This week we: continue to watch how laughably Wall Street is handling GameStonk, Cover a hip LA donut shop firing unionizing employees and the bootlicking instagram accounts arising to defend it, and follow the anti-mask Facebook account responsible for temporarily shutting down the Dodger Stadium vaccination center Follow Donut Friend United http://twitter.com/dfuworkers http://instagram.com/donutfriendunited Support the show for only $3/mo at http://patreon.com/miniondeathcult and get a bonus episode every week.
The liberals are destroying California, and conservative humor gone awry... Conservative humor gone awry is going to fascistphonia today, so stay tuned.
We're going to take a few pictures of the desert and how their policies are actually messing it up.
It's not beautiful when you go across that border.
Stay tuned guys.
We'll show you exactly what it looks like when you're in the middle of the storm.
You're still in the desert.
Oh, they're in Barbados.
Stay tuned.
I'm Alexander Edward.
And I'm Tony Boswell.
And we are Minion Death Cult.
The world is ending.
Workers making very rude demands are responsible.
We're documenting it.
What's up, everybody?
It's your free show for the week.
Thank you so much for tuning in as always, and we have just, you know, we don't do this too often, but it's fun, you know, when there's a relatively big story, you know, occasionally do a follow-up to it.
And, just right off the top, I want to thank our boys in blue.
Specifically, our boys in blue and gold from the NYPD protecting the Wall Street Bull from what they allege to be terrorism.
I mean, I believe them when they say this was a counter-terrorism effort standing in front of the Wall Street Bull.
Yeah.
I mean, this is not... People laugh this off, but you don't understand the way that bronze reacts to adhesives.
This could have been bad.
Wait, the statue's bronze?
I think so.
Metals.
The way metal reacts to adhesives.
Oxidized metals.
I respect it so much less now.
Now that I know it's not actually gold.
Oh, is it supposed to be gold?
Yes, it's probably gold.
I'm doing a bit here.
I don't think it's actually gold.
I just thought, you know, seeing a solid gold bull statue, like, you know, maybe one day I could own a solid gold bull statue.
That's what I always thought.
And now that I know it's bronze, I'm like, wow, is the American dream actually a lie?
You know?
I'm gonna get you either a tiny gold bull or a large bronze bull.
I'm gonna get you one of those to bless you with.
And hey, which is which.
You, the Patreon supporter, get to decide.
Yeah so yeah we're still the this is a follow-up to the uh the the wall street bets uh game stonks takeover of wall street that uh ended the way i well it's still not it's still not over technically but uh technically there was a a plot development that uh i had
You know in in my zeal and in my in my uh what do you call it in in like my ego I was going to call like Babe Ruth pointing at the uh the outfield and then it happened before we even recorded which was you know of course uh the powers that be and Wall Street uh treat the that sort of speculation and that sort of market manipulation completely differently than they treat
Any other sort of market manipulation, including Elizabeth Warren, a noted adversary of Wall Street, pretty quiet up until the moment Reddit users started using Wall Street to their own advantage.
Yeah.
And then she came out and said, why, of course, we need to crack down on Wall Street manipulation.
I believe this wholeheartedly.
It's funny because I said something about this and then I had people try to like well actually me and say actually she's talking about all Wall Street manipulation so yeah don't you look you know stupid.
And it's the same energy as when, you know, uh, I don't know, Ted Cruz or like Mike Lee says something like, you know what, we need to crack down on, uh, on, on, uh, drug abuse of any kind, whether it's, uh, pharmaceuticals or that guy selling weed on your corner.
Yeah, all of it.
You know, we need to just get rid of all of it.
Knowing, I mean, full well, if you're a grown adult in America, which one is actually going to be affected, which one is actually going to be policed.
So either Warren is a stooge or just, you know, unfit to be a senator.
Well, I think that anybody who knows anything can follow the money and follow where everything goes.
And if you know anything about Warren is that she's a big PC gamer.
And she hates GameStop.
And that's really all this is about.
Wow.
Yeah, I didn't know that.
She's a big PC gamer.
They don't sell those at the GameStops.
So, once again, with this whole spectacle, you know, and it's funny, like, people trying to obfuscate the right-left dynamic in taking down a Wall Street hedge fund.
