Management tried to hide how many of us were exposed to COVID and that we were even exposed at all.

We worked in a restaurant and essentially 3 servers had already went home that day with symptoms while another 2 went home with symptoms when I got there for the night shift. We started asking questions and management lied about what was happening. One of the servers still there ended up calling the other servers who were out. All 5 expressed showing symptoms for COVID. When we asked management why they didn’t tell us, they said that there was no COVID and that we should just keep working. The issue we had was that one of our workers was in Chemo. She was immunocompromised and directly exposed to these workers because she was not warned before she came in. Another server’s son was also immunocompromised. Another server’s child was waiting to get a surgery, and was now also exposed due to management trying to cover it up and not shutting the restaurant down.

When it became undeniable that COVID was now spreading among staff, management just tried to downplay it. When we asked why they didn’t let us know, they said they didn’t want us to panic. In other words, they didn’t want to follow the law at the time and shut the restaurant down. Workers that had been with this restaurant for 5-15 years all put their two weeks in right then. This had a cascading effect where more than half of us quit within the next two weeks.

Logged in one Monday to an email in my inbox. It was from HR offering a very generous early retirement/severance package.

It turns out they offered it to every employee over the age of 50 and 15 years tenure. All of the key employees took it. All of us. The ones that get things done behind the scenes and know where all of the bodies are buried. Good luck to those left behind.