Chick-Fil-A Franchise Owner To Pay Employees During Five-Month Remodel
Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large
By now, we’ve probably all seen instances wherein we pass one of the usual fast-food restaurants near to where we live, and notice that it is closed for renovations. In cases like that, the location may be out of commission for several weeks, or even a few months. When I see it, I wonder about the employees and what sort of hardships they might be facing at that time. What happens to them can vary, based on a wide variety of factors, but you normally don’t hear about them continuing to receive their regular pay while the store at which they’ve been working is closed for five months due to badly-needed updating…until now.
It seems that the owner of a Chick-Fil-A franchise in Austin, Texas did that very thing; when his store needed to be closed so that it could be made larger, instead of laying off his employees, he continued to pay them during the five-month period. As a matter of fact, not only did he continue to pay them during this time, he gave them all $1-per-hour raises for staying with him.
I have no idea what sort of a hardship this was or was not to the franchise owner, but, regardless, this is a tremendous gesture of a kind about which one rarely hears. Congratulations to him, as well as to his employees – it sounds like they all deserve each other, in the best possible sense of that expression.