Winnie Shilson has worked for Taco Bell for 30 years. She has been robbed at gun point twice, and 9 years ago she took a bullet in the leg when a robber started shooting the Taco Bell’s safe. Winnie was fired recently, after two negative performance reviews. She’s convinced that Taco Bell wanted to rid themselves of her $45,000 a year salary.
“I bawled for three days after I got fired,” she says. “I was the most loyal, dedicated employee they could have. In 30 years, I never called in sick or was late to work. Not once! And I was good at my job. Damn good.”Shilson started at the Zantigo on W. 7th Street in St. Paul in 1977 (Taco Bell later bought Zantigo). Her pay was $2.85 an hour, not enough to make her husband, a truck driver (now retired), think that it was worth the inconvenience of having his wife, and mother of their four kids, take a job.
“He wouldn’t even look at my paycheck the first two years,” she says. “Then one day, I said, ‘We need a new clothes washer’ and he said, ‘We can’t afford one.’ That’s when I said, ‘Well, I can!’ That changed his mind.”
Shilson rose rapidly, working 60-hour weeks and becoming general manager at the W. 7th Street store and, later, at the Richfield Taco Bell. She was robbed at gunpoint twice, including the time she was shot while opening the W. 7th restaurant one morning in 1998.
Winnie is currently looking for a job because she needs health insurance, and says she would have accepted a demotion to keep her job. Does the Curiously Australian President of Taco Bell, Greg Creed know about this?
Nick Coleman: After 30 years, Taco Bell didn’t even offer her any hot sauce [StarTribune]
(Photo:thicket23)
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I’m sure with her resume and the publicity over this event, she can get another job. Although it is kinda sad that she got let go after the kinda loyalty she had for them. I could never stand 30 years of working for a fast-food company, no matter what the position.
I hope their monkey dies…in a vat of fire….sauce.
christ, $45.000 a year, that’s 30.000 €… people here in Spain, with jobs of more complexity, don’t even recieve a 12.000 € income.
@matukonyc: “Companies often use reviews against employees they just want to be rid of, creating a negative paper trail that will “justify” letting an employee go.”
I know that one first hand. I flat out refused to do someone else’s job once, and said that I was sorry but the problems being blamed on me were CLEARLY not my fault.
I was rushed through performance review and cut loose because if they had waited one more month, they couldn’t have fired me if they tried since it was a state job. I had done my job to the letter, but not on paper. Even according to the interview when I applied for unemployment I was not fired for “performance issues” but because I wasn’t a “good fit” for the position. But the negative reviews and write-ups was the only way to get rid of me.
As for the person who said she balked at working closing hours and that’s reason enough to fire her, I completely disagree. I worked retail for six years, and the fact is that with seniority comes the right to choose your hours. Our general manager had the exact schedule he wanted, and that made perfect sense. You serve your time in the trenches so you can choose your hours when you get promoted. If she didn’t want to work closing, after 30 years she’s perfectly entitled to say she doesn’t want to close the store.
Depending on the store and the way the tasks stack up, opening can be just as stressful, and it’s early morning which most people hate. We always had a harder time finding people for opening shifts.
As the manager, who only requirement when it comes to hours is that if nobody else could cover a shift she would have to step up herself or find somebody to. But she shouldn’t have to regularly work a schedule she didn’t want, she’d worked hard 30 years to make sure she didn’t have to.
@meiran: Hahahaha, you are so funny. seniority rights? What do you think this is, a union or government job? Get real. The only rights you have are defined by the EEO rules posted at the jobsite. Unless you have a contract that says what your duties are, they can ask you to do any part of the business, not just “your job”. What a joke. Seriously, don’t apply government job requirements to this. This has to do with real business, not government jobs reserved for the special entitled people.
Oh, I didn’t say that she was required to have seniority or anything like that. She probably has no legal recourse whatsoever, to be honest.
I’m saying if she worked there 30 years and didn’t want to work nights anymore, random people on the internet have no right to say she’s at fault and a bad worker. Almost every menial retail job I’ve ever been at has done this, not government jobs. The store manager chose their schedule, everyone else had to live with it.
As for “This has to do with real business, not government jobs reserved for the special entitled people.” Are you bitter that you’ve never had a government job, or bitter that you did?
@meiran: Those policies for “seniority” (unless union) are defined by company policy and is at the whim of the company. If her regional manager says she had to work nights a few nights a month and refused, I could see that as grounds for term.
I’m not bitter about either, and I don’t want to start a discussion about government workers which have both good and bad people in it. I shouldn’t have brought it up in the first place.
Shame on taco bell.
- “Yo no quiero Taco bell”
I’d like to answer the response that someone wrote about the “17 year olds that get canned”
I’ve worked many places and I hate to say it but many of the people this age that get hired either don’t show up for work, have poor customer service skills, or just don’t give a damn.
Now there are exceptions to this rule. But they are few and far between. And, no I am not 40 or something. I’m actually not that far above 17.
@TechnoDestructo:
That link says they also operate some chains in IOWA, maybe one or more of the Democratic Presidential candidates can get their staff to boycott the chain over the next three weeks leading up to the primary. The big three Dems have something like 1000 staff and volunteers each on the ground in Iowa right now, that’s a lot of fast food customers (each probably getting all their meals at fastfood places) to be losing the business of.
This is becoming very typical of Taco Bell. I am aware of a similar situation. The store was robbed at closing and the shift manager was fired. The manager had absolutely nothing to do with the robbery. The thing about this is that you have no-one to make a formal compliant with.I will advise all employees of Taco Bell to only work there until you can find something better. Then leave them high and dry. So I hurt for this loyal worker.
it’s kind of funny to read all of the things that people say about my grandmother whether they know her or not. but the truth of the matter is that indeed, she did work her butt off for taco bell, and they were hiring illegal people to work for them, and they did tell them to go change their identities when they found out they were illegal. and there is no reason to fire someone because a store failed an audit. it happens all of the time to taco bell. they transferred her to 3 different stores after the west 7th store, to FIX THEM UP. does that make sense? it should. numerous requests were made to people to fix certain things in the store that were not operating properly. she wasnt responsible for those things. but its all good because matters have been taken to the courts. so before some of you open your big mouths. let the courts decide. thank you:]