People trying to pretend that this is, like, a bipartisan effort.
Or a bipartisan ideal that we should ascribe to, as if, you know, it wasn't raw, unfiltered capitalism that launched those hedge funds to where they're at, and it keeps them there.
Aside from all that, I can ignore that.
I can say, oh yeah, we need to take down the 1% from the right.
100%.
As long as you don't mean that that's like, oh, we need to, like, you know, kill the Jews in Wall Street or whatever.
Like, as long as you just think, like, taking down the 1% is a nonpartisan, anti-elite issue, yeah, sure.
I can side with you.
I won't correct you on that issue.
In addition to that sort of spectacle being, I think, a, I don't know, an entry point for left thought or an entry point for left organization, we also have the NYPD literally protecting a golden calf or a sim, you know, the representation of a golden calf on what is truly America's only holy ground.
Yeah, Wall Street.
What's amazing about that too is, I mean, you saw how it was defaced, right?
Yes.
Okay, so what you're referring to is the reason that they're actually, quote, protecting the bull from counter-terrorism.
Yeah and so like they were there for a reason it's because the bull was defaced and the type of vandalism that you only would result from this exact movement which was which was like written in sharpie on like painter's tape the most delicate tape and put on the bull's face what was like hold the hold the wall Hold the ball, is that what they're saying?
Hold the line.
Hold the line?
Yeah, it was basically hold fast, don't sell your game, stonk, you know.
Yeah.
Because again, the whole point of it is to keep buying GameStop stock and raise the price of it so when the hedge funds have to buy it back by virtue of their contract, they have to pay out way more than they bought it for originally.
It's so funny because it would have just been so much cooler if they would have just like taken a bucket of red paint and thrown it on the bull and then ran away but like yeah I guess people might have thought they were PETA in that instance like people might have thought you're like PETA protesting uh the what do you well that no hold on hold on People might have thought you were PETA, like, complaining about appropriating the likeness of an animal for a statue or something.
Yeah.
That bull was actually forced to stand still for that carving, for the sculpting of it.
It was really fucked up.
Listen, livestock's culture is not your costume, Wall Street.
That is actually a bull that is coated in gold.
They did it live, and that's why he's in that position.
I don't know, if you have any friends who are maybe on the fence, or you maybe think are like, you know, have sort of the right idea when it comes to class, show them a picture of the cops guarding a statue of a bull as an effort of counter-terrorism.
And they're not just standing there, they were armed guards.
And they didn't just have Glocks, they had multiple guns.
They bragged about it.
It was incredible.
They posted it like they thought it was cute that they were doing this thing that we were all like, oh this is, oh the right is getting better at making leftist propaganda and it's making lefties confused.
Yes.
And then one more thing.
There should have been people in costume doing that, making fun of the police, but it was real.
One more thing before we move on.
Uh, so yeah, like, you know, all, all the, all the far right personalities, uh, you know, Tucker Carlson, uh, what's his name?
Sean Hannity, your Fox News hosts.
We're trying to cash in on this like anti-elite sentiment, you know, from their individual golden towers.
And one of these people was Dinesh D'Souza.
Which was amazing because in a couple Facebook posts he said, you know, the GOP has historically been on the side of Wall Street, but not anymore.
We need to change it.
So it's amazing that he even admitted that.
Yeah.
Which is, I guess, on brand with him being stupid and making an argument that he probably shouldn't.
And going with the tide, just because it works for you.
Yeah, and, uh, Vonnie Speck commented on his video about how, you know, we need to, uh, we need to, I don't know, stop being on the side of Wall Street.
Vonnie Speck says, Boycott them, it works!
We boycotted Macy's.
They lost 500 stores and still going down.
Hollywood lost $65 billion last year.
I am hoping they lose $140 billion this year.
Can you imagine how many hundreds of billions we've lost sports?
Because they have no respect for God.
Country or military?
Flag the desplit on it.
Colon after millions of military have kept them safe while they make their millions boycott boycott boycott Yeah, hell yeah!
I like how, like, he thinks that these huge market impacts were the byproduct of boycotting and, like, not this pandemic that the whole world's in.
That's not a factor in this comment.
So that's, uh, it's she, first of all.
It's, it's, I understand the confusion.
Somebody named Vani, which I don't think is a real name.
