Five Guys’ chief executive officer, Jerry Murrell, said he gave a $1.5m bonus to employees of his US-based burger restaurant chain because “I didn’t want anybody shooting me” after the company recently “screwed … up” a buy-one-get-one-free promotion.
Murrell did not elaborate on the comment, which he gave to Fortune in an interview published on Wednesday – but it came a little more than a year after the UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot dead on a midtown Manhattan street in what was widely considered a murderous rebuke of the US health insurance industry’s profit-driven practices.
Fortune’s conversation with Murrell revisited a two-for-one promotion that Five Guys organized in February to celebrate its 40th anniversary that proved to be much more popular than the chain expected. Five Guys’ app crashed as customers sought to take advantage of the promotion, and many overwhelmed chain locations discontinued the offer early, inviting backlash on social media.
This is what I keep saying but everyone gets pissed at me for not being diplomatic.
Yeah, because your average billionaire or even high-end millionaire gives two shits about diplomacy.
I am actually surprised, normally when I say something like this, a whole bunch of people pop in to call me an insane hypocrite coward terrorist.
But uh yeah.
The whole point is to dispense with the formalities.
Because the formalities… are the system.
The system that is run by… apparently, largely a lot of literal child fucking murderers, who just also happen to have a lot of money, from fucking people over in slightly less literal ways, as a lifestyle.