“I quit, tell everyone we’re closed.”
These are the words senior Vincent Jordan heard from his manager on the day Sonic located on Switzer closed.
Senior Elliese Thurlby said she was also working the night Sonic closed. She said the schedules came out and the manager decided they weren’t going to work there anymore. The store stopped taking orders and the staff left early.
However, Sonic recently reopened after months of being closed. Along with other Northwest students, Jordan said he is excited for the reopening.
“I feel good about it. I feel like it’s about time because they were closed for a really long time,” Jordan said. “It’s probably gonna be a slow startup before everyone knows that we’re back open but I feel like once they do, we’ll get things running again.”
Vincent said that understaffing made working there harder and they only had two managers left when ideally they wanted 4-5 managers.
“You could definitely tell that is was gonna happen. You just didn’t know when because people just started leaving slowly and then eventually there was no one left,” Jordan said. “When it got really hectic, some people would just leave because they didn’t want to put up with it.”
Current co-manager Hannah Ginsburg was a manager during the summer as well. Due to the original three managers quitting when Sonic reopened, Ginsburg is a part of a team of managers that come from other stores.
While working as a manager last summer, Ginsburg said that she and the other managers were treated poorly which led to them coincidently quitting around the same time. Since this wasn’t expected, the sudden lack of managers was the main reason Sonic had to shut down.
“We were just overworked, and all of us got drained and they didn’t really care what happened in the summer,” Ginsburg said. “There were a few times where I or another manager had a medical issue and no one could come in and cover and they made us work through it.”
Ginsburg continued, saying how the work environment was intense and became a manager power struggle due to scheduling.
“It was unfair because of certain managers. Two of them did the scheduling and the other managers had to follow along with what they did. So they just kind of overpowered everyone,” Ginsburg said.
Thurlby said there was also a lack of organization. While working as a carhop, Thurlby said she would often have to help inside when it was backed up because car hopping got the most amount of tips so people wouldn’t help inside when it was needed. She said there were also problems with keeping track of orders. Another issue with their system was the cash. Thrulby said she would sometimes not leave with the amount of tips she earned due to not having the right amount of cash from cars.
Thrulby said she does not plan on working at Sonic again.
After the closing Jordan said he began to work for UPS, but now that Sonic’s reopened he has returned.
“They reached out to me instantly because they knew that I was one of the people that would have stayed and I did a good job,” Jordan said.
Since returning back to work, Jordan said the new management is great, charismatic and good to work with.
Ginsburg said she believes that it’s going to stay open, due to them figuring out the managing situation.
“I think we have a pretty good foundation now. We have a better supervisor and she’s actually on it. Other people want it to be open too so we have a bunch of new carhops being trained right now. Some of them could even become managers.”
Despite the past chaos, Jordan said he hopes more customers will start to come over the summer and Sonic will regain its popularity.
“I just feel like it’s a good place to hang out. If they [people] want to get ice cream, drinks or food. It’s just something to do,” Jordan said.