That's what I call Vince Vaughn when we hang out.
Vaughn-y!
Yeah, this is a different Vaughn-y.
She looks like the God Warrior woman.
She looks a little like that woman.
Xeno?
No, I'm a god warrior from the Trading Spouses.
Come on, the god warrior.
The only god warrior worth mentioning.
You're saying some wild stuff right there because Xena is worth mentioning every day.
Xena is a warrior princess.
She's like a god, right?
She's a princess.
Oh, I thought she was a deity too.
Uh yeah it's yeah Hollywood lost 65 billion last year.
I boycotted because I'm still going out without my mask in public all the time but I will not set foot in a movie theater and I'm assuming everybody else is just like that.
I only saw one movie and it was Tenet.
I really did go see Tenet in theaters.
It was great.
Highly recommend it.
You probably walked in, delivered a package, and stayed a while, so it's fine.
That's the safest way to do it.
Do it while you're at work, because you can't get sick when you're at work.
I stole three and a half hours of company time to see Tenet.
That'd be badass.
And I like the idea of like, you know, if all of us average citizens, all of us average middle-class Americans, if we simply boycott Wall Street, what are they gonna do about it?
Yeah.
They can't do anything about it.
You know what?
Because we pay their salaries, alright?
Yeah.
Like what does she think Wall Street is?
Yeah, I have no clue.
It's not a place you go to.
It's like everything.
It's not like... I haven't streamed that Rage Against the Machine video in a long time because I know that they get royalties every time I look at that video.
I imagine her going up to like a day trader.
Be like, I pay your salary!
Yeah, yeah.
You work for me!
You work for me, Buster!
I'm just gonna go tell them all, hey, you're welcome!
This guy's like, uh, I haven't literally touched physical money in 12 years.
I think I'm allergic, actually.
I hit keys on a keyboard and I make $500,000 an hour.
Yeah.
I don't know what you're talking about.
I actually can't hear you because I've had implants put into me that if you don't make enough money, I literally can't hear you.
Yeah, so, I don't know.
Nice little closure, I think, we got on the whole Wall Street situation.
It's gonna be solved.
I think Vonnie has the right idea.
Just don't, hey, vote with your dollars, folks.
Stop giving your dollars to Melvin hedge funds.
Stop buying all that Wall Street merch.
I know it's tight, but...
Is her name really Melvin, right?
Isn't that what the hedge fund's name was?
Yeah, I think so.
It literally means a nerd.
Yeah.
That's what it means.
I love that.
It's not ironic like the Melvins, even though King Buzz is a pretty big nerd, actually.
It's like Revenge of the Nerds, you know?
It's like we're all in the bounce house now.
Yeah, without the rape.
No risk.
Deep in this version of it.
So, right.
On to the show.
If you're listening to this when it comes out, February 1st, first day of Black History Month.
In honor of that, we're going to be talking about the black dude on Twitter who really liked Hitler and then also found out that Hitler wrote a book called Mein Kampf.
Ooh, even better.
Get to dig into that as well.
Yeah, I love that.
He's like, no, I'm gonna do the reading.
He's like, oh shit.
Oh, cool.
I already got Amazon.
I got something to read tomorrow.
I love that.
It's like learning about a new podcast or something.
You're like, oh shit, the Bundy Ranch standoff?
Hell yeah, I got something to listen to at work tomorrow.
Oh, Mein Kampf?
Excellent.
I mean, I knew I liked the guy's praxis.
I knew I liked the guy's praxis.
Let's read a little bit of the theory.
I will say that I do firmly believe that anti-Semitism within black America is the most successful PSYOP that government's ever done.
Right up there with crack.
I'm not going to comment on that.
We could possibly do an episode about that if you're interested in that in honor of Black History Month.
We'll take that down.
We'll take you guys down a peg or two.
In honor of Black History Month, we're going to go over how you guys are racist and bad.
Yeah.
No, it would be funny though.
It would be genuinely fun to do.
I do want to make it very clear that any racism that Black America might express through anti-Semitism is because of white people.
That needs to be very, very clear.
I take your word for it.
It's still your fault.
Um, no, we're not talking about that today.
It's just a funny thing.
Uh, we're starting off talking about, um, a shop called Donut Friend in LA.
