Hi, and welcome back to me and talking about whatever I want. Today, I want to talk about
how Wendy's destroyed their legacy along with Chipotle, and a couple of other fast food places,
and how they collectively had to pay millions of dollars in fines as a result. This is one of
those lower your faith in humanity stories. But thankfully, nobody got away with it this time.
But before we get into that mess, of course, I'd like to do my comments shout out from the last
video. Yesterday's comment shout out goes to Azure Kuzma, who says, "The way that the mirror just
reflects the D'Angelo talking into a phone makes me feel weirdly lonely." Then imagine how I feel.
Actually, all jokes aside, the first videos on this channel I was shooting with this webcam right
here until I realized that my phone actually has a much higher video quality than the webcam that I
paid money for specifically for this channel. But anyway, thank you for putting up with
my previous awful video quality and my audio problems as well. Anyway, that's enough about me
and my video clarity. Today, we're going to talk about clear violations of child labor laws. Now,
this isn't the first time I've talked about Wendy's on this channel. I actually
mentioned them in passing a few weeks ago. Brands are annoying, especially on social
media. We all remember Wendy's and the little Twitter clap backs and honestly,
it's funny at first but after a certain point there's a thin line between good brands on social
media and straight up cringe. And I still stand by that. Honestly, Wendy's is just so annoying and if
you view them through that lens, then the news I'm about to share doesn't really surprise anybody. So
I think to understand just how bad of a situation this is, we need to do a bit of a Wendy's history.
So before the edgy Twitter rants, before the anime personas, before the quality of their
food started dramatically going downhill, but that's not what this video is about,
there was just one dude behind Wendy's and that dude was Dave Thomas. Now, from what I understand,
Dave Thomas was a super cool guy. He was really into burgers and making money,
as Americans are. And so in 1969, apparently, he started his own burger brand, Wendy's,
named after his daughter who is not named Wendy. That kind of threw me through a loop. Now, Wendy's
took off and, obviously, he became a multi, multi, multi, multimillionaire, but he stayed
pretty hands-on with their images. This man was in over 800 commercials for his company. I was really
born in the wrong generation because I've never seen any of these commercials. They were mostly
aired before I was born. But anyway, I'm not just bringing this up because I'm a Dave Thomas stan.
I bring this up for very specific reasons. Dave Thomas was an orphan. And so because of that,
he always cared a lot about orphans and, specifically, finding homes for them. And
when he acquired the money in order to make an actual difference, he made it his mission to
find homes for these soldiers. He founded the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption in 1992 and
it still goes and is mostly backed by Wendy's to this day. So if you go to Wendy's website,
there's a little footnote section called Dave's legacy, and if you scroll past all
the propaganda pictures up on there it says right here, "Anything for the kids. Every child deserves
a permanent home and loving family. Having a family means there are people who care about you
and who will always be there for you. Adoption is a great way to create or add to a family.
There are so many children in America waiting to be adopted." So through Dave Thomas's effort,
literally thousands of children have been moved to permanent homes. And this man went on adoption
tours and he was really doing the most for these kids pretty much all the way up until
he passed away in 2002. And in a way, I'm kind of glad it's not here anymore because if he was,
he would also have to share the news that Wendy's just came under fire for over 1,000 violations of
child labor laws in the State of Massachusetts alone. How are you going to break the law,
not just once, but 1,000 times? So, I mean, while it's obviously already egregious that we're out
here violating these sort of laws, the fact that it was done by a company that was founded
by someone who truly cared so strongly about children is really upsetting.
And also, their food sucks. Ever since he passed away it's just been awful and I was barely alive
when that happened. So I got this news from this CBS article right here and it says, "They agreed
to pay $400,000 to resolve allegations that it I violated child labor laws by having teenage
employees at dozens of Massachusetts restaurants work later and longer than allowed." So basically,
these kids were 16 and 17-years-old and they were working past 10:00 PM, and some of them
were working for more than nine hours a day. Needless to say, that's literally illegal. At
least it is in the State of Massachusetts. I'm not sure if it is in other places, but I mean,
if you've ever had a job where you work in shifts, you would understand that's
just not right. I personally once worked a 13 hour shift, however, I was an adult.
And even at that, that was just far too much. I came home and crashed. I had no energy. So having
children work for over nine hours in your crappy little restaurant, what were you thinking? Well,
let's be honest. We know exactly what they're thinking because here's why. What they really
should have done was hire additional people. But if you can just pay somebody to stay
a little bit longer to replace that gap where there should be a whole other being,
then you're saving a whole lot of money on payroll expenses. So basically, it's just a
classic case of prioritizing money over human life. What else should we expect from somebody
as rich as Wendy's? Investigators estimated more than 2,000 violations at 46 corporate
owned Wendy's international locations across the state. Corporate owned, so this wasn't just like
your mom and pops Wendy's where some heartless manager was allowing their kids to work too long.
