Emily Duprie
It is now year three since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, and people are still adjusting to new ways of life. Some businesses still haven’t quite recovered from the result of unemployment and stimulus checks. In fact, many businesses are severely understaffed and instead of hiring more people, they just pressure their current exploited workers to drop everything for their job at any moments notice.
If the pandemic has shown us anything however, it’s that the working-class citizen is now aware of their true value. Especially in a society where no one wants to work anymore, minimum-wage workers are becoming increasingly difficult to find, given that if they wanted to, they can simply apply for a monthly unemployment check and sit pretty with their free government money.
Even more so, current workers at establishments all over are realizing they do not owe their loyalties to a company who pays them $10 for an entire hour of their day. Younger generations are realizing their worth and starting to say “Yeah……No” to managers who could previously get away with exploitation.
The viral video on popular social media platform TikTok, showed a man receiving a call from his manager asking him to come in to work on his day off.
The video, which received over 438k likes, starts with a man sitting in a swivel chair, his phone on speaker and his manager ranting about how they lost the worker for the day to covid and would need a replacement. She says, “Yeah unfortunately we had some team members call out today due to covid.” To which the man responds,
“Dang…you don’t have anybody else?” The manager then replies,
“Uh, no we actually don’t. And I know you’re not on the schedule but we were actually wondering if you could come in anyway-“
“Ummmm…” The man cuts her off. As the manager continues to plea for his help saying,
“We’re really short staffed so we could really use your-“
“Yeah…no.” He interrupts, chuckling softly at the audacity. The manager pauses on the other end then, agitated at his response says,
“Uhhhh?-” but the man cuts her off again, cordially wishing her a good night and throwing in a quick “Sorry” to make things better. Right before he hangs up the phone, the manager pleads out with a
“No wait!-” Before the call is disconnected.
The man then turns in his swivel chair with a grin on his face as he says “So you wanna go to Target? Whohooo!” And the two people in the room cheer in celebration.
Viewers showed full support for the nonchalant hero in the video, reiterating the fact that he had no reason to fall for the managers guilt trip, drop everything, and go into work on his day off.
The story and laughable video is a good reminder to know your value. Whether the man in the video ended up having consequences for his response and the posting of this video has yet to be determined, but I’m sure he knows that, fired or not, he can walk into virtually any minimum-wage paying job and practically get hired on the spot.