Uh, this is a, I don't know, pretty good looking donut.
I've, I've never been there.
Um, didn't we, we didn't go there.
We didn't go there when we went and we didn't go there with like with Tommy and Joe.
Didn't we go there?
We could've.
We could've gone there.
I think we did, but that was the night, I think that was the same night as the pen, so who knows what you did that night.
The pen?
When you hit the weed pen.
Oh, wow, yeah.
I don't know.
Yeah, I think we totally went there.
It's great.
It's great.
They're all vegan.
It's a nice little place, and you're going in there and spending a lot of money on donuts.
And it really fucking sucks when you see this stuff happen.
Um, I, yeah, I don't know.
Maybe we went there or not.
I was, I was looking at the donut friend official Instagram and I was, I don't even like donuts.
Like, I like donuts, but I don't ever like want to get them or crave them or anything.
But I was looking, I was looking at them and I was like, damn.
Like a coffee donut looks good.
There was like a Tegan and Sarah donut.
It was like lime green or something.
And I was like, fuck, I'll eat that weird lime green looking donut.
And they're all, like, clever band puns that you, like, recognize.
Like, the Drive Like Jelly is a Drive Like Jay joke, and it's a jelly-filled donut.
Okay, that's a bad donut for Drive Like Jay here.
I don't like the jelly donut.
I mean, it probably looked good, though.
I think it's peanut butter and jelly.
Wow.
So it's just a glazed peanut butter jelly sandwich.
What's the peanut butter and jelly burger from, uh... From Doomie's?
No, no, no.
From the Metallica, the fake Metallica burger, uh, truck, food truck.
Oh, Grilla Mall.
Grilla Mall, yeah.
What's... There's a peanut... I don't know.
I think it's called... I think it's the, uh... What's this?
I think it's the D. Snyder is the peanut butter and jelly burger from Grilla Mall.
I like that.
Because Dee Snider is kind of like Hair Metal's Elvis.
Okay.
Is that what the joke is?
I don't know.
What does Elvis have to do with peanut butter?
Elvis liked peanut butter and like bacon.
I don't know.
Okay.
But yeah.
Yeah.
I think it's just like a goofy, like flamboyant hamburger like Dee Snider was, you know?
Yeah.
Yeah, so, I don't know, you know, I hadn't really, I didn't remember going to Donut Friend, maybe we'd been to Donut Friend.
I might be wrong, I might be totally wrong there.
Okay, who cares?
I recently found out though that Donut Friend, the staff, was experiencing some problems.
They were experiencing some problems like a lot of workers are in the face of an unprecedented worldwide and it's it's almost unfair to call it a worldwide pandemic considering we are handling it worse than the rest of the world.
It's like, what's the point in even saying that it's a worldwide pandemic when you live in America?
Because it's like, it's an American pandemic.
It's a specifically American pandemic.
The world is like, no, you guys have different versions of this pandemic now that we don't have.
This is all you.
So like every, you know, person who is on the front lines of COVID, an essential worker, you know, like a, meaning like a boutique bakery, artisan bakery.
Not that that's not like a valid, the valid work or anything, but like, you know, the government should probably pay you to stay home at that point.
I don't know if you can.
It's like a vital artery of, of the American economy.
I mean, I will say now, now if it was like a, Straight bakery where they had like bread and essentials like that.
Oh you would say that but yeah, I would say that But these are donuts Yeah.
You can make an argument for needing bread.
Nobody needs donuts.
I don't know if you can make an argument for needing your kind of bread, Tony.
It's great bread, but it's too fancy.
It's too fancy for pandemic sustenance bread.
It's a dollar.
Fair.
It's one dollar.
It's still too pretty.
But you're right though.
It's still too pretty.
I don't think we deserve your bread.
No, we have to eat ugly food at times like this.
Pretty food?
Pretty food during a pandemic?
What's wrong with you?
Yeah, wow.
I see you're eating.
It's, it's, wow.
You, you're eating Tony's bread yet you want to change things?
Interesting.
I just think that if we can't be pretty because we have to wear a mask, our food can't be pretty either.
Okay, sorry.
There was a little tangent.
The donut friend donuts are beautiful and they should be enjoyed by all and also society should take measures to allow people to stay home where it's safe and pay them a bunch of money to do so.