This is literally Wendy's, Inc. They are the ones who own that establishment. So
it's not like Wendy's the company didn't know this was happening. And of course,
they had to release their little press statement. "We are committed to being a responsible employer
with the goal that all employees have a rewarding experience as valued members of our team." What
the kids? So yeah, that was truly egregious. I feel like Dave Thomas is rolling over in his
grave. And the thing is, it's 2020. I almost said 2019, holy crap. You would think with us being
in the 21st century and all we would prioritize education and wellbeing for children over labor,
but I guess someone had to flip the burgers, right? Now, let me ask you this. Why weren't
the managers there? If you needed two extra hours worth of scheduling, the manager should
have come in and did those two extra hours. That's just how it works. I think I'm getting
extra mad because, as you can tell, I used to work a shift job. But anyway, what's
really disturbing is that when I was reading this article, it led me down this rabbit hole of other
violations and I realized this is a huge issue. This was not a localized incident. So next up,
I'm going to call out Chipotle. Now before we get into it, I just want to say I have
never liked Chipotle. I have never understood the hype. If someone understands the hype,
just let me know. Anyway, once again, this video is not about my opinions on fast food. Oh,
that's a video topic right there. Let me know down below if you want me to make a video about how
nasty 90% of your favorite fast foods are because I am not about to pull any punches. Anyway,
Chipotle the company, Chipotle, Inc. Chipotle.biz. I don't know what their company name is.
Investigations started in 2016 into the same issue, that Chipotle was having their
kids work for way too long, and by the time that investigation was concluded,
the Attorney General found 13,253 violations of child labor laws. They were fined $1.3 million,
but they wound up settling it for $2 million. And of course, I'm getting this information from this
Boston Globe article, but here's the thing. This article actually shares first person experiences.
So apparently, this mom picked up her 17-year-old daughter and it says, "When she got into the car,
she was shaking. She had just finished a 10 hour shift at Chipotle and hadn't been given a break to
eat, drink, or sit down." I do not have words. And here's the thing, I know that this is true
just because something really similar happened to me where I was the only one at the store and it
was logistically impossible for me to leave the counter so I just had to stand there. And yeah,
we weren't allowed to sit, which by the way, I've never understood. Why aren't fast food workers,
and cashiers, and all these people allowed to sit if the only thing we're
doing is standing behind the counter, but if you're a receptionist there's a chair?
And this is not hate towards the receptionists, I'm just calling out the companies. What is with
that? But yeah, imagine 13,000 violations of labor laws. How? And again, this was only in
Massachusetts. That is one state out of 50. They have another first person account. Apparently,
this girl was 16-years-old and she was putting in 25 hours a week at two different jobs trying
to help her mother pay her bills. Her shifts, technically, weren't scheduled passed the legal
amount of time, however, she still had to stay at the store once her shift ended because they
had to put away the food. In other words, her company was reporting her shifts. That way,
an external examination would make it appear that no laws were in violation. She was 16 and
she was just one of, who knows how many cases, if there were 13,000 violations. Probably hundreds,
if not, thousands of kids who were just being allowed to work far more hours than
they needed too. Well not than they needed to, than they were literally allowed to.
These are laws. I didn't make these out. This girl also brought up the major power
imbalance to where Chipotle figured out how to stop people from protesting this because
when her coworkers asked to get their hours cut down, Chipotle cut their pay instead. So I mean,
this girl was free to speak up if she wanted to, but they were also going to slash her pay. Could
you imagine holding someone's finances over their head like that to get more work out of them when
they are literally just trying to make money to give it to their mother? Chipotle is discussing
for that one. On top of that, a lot of this was happening on school nights. So these kids were
getting off close to midnight and then having to wake up and go to school the next day. So,
that was Chipotle's disgusting mess. For once, I'm not talking about their food.
Anyway, the last company we're going to look at today is this one called Qdoba. How do you
pronounce Q-D-O-B-A? Qdoba.
Qdoba. I'm just going to assume this is right. So yeah, I've never heard of Qdoba,
but they had to pay $409,000 because they had over 1,000 child labor law violations at 22
corporate owned locations. And here's the thing, this was only in Massachusetts. Are you starting
to see why I'm saying that this is an enormous issue? Without these investigations we wouldn't
even know that this was going on. Well, let's be honest. Deep down we all knew this was going on,
but we wouldn't have the numbers on the data to prove without a doubt that this is going on.
Children are being exploited by fast food chains. Because the Attorney General's Office found almost
200 instances where a minor worked more than 11 hours in a single shift and 18 instances
of minors working more than 48 hours a week. That's more than an adult's full-time job.
On more than 25 occasions, Qdoba also failed to obtain work permits prior to
hiring a minor employee. Oh, my gosh. So now that we're at the little conclusion,
it really raises a question of what do we do. I think the answer is pretty simple, boycott
Wendy's. Wait, no. I'm just kidding. Boycotts never work because, obviously, people forget
about it and then they just go right back to it. But here's what you can really do, report these
people like your life depends on it. See the thing about the Attorney General's Office in your state
is that they already know this is going on, but if you report your specific issue to the Department
of Labor, they have to launch an investigation and the only thing that these companies care about is
money. So the only thing that's going to rein them in is a $409,000 fine or a $2 million settlement.
So yeah, in conclusion, report, report, report. We can't let these people get away with this. I
almost feel like I should apologize to Dave Thomas because like... But then again, I wasn't the one
violating labor laws. Honestly, I hope that every single manager who allowed this to happen watches
this video just so I can personally tell you, you should have been at the store but you had the kid
do it instead because you are morally bankrupt. Anywhere, I feel better now that I've talked about
it, but let's be honest, this really not going to change anything. The hundreds of thousands
of dollars of fines aren't going to change anything and these companies are probably just
going to find another way to get around violating these laws anyway, so honestly who cares?