A Tim Horton's coffee shop employee in London, Ontario has been given her job back only after a substantial public and media outcry. What was the outrageous misconduct which her employer felt was just cause to hand Nicole Lilliman, a single parent with four children, her walking papers? Helping to soothe a distressed child by giving that child a Timbit. For those of you scoring at home outside Canada, a Timbit is a pastry sold at Tim Hortons. It's about the size of a donut hole and has a retail value of about 20 cents.
This is not about one particular bastard of a store manager, or how this is an isolated incident and other Tim Horton's locations don't have a problem going out of their way for customers. This is what happens when mom-and-pop businesses (or in Tim Horton's case, NHL player before journeyman defencemen became millionaires-business) become large, publicly-traded corporations whose shares are held by institutional investors that have a fiduciary duty to return as much profit as possible. If that means forgoing organic and fair trade coffee, so be it. If that means busting a union, so be it. If that means firing a single parent because she was nice to a child, so be it.
At present, there are almost 2800 Tim Horton's locations in Canada, almost twice as many stores than McDonald's has in this country. Not only does Tim's have the Golden Arches beat when it comes to franchises, it appears that Tim's also beats the Golden Arches when it comes to disgusting and reprehensible labour practices.
Memo to Tim Horton's and your shareholders: you know where you can 'Roll up your Rim'...
1 comment:
The irony is, they easily could have lost more than 20 cents worth of business if the kid had started crying--and that's before figuring in the negative PR value of firing the employee.
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