DQ video goes viral; employees respond

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Three former employees of Dairy Queen who are embroiled in the controversy of a viral video agreed to interview with the Steele County Times on the condition they remain anonymous. While The Times typically doesn’t allow this, we made an exception in this case only because there have been threats to their personal safety.)
In this age of social media and instant feedback, there lies a message. More than one, maybe.
Nowhere was it more obvious than a video that went viral last week after an altercation at Dairy Queen in Owatonna. The video shows just seven seconds of what happened during the Jan. 30 incident, but that seven seconds was more than enough for thousands of people to weigh in.
The video shows an employee tossing a bag of food out the door of the business; the bag lands on the sidewalk, spilling open, at the feet of a woman standing in front of a vehicle. The woman takes a step forward, plants one foot and attempts to kick the bag of food back toward the door. Instead, she missed the bag, slipped on a patch of ice and fell onto her back. Laughter could be heard in the background.
The customer has never been identified.
That’s the end of that video, which was posted to Snapchat, a photo- and video-sharing platform on social media. The employee who tossed the food posted the video; she and another employee at the business then made a follow-up video mocking the woman and posted it on TikTok, another video-sharing platform.
Within an hour, the original videos were both removed from the employees’ social media accounts, but as we’ve all learned: If it’s on the Internet, it’s there forever.
And by then, the damage was done.
The video was shared multiple times on Facebook, usually accompanied by comments about disrespect and rudeness, suggestions to “call corporate,” press charges, file a lawsuit and more.
That was just the beginning, though. Within two hours, two of the employees received death threats, threats of rape and suggestions to kill themselves.
They are 17 and 18 years old. Both are seniors in high school; one works two jobs and attends post-secondary classes to get a jump on her college degree; the other balances school and sports, excelling in both. Both had worked at DQ for about two years when the incident occurred.
And now, both have quit their jobs – along with three other employees; they said – out of fear for their safety.
“I regret it,” said the employee who threw the bag of food. “I’m not proud of that moment; I’d been dealing with it for 30 minutes, but I know I’m accountable for everything I do. Now we’re dealing with the consequences.”
But as the saying goes, no matter how flat you make a pancake, it still has two sides.
 
Before the video:
According to three employees – two 18-year-old managers and a 17-year-old shift leader who spoke to the Steele County Times – the incident began about 20 minutes before the video started rolling.
The woman ordered burgers, fries, drinks and ice cream, then advanced to the pick-up window. She paid and received her change, then had to wait for the hot food, which is cooked to order, they said. The employee at the drive-thru window – one of the 18-year-old managers, handled the order.
The woman was upset about the wait time, the manager said, became angry and drove away without the burgers and fries. Moments later, she pulled back up to the drive-thru order board and began “yelling at us that she deserved a refund,” the manager said.
The manager told her to pull around to the pick-up window again, where she could get the rest of her food as well as the refund. Instead, the girls said, she pulled up to the front doors of the business.
The lobby of the business has been closed for years because there aren’t enough employees to staff both the drive-thru and the lobby, the employees said.
They didn’t realize the woman was there until they “heard banging on the front door,” the shift leader said, and “when I walked up, she was just cussing me out and telling me how she’s late and how we’re unacceptable,” and wanted a refund.
“I tried explaining to her multiple times that I can’t let her in the store, but if she went to the drive-thru, or just walked up to the (drive-thru) window, we’d be happy to give her the refund,” the shift leader said, “but she wouldn’t cooperate and wouldn’t listen.”
As the conversation through the locked doors continued, the employees said the woman continued “cussing at us, kicking the door, grabbing the handle and trying to open it.
“Usually, when someone’s acting like that, for the safety of us and especially the younger ones, we can’t let them in,” the shift leader said.
Three other employees, ages 15 and 16, were also at the store that day.
One of those employees ran to get the second 18-year-old manager, who was in the office.
That manager repeated the policy of not letting people into the lobby and told the woman she could pick up the rest of her food and the refund at the drive-thru window.
“She was using the ‘F’ word every other word, said she had kids in the car, and said her kids were already late,” the manager said and soon started recording the employees.
“That’s when I told the girls to record her, get her license plate and call the cops, and I told her if she didn’t leave, we’ll have her trespassed because we asked her multiple times to leave.”
The woman eventually said she didn’t want the rest of her order, which is when the manager opened the door and tossed the bag of food onto the ground.
The woman steps forward to kick it, slips and lands on her back.
The video ends there, with the girls first gasping, then laughing at the fall.
 