That's all I was saying.
So I'm going to read here from the Donut Friend United, which is the name of the union they're trying to start, the workers are trying to start.
I'm going to read here from their Instagram.
You should all follow them at Instagram.com slash Donut Friend United.
Here here to for to be referred to as DFU.
Okay.
Our story.
We started organizing about a year ago as many problems at Donut Friend preceded COVID and are prevalent in food service.
Unlivable wage, scarce and inconsistent hours, few benefits, lack of communication, etc.
Wonder if anybody on this podcast can relate to that.
Oh, just a tiny bit.
Just a tiny bit.
I was literally on the phone with unemployment and they were like, when did you get fired?
I was like, well, they stopped putting me on the schedule.
And I was, they said, when'd you get fired?
I said, well, they stopped putting me on the schedule.
And they said, if you didn't get fired, why are you filing for unemployment?
I was like, shut up, shut up.
I haven't worked in since November.
Shut up.
Yeah, just to clarify for anybody who hasn't been paying, when did they stop putting you on the schedule, Tony?
How many months ago?
Two months?
The last day I worked was October 28th.
So three months ago.
Three months ago.
I haven't worked, I have not had the pleasure of working under the Biden administration or even knowing that he was going to be our future president.
I didn't have that comfort.
Okay, but did they give you a pink slip, Tony?
Did they physically hand you a pink slip?
I love the idea that, like, the unemployment agency is operating off, like, the same, I don't know, 50-year-old idea of what the workplace is like that, like, our parents were operating on when they told us to walk into Hot Topic or walk into PacSun and demand to speak to the manager and shake their hand and ask for a job.
Yeah, no, okay, well if you can't fax us the copy of the pink slip that your employer gave you when you were fired, then you're technically not unemployed.
Dude, these motherfuckers sent my W-2 to my old address, and they know my new address.
And I'm like, that's how much they're not talking to me, and it's infuriating.
That's some passive-aggressive shit, dude.
Yeah.
It's okay, I'm gonna go buy some bread and fight them.
They need to start using I-statements when they're denying you an income.
You know?
COVID made everything worse.
On top of existing issues, we were now risking our health and safety by coming into work, and when some workers gave up shifts, At the beginning of the pandemic, many didn't know if they were coming back for months, even when they indicated to Mark, who's the owner of Donut Friend United.
Fuck you, Mark.
Who I think is like an indie rock guy.
I think he's like a cool hip.
Like hey, we're all hey, we're all just what's what's the world?
We're all just alt alt Alternative people here.
Yeah or something Even if even when they indicated to mark.
Oh, what if it was like Mark Kozelek from?
Okay, I don't think so if you see this little hole right under my lip, but I used to have my lip pierced I know I know what's I I'm I'm down look at how skinny my tie is I Would a normal businessman have this kind of a tie?
You saw me wearing the bolo tie last week, right?
It's not even a cloth tie anymore.
Look at how high water these dress pants are.
Uh, don't I, couldn't I be in like, uh... I forgot the name of that other band that Refused was in.
What's, what's the, what's the guy?
What's the Refused, another Refused band?
I don't know.
There's like a, there's like another band that that guy was in.
But they, I think they all wore suits.
I think they were like trying to be part of the, uh... The Thuz?
The Thuz?
Yeah, they were like the Thuz, or the Vines, or the Stripes, or whatever.
Um...
Someone's gonna DM me the name of that band, and I appreciate you.
The Innerpools?
Yeah, they look like the Innerpools.
The Innerpools.
Okay, so even when they indicated to Mark that they were ready to do so, okay?
At the same time, Mark received a Paycheck Protection Program loan of $330,000.
Fuck you.
Okay, real quick.
These donuts are like $4.50 a piece.
I need to make that real clear.
Insane.
Fuck you, Mark.
It does not cost much to make a donut, and I understand the value of a good donut, and I will pay that, and I have paid that, but you don't get to do everything Mark's doing.
Your workers need to be making $25 an hour if you're selling a donut for $4.50.
Ugh.
One worker, let's, I mean, hypothetically speaking, one worker could make 64 donuts an hour.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Right?
You roll the donut, you dip them, you put them in the oven, you put, you know, uh, four trays in the oven.
