Today was the day me and Jacob finally made our move. While Tisha was locked in her office doing whatever the fuck she does, we went around gathering evidence of how bad the conditions really were.
Nobody in the kitchen was wearing gloves. The floors hadn’t been mopped properly in days, leaving a thick layer of grease on the tile. But the crown jewel of the whole safety hazard collection was the AC unit in the back. The damn thing was leaking like crazy, leaving a massive puddle right in the middle of the walkway where people were carrying hot chicken.
We gathered all the photos and videos we needed on our phones. Now, it was time for the fun part: confronting her head-on. The goal was simple. I wanted to ragebait this bitch into firing me on the spot, all while I had my phone secretly recording the audio from my pocket.
I walked right into her office with Jacob standing right behind me.
“Yo, Tisha,” I said, leaning against the doorframe. “We need to talk about some safety hazards in the back.”
She didn’t even look up from her phone. “I’m busy. Go back to your station.”
“We can’t do that. The AC unit is leaking a whole lake in the middle of the kitchen, and nobody’s wearing gloves back there. If corporate or OSHA walks in, this place is cooked. And since you’re the manager, it’s gonna look real bad on you.”
That got her attention. She looked up, her fivehead practically turning purple under the office lights. “What did you just say to me?”
“I’m just saying, it looks like you aren’t doing your job. If you can’t even keep the floor dry, maybe you shouldn’t be running this place. Jacob’s been here five years and actually knows how a kitchen works.”
“Who the fuck do you think you are?” she yelled, slamming her hands on her desk and standing up. “You’re a crew member! You don’t tell me how to run my store!”
“I’m just pointing out the facts, Tisha. You write me up for being late because of the cops, but you let this kitchen look like a ghetto slip-and-slide. You’re a joke.”
“That’s it! You’re done!” she screamed, pointing her finger right at my face. “Get your smart-ass out of my store! You’re fired! Pack your shit and get the fuck out!”
I looked over at Jacob and gave him a quick, subtle nod. The trap had sprung beautifully.
“Alright, Tisha,” I said, backing away with a smirk. “You’re the boss.”
I walked out of there knowing her reign was officially on its last legs. The recording was locked in, the OSHA report was ready to go, and your boy was about to get a nice little payday for whistleblower retaliation.
Now, I had confirmed that I was fired for threatening to call OSHA on the business. For those who don’t know, there’s a federal whistleblower law that protects you from being fired for threatening to report safety violations. And since we set her up so bad, I’d been master-planning this whole thing for a month.
You’re probably asking,
Why did you wait so long just to execute this, Rico?
Well, for a simple timestamp, it was exactly January 1st, 2019. The KFC/Taco Bell paid bi-weekly, meaning we got paid every two weeks. Now, you’re probably wondering why the fuck that matters. It matters a lot, actually. Under federal law, you have to file a formal whistleblower retaliation complaint with OSHA within thirty days of your wrongful termination.
The exact reason I waited until the twenty-ninth day to file was to build up my back pay. If you get fired for whistleblowing and win your case, they don’t just have to give you your job back—they have to reimburse you for every single dollar of lost wages since the day you were let go. By waiting, I let those weeks stack up, opening the franchise up to a massive lawsuit that I knew I’d win. I had my timelines and the evidence proving she fired me directly after I threatened to report her.
On the twenty-ninth day, I filled out the online form, called corporate to tell them exactly what went down, and got in touch with the OSHA investigator, a guy named Mr. Carter. I told Mr. Carter to wait outside the store. I wanted to walk in first and see if we could resolve this without getting the feds involved.
I walked inside, calm and nonchalant as always. Jacob was at the front counter like he usually was, and I told him to go get Tisha.
After a few minutes, she marched out of the back. “What the hell are you doing in my store, Rico?”
“As much as I’ve enjoyed my vacation away from your big-booty ass,” I said, “I’m here to get my job back.”
She actually laughed out loud. “What makes you think I’m actually going to hire you back after everything?”
“Because you fired me for being a whistleblower,” I said, leaning against the counter. “Now, I tried to be nice. I tried to give you the benefit of the doubt. I’m still within my thirty-day window to file a formal complaint, so I just want you to stop acting like a bitch over nothing and give a nigga his job back. Otherwise, your life is about to get very hard.”
Tisha sneered at me. “If you don’t shut your bitch ass up and get the fuck out of my store before I call the cops—”
“Oh, you’re calling the cops? Well, at least I tried to give you an opportunity. Mr. Carter!”
The door swung open, and Mr. Carter walked in.
Tisha looked between us, her face getting tense. “Who the fuck is Mr. Carter?”
“OSHA, nigga,” I said. Her face completely dropped. “And before he got here, I made sure to call corporate, too. You’re about to lose your job and your 401k. And I made sure to wait until it was a brand-new month, so that’s a whole entire month of free back-pay you owe me.”
“I don’t have to pay you shit!” she yelled, her voice cracking. “I didn’t fire you because you were a whistleblower! I fired you because your ass kept coming in late!”
Lies. All she did was lie with her loud-ass mouth.
“That’s your word against two,” I said.
“Two?”
“Yes, two.”
Jacob stepped out from behind the register. “I’ve been trying to call OSHA for years,” he said, looking right at Mr. Carter. “But she kept threatening to fire me if I did. I was too scared of losing my job. It’s the only way I keep the lights on.”
(Just a quick note: Jacob actually had two jobs and wasn’t struggling for real, but getting promoted to general manager at this place was gonna make his life way easier.)
“It took this young man standing up for everybody to make me want to come forward,” Jacob added.
I looked at Tisha and smirked. “Yeah, bitch. Now you’re fucked. You violated federal law and you’re about to lose everything. Guess you might have to go back to the streets giving up neck. Or go to stripping—you got the body for it. I am definitely going to miss your ass.”
Quite literally, her ass. I wasn’t going to miss her personality worth a damn.
It didn’t take long for corporate to clean house. Tisha was gone by the end of the week, her fivehead and her fatty escorted right out the door by security. Jacob got the general manager spot, and the whole vibe of the store changed overnight. He actually treated us like human beings. And the best part? No more throwing away perfectly good food. At closing time, Jacob let us pack up the leftover chicken and burritos to take home. Your boy was eating like a king back at the dorms, and everyone in the kitchen was finally smiling.
For a second, things were actually peaceful. My parole was officially over. My record was clean, and my fridge was packed with free food.
But then, things on campus started looking weird.
Dudes were walking into my morning classes with split lips. This quiet guy in my Network Security class had a fresh black eye, but he was grinning like he’d just won the lottery. By Thursday, I counted four different guys with scraped knuckles and bruised jaws, all walking around with this weird, quiet confidence.
It was starting to feel like some real-life
Fight Club
shit. If you’ve seen the movie, you know the deal—nobody talks about it, but everyone’s walking around looking like they got jumped by a chimpanzee, yet they’re happier than they’ve ever been.
I didn’t know where the basement was yet. But looking at the bruised smiles multiplying around the dorms, I knew it was only a matter of time before someone asked me if I wanted to find out.