A North Carolina Chick-fil-A restaurant is catching a lot of heat after it tried to lure “volunteers” by offering to pay them with chicken sandwiches.
On July 26, the Chick-fil-A located in Hendersonville posted a message on its Facebook page asking people to work for free entrees, the Charlotte Observer reporter. The post did not mention any kind of monetary compensation to volunteers.
“We are looking for volunteers for our new Drive Thru Express!” the now-deleted post read. “Earn 5 free entrees per shift (1 hr) worked.”
After the original post was taken down, the eatery sent out a follow-up message saying, “multiple people” signed up to volunteer and “people who sign up for this choose it voluntarily.”
The fast food restaurant has since limited who can leave a comment on its Facebook posts, but that hasn’t stopped users from flooding its page with angry comments.
“Glad to see you deleted the highly illegal volunteer post, pay workers money not chicken,” one user commented on the post that included a picture of an employee holding a child.
“Are you forcing the kid to work for that ice cream cone with your slave labor scheme?” another left.
A few users pointed out that employees cannot volunteer services to for-profit private sector businesses, which falls under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Under the act, people are only allowed to volunteer with public agencies and their communities.
A volunteer is someone who donates their time without receiving financial or material gain, the Society for Human Resource Management says.
A spokesperson for Chick-fil-A corporate told Business Insider that the company did not endorse the program and the restaurant has since decided to end it.
