An Auntie Anne’s employee posted a viral TikTok lamenting the number of “kids” they say their manager keeps “hiring,” showing off a large number of workers staffed at one of the franchises at the same time.
User @ohnourdeadnggas prefaces her post in a caption that states: “if you see this please dont fire me, it was a joke” however there were a number of other commenters who seemed to think that the store had too many employees in it at once.
@onourdeadnggas if you see this please dont fire me, it was a joke #fyp #viral #relatable ♬ original sound – user71338878558
The TikToker records themselves pantomiming frustration into her camera while at work at the Auntie Anne’s location she’s employed with. She lip-syncs to someone saying: “sweetie, bitch, if you don’t sit the fuck down,” while flipping her camera around to show a number of young employees working on making pretzels and serving them to hungry customers.
She writes in a text overlay of the video: “me because my manager won’t stop hiring random kids”
According to various online resources, the minimum age for Auntie Anne’s employees is 16 years old. Jobzmall writes: “To work at Auntie Anne’s, you generally need to have a high school diploma or equivalent. You may also need to have prior customer service experience, basic math and cash handling skills, and must be able to stand for long periods of time.”
The Daily Dot has reached out to Auntie Anne’s via email and @ohnourdeadnggas via TikTok comment for further information.
A commenter on an Indeed forum post writes that people as young as 15 can work at the chain, however, they’re not allowed to handle dough or operate the ovens/appliances to make the food, so they will more than likely be relegated to a interacting with customers, processing transactions, and handing them their items.
It’s believed that fast food jobs are primarily held by teenagers, however, according to the Center for Economic Policy, this is an assessment that hasn’t been true for sometime. In a 2013 paper, the organization wrote that only 30% of employees who work in the fast food service industry are teenagers. Another 30% are between the ages of 20-24, and the other 40% are 25 years of age or older.
In a late 2022 piece penned by Zippia, a range of various fast food employee demographics were compiled, including the age of the average fast food worker, which the website says is around 23 years old. The business also skews toward a more female workforce: 53% of fast food employees are women, with men comprising the other 47%. Women also, on average, earn slightly more than men: $1.02 to every $1.00 that men in the industry, on average, earn.
A number of TikTokers who saw @onourdeadnggas’ commented with a variety of opinions. There was one user who thought that the number of workers she showed off in the video was adequate, as they said Auntie Anne’s locations are usually extremely busy: “Plzzzzz it’s packed asfff I know that labor high”
However someone else thought similarly to @onourdeadnggas: “dangg, it’s a lotttt,” they wrote.
Someone else seemed to look at the bright side of the situation, however, highlighting that as a result of having so many workers, the store is less likely to be overstaffed as a result: “damn y’all ain’t ever gon be short staffed”
Another TikToker said that this amount of workers on shift simultaneously probably wouldn’t fly at their respective place of work: “all them ppl on the clock my manger would’ve been sent somebody home”
One person, however, who appears to be commenting as a teenager themselves wrote: “well we gotta work somewhere”
Although many industries have been able to bounce back from labor shortages that were caused by the implementation of government-mandated stay-at-home and social distancing orders in response to the fervor fomented around the COVID-19 pandemic, there are still a purported number of open food service jobs, leaving many businesses still understaffed in 2023.