Each tray has like 20 donuts on it.
Come on.
Yeah, yeah.
You can run this through.
I don't, yeah, this is bullshit.
Ugh, fuck this dude.
Yeah, and again, the name of that kind of loan is a Paycheck Protection Program loan.
A PPP loan.
Yes.
That means that your employees' paychecks are covered regardless of how much they can work.
Yeah.
At the same time, Mark received a Paycheck Protection Program loan of $330,000.
of $330,000.
So much money.
He never addressed it to his staff and laid off several employees.
strategies.
Shortly after, he opened his new Cremo store in Silver Lake.
So this is like a different store that's like, you know, milkshakes or whatever the fuck it is.
I wonder how much it cost to open that place.
Probably about $300,000.
Opening up, firing employees while opening up a new store, while getting a loan from the government, a no interest loan from the government.
That's fucking diabolical.
That's what Augie's did.
That's demonic.
Augie's got the paid protection loan.
And they were in court, they were in court and in like the all these city hall hearings at the same time as firing everybody, they were trying to open up a wine spot at the same exact time.
These people are fucking disgusting.
Yeah.
I mean they're like... Ruthless.
They're like demons.
I'm not joking when I say that.
Actual demons.
They're like demonic people.
Yeah.
A now former employee who worked at both Donut Friends stores got COVID in July.
Neither store closed, and no mention of it was made to the public.
When we brought our concerns about the close quarters of one store and exposure of co-workers, we were brushed off because Mark didn't think the exposure was enough for anyone to be at risk.
By September, we put together a list of five demands, which we'll share later.
Five.
That's not very many.
Five.
That we wanted management to address.
Five of us presented it, but it was signed by the majority of eligible staff members in all three stores.
And I just gotta hand it to these folks.
That's good fucking organizing.
That's a lot of work to do, and that's really cool that they got it done.
And again, that happened back in September.
Okay, so this is how long of a process these things can be.
We asked for a Zoom meeting involving the entire staff wherein management could address our concerns and listen to us.
We gave them the weekend to schedule the meeting.
They chose not to.
We were chastised for our letter's language, specifically the word, quote, demand.
We were told that this letter caused Mark intense distress and that it made him feel, quote, shitty.
Oh no, Mark!
Oh, that's a thing, dude!
That's a fucking thing!
You're like, oh, I felt bad.
Yeah, that's part of owning a business, is you are now, like, you don't have responsibility.
You're bad, yeah.
Like, fuck you.
Fuck you, piece of shit.
You don't get to feel guilty.
You get to take care of business.
I'm just feeling, like, really attacked by everyone right now.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
This is, I'm just... So I'm gonna not put you on the schedule next week because like honestly I think you just need to reset your vibes.
Like you, no you're not gonna get paid, no you're not gonna get paid for this because I don't know if you can... I can't incentivize you to like fix your vibes.
It needs to happen organically.
Once your vibes are good, come on back.
Honestly, Cass was being pretty high-key toxic to me when she demanded that we put plexiglass between her and the customer.
Like, do you know how much emotional labor I put into running this business?
And how much emotional labor it costs for me to interface with my employees?
And how many spoons I'm spending every single day when I'm deciding how much to pay you guys?
Like, I already have glasses.
How many more barriers do you want between mine and your soul?
Like, I want to connect with you.
I want to be here with you.
And I can't do that with Plexiglas between you and the customers.
I just feel like this was my building, and now it's being colonized by you guys?
Ooh, yeah.
Yeah.
I feel like- I will say I was here before you because I hired you, so I know I was here before you.
Have you guys read Settlers?
Hey, Mark, you seem to have crossed out names and just written Mark throughout the book.
Telling my non-living wage employees they need to decolonize their living expenses.
I just can hear Mark right now just like, hey, listen, I know this is donut friends, but you're my donut family.
And I don't know why you would do this to me.
If you got time to clean, you have time to unlearn some of this toxic behavior.
They immediately scheduled employee reviews, a common anti-labor organizing tactic to isolate and intimidate employees.
In-store meetings were also announced, despite our assertion that a Zoom call was safer and OSHA and CDC compliant.
It was at this point we began collecting signatures for a union in earnest.
Yeah.
