Mistakes happen, and when you’re trying to serve a dozen grumpy and patient customers while up to your arms in grease, you probably can count on those mistakes happening often. One store manager for a Burger King in Michigan, however, believes they have the perfect scheme to minimize any errors in the kitchen: make the workers pay for it. More specifically, they’re enforcing a rule that all employees must pay for any food that they drop on the ground, accidental or otherwise.
“You drop it. You buy it,” a poster in the Burger King, saying that there were “No Excuses!” for people not to pay a dollar or fifty cents for dropped Whoppers and burgers. One of the younger employees wasn’t too keen on the bizarre rule enforced at the store, so they posted a photo of it to r/BurgerKing. According to many Reddit commenters, this rule might really backfire for the manager.
“Incentivizing using dropped patties, sweet,” joked a commenter. Plenty of fast-food joints have a bad enough reputation for being dirty and unsanitary, but a place not throwing away dropped food to avoid punishment is outrageous. That is the case if the manager didn’t catch an employee doing it, of course. “Also incentivizes lying about dropping food if they’re not given free lunches,” adds another, saying how people might intentionally ‘drop’ a burger or Whopper for free food.
According to Michigan Law, The Store Manager’s Rule Could Be Illegal
Shady or gross problems aside, some Redditors point out that this sort of enforcement is not legal. “Call corporate and bro this is [expletive] and probably illegal depending on your state,” remarks a Reddit user. “Very illegal! You cannot punish employees financially for stuff like this. You can sue them for damages maybe,” chimes in a second.
According to Michigan law firm Sommers Schwartz, these commenters might be right about this Burger King manager’s illegal rule. The law doesn’t allow an employer to deduct pay without written consent. And even with consent, the deduction cannot let employees’ wages go below minimum wage, which could be an issue for those working at Burger King. That said, “mistake-based penalties,” like fees for dropping burgers or Whoppers, are most certainly wage theft unless OP isn’t disclosing that everyone in the store agreed to it in writing.
