Hamilton Journal News

How a Dollar General employee went viral on TikTok, then got fired

- Michael Corkery

In January 2021, Mary Gundel received a letter from Dollar General’s corporate office congratula­ting her for being one of the company’s top-performing employees. In honor of her hard work and dedication, the company gave Gundel a lapel pin that read, “DG: Top 5%.”

“Wear it proudly,” the letter said.

Gundel did just that, affixing the pin to her black-and-yellow Dollar General uniform, next to her name badge. “I wanted the world to see it,” she said.

Gundel loved her job managing the Dollar General store in Tampa, Florida. It was fastpaced, unpredicta­ble and even exciting. She especially liked the challenge of calming down belligeren­t customers and pursuing shoplifter­s. She earned about $51,000 a year, far more than the median income in Tampa.

But the job had its challenges, too: Delivery trucks that would show up unannounce­d, leaving boxes piled up in the aisles because there were not enough workers to unpack them. Days spent running the store for long stretches by herself because the company allotted only so many hours for other employees to work. Cranky customers complainin­g about out of stock items.

So on the morning of March 28, in between running the register and putting tags on clothing, Gundel, 33, propped up her iPhone and hit record.

The result was a six-part critique, “Retail Store Manager Life,” in which Gundel laid bare the working conditions inside the fast-growing retail chain, with stores that are a common sight in rural areas.

“Me talking out about this is actually kind of bad,” Gundel said as she looked into her camera. “Technicall­y, I could get into a lot of trouble.”

But she added: “Whatever happens, happens. Something needs to be said, and there needs to be some changes, or they are probably going to end up losing a lot of people.”

Her videos, which she posted on TikTok, went viral, including one that has been viewed 1.8 million times.

And with that, Gundel was instantly transforme­d from a loyal lieutenant in Dollar General management into an outspoken dissident who risked her career to describe working conditions familiar to retail employees across the United States.

As Gundel had predicted, Dollar General soon fired her. She was let go less than a week after posting her first critical video, but not before she inspired other Dollar General store managers, many of them women working in stores in poor areas, to speak out on TikTok.

In a statement, Dollar General said: “We provide many avenues for our teams to make their voices heard, including our open-door policy and routine engagement surveys. We use this feedback to help us identify and address concerns, improve our workplace and better serve our employees, customers and communitie­s. We are disappoint­ed any time an employee feels that we have not lived up to these goals and we use those situations as additional opportunit­ies to listen and learn.

“Although we do not agree with all the statements currently being made by Ms. Gundel, we are doing that here.”

Before March 28, Gundel’s TikTok page was a mix of posts about hair extensions and her recent dental surgery. Now it is a daily digest dedicated to fomenting revolt at a major American company. She is trying to build what she calls a “movement” of workers who feel overworked and disrespect­ed and is encouragin­g Dollar General employees to form a union.

Just about every day, Gundel announces on TikTok a newly “elected spokespers­on”

— each one a woman who works for Dollar General or worked there recently — from Arkansas, Ohio, Tennessee, West Virginia and other places. These women have been assigned to answer questions and concerns from fellow employees in those states and most are keeping their identities hidden because they worry about losing their jobs.

Social media not only gives workers a platform to vent and connect with one another, it empowers rank-and-file workers like Gundel to become labor leaders. Gundel’s viral videos appeared as Christian Smalls, an Amazon warehouse employee in New York City, who was derided by the company as “not smart or articulate,” organized the first major union in Amazon history in March.

Gundel planned on a long career at Dollar General when she started working in her first store in Georgia three years ago. She has three children, including one who is autistic, and her husband works at a defense contractor. She grew up in Titusville, Florida, near Cape Canaveral. Her mother was a district manager at the Waffle House restaurant­s. Her grandmothe­r worked in the gift store at the Kennedy Space Center. Gundel moved to Tampa as a Dollar General store manager in February 2020, just before the pandemic.

The store used to have about 198 hours a week to allocate to a staff of about seven people, she said. But by the end of March, she had only about 130 hours to allocate, which equated to one full-time employee and one part-time employee fewer than when she started.

With not as many hours to give to her staff, Gundel often had to operate the store on her own for long stretches, typically working six days and up to 60 hours a week with no overtime pay.

Gundel’s protest was prompted by a TikTok video posted by a customer complainin­g about the disheveled state of a Dollar General store. Gundel had heard these complaints from her own customers. Why are boxes blocking the aisles? Why aren’t the shelves fully stocked?

She understood their frustratio­n. But the blame on employees is misplaced, she said.

“Instead of getting mad at the people working there, trying to handle all of their workload, why don’t you say something to the actual big people in the company?” Gundel said on TikTok. “Why don’t you demand more from the company so they actually start funding the stores to be able to get all this stuff done?”

Gundel continues to post videos regularly and recently started driving for Uber and Lyft.

While Gundel’s unionizing effort may be an uphill effort, some people say she has already had an impact. In one recent TikTok video, a woman shopping at a Dollar General in Florida credited Gundel with forcing the company to spruce up the store she shops in.

 ?? TODD ANDERSON / THE NEW YORK TIMES ?? Mary Gundel, who managed a Dollar General store, in Tampa, Fla., created the hashtag #PutInATick­et because, she said, that was the company’s response to serious store issues.
TODD ANDERSON / THE NEW YORK TIMES Mary Gundel, who managed a Dollar General store, in Tampa, Fla., created the hashtag #PutInATick­et because, she said, that was the company’s response to serious store issues.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States