Hell yeah.
Apps fucking right on.
And real quick, I will say this.
This is something I've seen happen time and time again.
If you're in your spot, I know it's terrifying and you will lose your job possibly, but if you can possibly get the signatures before you even have these discussions, You're going to be better off.
So, I mean, this is all really hard work, so... Oh, it sucks.
We're not trying to fucking Monday morning quarterback anybody, but if there is this sort of sentiment in a workplace, it is almost like, as a rule, better to start union organizing first and foremost, because that's the only way you're going to get the leverage to do these things.
As we see in this story, they tried to operate in good faith and tried to bring concerns, you know, sort of in a formal and yet informal way.
Because if you're not operating as like everybody has voted on the union sign-up, that's a more formal way to operate.
You try to bring this to your boss as a reasonable employee or whatever, it's not... Best case scenario, it's not gonna go anywhere.
Worst case scenario, you get fucking fired.
Which is what happened to a couple of folks here.
Yeah.
The whole thing is you can't trust your boss.
You cannot give them a benefit of the doubt.
It's always bad faith with the boss.
Every single time.
You cannot go in there... I don't care if they went to your fucking baby shower.
Yeah, it's beyond the sort of good faith, bad faith dynamic, because I would argue that a boss even lying to you, a boss even knowingly feeding you bullshit, I would argue that that is at a metaphysical plane higher than bad faith.
That is just an operation of the employer-employee dynamic.
That is the science of the relationship between you and your employer.
They're never going to act on your behalf.
That is not their nature.
That is not the scientific relationship between employee and employer.
These things are always going to redound to, you want more money, that means less money for me.
Yes.
That is what the employee-employer relationship is always going to redound to.
And of course you get highlighted stories about the CEO who raised everybody's wage to $72,000 a year.
That one person is an anomaly.
That one person is like, you know, a scientific phenomenon that, you know, uh, is, is like fun to look at and fun to say like, oh, hey, look, this like piece of toast burnt in the shape of Jesus's face or whatever.
But that's not like worth, that's not, that's not, uh, I dunno, anything to even consider.
No.
Yeah.
If it happens to you, good luck, but you cannot depend on that.
No.
And it's funny, going back to the whole, uh, he just felt really attacked by the word demand.
Incredible.
Um, that's very interesting to me.
Like, I saw some replies, I was going through the replies here on the DonutFriend Instagram, and, uh, this person, Lotus Steph, said, uh, some of these, quote, demands seem a little extra.
I was following this account to see how it all worked out, but now it just sounds like whining.
Dot dot dot dot dot.
They, meaning Donut Friends United, Donut Friend United, they should open up their own shop and run things the way they want.
Just open up your own business.
Do your own business.
Fuck you.
They should open up their own shop and run things the way they want to.
Of course the owner needs to improve and can change, but not all of this is reasonable.
And this is like...
I will, okay, just for the sake of this discussion, I will, I don't know, I will entertain the idea that Steph here is operating in good faith or whatever and thinks that the owner does need to change.
But hey, the employees shouldn't use such harsh language.
They shouldn't make, quote, demands.
They should simply ask nicely.
And never mind that Donut Friend United has already documented the process of asking nicely, which in my mind is not forming a union.
It is just asking for these Very basic things that, again, we'll get into but involve, like, you know, safety measures, like a fucking plexiglass between you and the customers, hazard pay, uh, um...
notices about shift schedules and things like that, very reasonable asks, was met with firing to employees.
- Okay, forget about-- - In LA County, in LA County, anything you do, any precaution you make in changing your physical space to make it safer for it to stop the spread of the pandemic, if you install a handout window, if you put in plexiglass, all of that is covered by the county.
You just have to fill out a piece of paper.
All of that is covered.
They also pay you for the time you lose.
They also pay you for the time your business is closed.
They compensate for that.
This is pure shit.
This is pure shitty person not wanting to put any effort in.
I don't know if you've ever had to deal with filling out forms or bureaucracy, Tony, but that's a lot of emotional labor for the recipient of a $330,000 PPP loan.
a $330,000 PPP loan.
Yeah.
It wears on you.
That's not even talking about that fund.
That's just a whole separate fund.
When you got to fill out paperwork for free money from the government because you're a small business owner, God, it's exhausting.