After the video
The employees said the woman lay on her back “for a while, saying she was going to call the cops and that we assaulted her.”
She got back in her vehicle but stayed in the parking lot for about 10 minutes, then pulled her vehicle into an adjoining business parking lot before eventually leaving.
The employees had called the non-emergency number for the Owatonna Police Department; the woman had also called police.
Two officers arrived at the DQ about 30 minutes later, the girls said, after talking to the woman.
The woman told officers the employees had “called for back-up” and there were people “waiting for her.”
Not true, the manager said. It was customers who had witnessed the incident and circled back to “make sure we were OK. We didn’t know any of them.”
The employees showed the officers the video, the shift leader said, “because after what she was yelling after she had fallen, we wanted to show what really happened: That she slipped. We didn’t do anything to her.”
After the police left and business resumed, the threats started rolling in – including from people coming through the drive-thru lane.
“It was just me and two 16-year-olds,” said the manager who was at the drive-thru window during the initial confrontation. “We’re just three girls in high school, compared to grown men who were coming after us.”
By 7 p.m. – about five hours after the altercation ended – Fourteen Foods, the corporation that owns more than 240 DQ stores, including the one in Owatonna, had contacted the local store.
A corporate rep told the manager to close early and “to let her know when we were safe.”
By the end of the night, the two managers and the shift leader had quit.
 
The fallout
The Owatonna Dairy Queen hasn’t reopened since it closed early the night of Jan. 30. The website says it’s temporarily closed, and the corporation has issued this statement:
“Fourteen Foods shares your concerns about what was shown in the video … We are in the process of conducting an internal investigation, including talking with employees at the restaurant, reviewing security footage, and talking with the customer in the video. Know that we are taking this matter extremely seriously. The store will remain closed until the investigation is complete. Our number one goal is to be able to continue to serve the Owatonna community to the best of our ability.”
None of the three employees who spoke with the Steele County Times had spoken to Fourteen Foods since the night of the incident.
They’ve heard nothing from Owatonna police about the incident – but have since reported the threats they have received, including a particularly brutal one about raping one of the young managers.
Police are investigating, she said.
 
A larger problem?
This isn’t the first video to go viral because of poor behavior by customers and members of the workforce.
There’s no shortage of help-wanted signs; businesses of all kinds are desperately seeking employees. Tempers are short.
“Some comments are right,” one of the 18-year-old managers said of the feedback on social media. “The place was basically run by kids. Once you turn 18, they consider you an adult and make you a manager; you can open and close and count the till.”
The shift leader, a high school senior, was scheduled for 35 hours last week, with one day off.
Before the girls quit, they said there were nine employees – at least six of them 18 or younger – to run the store, which was open nine hours a day, seven days a week.
Starting pay was $10.50 per hour, they said. One manager made $14.75 per hour and the shift lead made $12.50 an hour.
But weekly, they dealt with upset and unruly customers.
“It’s not our first time getting people like this,” one manager said of last week’s altercation. “It’s typical, and we’ve learned to deal with it. Usually, it’s done within five minutes, where they yell at us and leave.”
The most recent incident was only an exception because “usually I’m able to resolve things right away,” the manager said.
It wasn’t the first time they’d had to call law enforcement, either.
“Especially recently; we’ve called the cops on a few customers lately, for threats and things,” the shift leader said. “It’s crazy that people would talk like that to … anyone, really.”
 
The lesson
“We take full responsibility for the TikTok,” the shift leader said. “We regretted it and deleted it not long after posting it. We aren’t trying to play innocent. We do take accountability and are sorry for our actions and are now just doing the best we can.”
In addition to worrying about finding new jobs and how the incident may affect their future, they’re also worried about how their parents have been portrayed.
“I want people to know that it’s not our parents’ fault,” one of the managers said. “They did raise us right. We’re responsible for our own actions, so those are the comments that hurt the most. My parents have done whatever they could to raise me the best they could. One action doesn’t define who I am or what they taught me.”
The shift leader agreed.
“I looked at my mom and said, ‘please don’t think this is your fault. I’m so sorry.’”
Their parents, they said, are disappointed in them.
The manager who was at the drive-thru window has maintained her anonymity online because she remained at the window.
“It makes me really sad to see people saying such awful things about genuinely good people,” she said of her coworkers. “The nicest person in the world has had a moment where they get upset. I don’t know whether it’s because we’re in the service industry or because we’re teenagers, but we’re not supposed to show we’re upset?”
Most importantly, the internet is forever and often unforgiving, the shift leader said.
 
“It definitely made us more aware of what social media can do – and how quickly.