It's like, oh, now my job is to fill out paperwork.
And I empathize with them as someone who's trying to get unemployment.
I totally feel... Yeah, you empathize with them as somebody who has done far more work in that department and not received anything back for it.
Yeah, not yet, not yet.
But again, I just want to say, like, as a union worker, as somebody who's, you know, I've been working since I was 14 years old kind of guy, right?
This is the only way to make changes in your workplace.
It's not like, This is, it's tone policing, it's civility politics, it is the sorts of things, it's the sorts of terminology that liberals and the capitalist class use To, like, you know, hoodwink you into, like, being, I don't know, too frustrated with the system to not actually make a change.
Because when, you know, oh, you need to ask nicely.
You need to ask your employer nicely.
Hey, when your employer, when they ask you to do something, they ask nicely, right?
They don't come up and make demands to you or whatever.
and it's like well actually if my employer my employer can ask me to do something as nicely as they want but they're my employer and because they're my employer there's always an implicit threat that they're going to fire me or punish me otherwise if i don't accept their nice request yeah okay so they can be as nice as they want And then kick me out to the curb like they did with these two employees, okay?
And so all you're doing by asking that the employees be nice is you're obfuscating the power dynamic that actually exists here.
They can have all the manners in the world and it doesn't negate the fact that they have like the power of life and death over these people.
And when you form a union, what you do is you create An equal amount of leverage to what they are bringing to the table, to what your employer is bringing to the table.
Oh, you want to say you don't want to do this work?
Okay, I'm going to fire you.
I'm going to fuck with your employment.
I'm going to fuck with your money.
Okay, you want to tell us to do this unsafe shit?
You want to pay us a wage we can't live on?
We are all going to fuck with your employee, your employment, Mr. Mark Donut Friend, by striking or by picketing.
Yeah.
That's the only way it works.
There probably is.
But for most small businesses, there is no strike fund to cover their end.
There is no strike insurance.
That is the only power we have.
And what's funny about the ignorance of most people is the blindness to realizing that You telling somebody not to be hostile to their employer is the hostile thing, is the hostile action.
And people are blind because these people who are commenting are not business owners.
They're just people who are getting by and not getting probably what they deserve.
It's the economic equivalent of you telling someone just to stop resisting.
Yep.
Yep.
Yeah, exactly. exactly.
I think there's like several vacancies on the board.
It's it takes like years if if not takes a year if not years to hear any case and then it's all filled with like fucking right-wing corporate ghouls anyway.
So fuck like it's you can't depend on that shit.
You have to depend on muscle and that's what the union is.
So going through here, the guy lied about a COVID exposure.
He fired two employees and because California is an at-will state, he invoked his right to give no formal reason for their termination.
It's just typical union crackdowns.
It's like Amazon firing the one union organizer for not observing six feet of space in a fucking warehouse, right?
So disgusting.
He lied about the various outbreaks of corona, the positive cases.
He said that they were closed for remodeling instead of closed for actually having a COVID contamination, that sort of thing.
He lied about it in social media.
Wow.
I will fast forward to one of the employees who was fired, Cass, she got her job back because of a call-in campaign that Donut Friend United had broadcast on their Twitter and on their Instagram.
The other employer, the other employee rather, has not gotten their job back so they are encouraging people to continue calling And being polite on the phone and asking that Donut Friend and Mark observe proper coronavirus protocols and rehire that employee.
So I would go to Twitter.com slash DFU workers.
There you go.
You can search Donut Friend on there and you'll find it.
Just make sure you go into the union account.
Oh yeah, but if you got, you know, an extra couple minutes, call and demand that both employees be rehired.
Happy to see some gains from their recent efforts.
Real quick, I'd like to add to that.
It is important for us to watch this space.
To kind of like pay attention to it.
Because one thing that is happening is Cass is now returning to a hostile work environment.
So we need to watch this space to kind of just make sure that, you know, she doesn't still end up getting screwed here.
Because that's still a possibility.
That's something that can happen very easily.
Because that is probably an uncomfortable position to go back into for everybody.
Including, you know, poor Mark.
So we got to watch this space so we can continue to hold them accountable.
That's the biggest thing with these things is follow through from the people who supported from the jump.
Yeah, absolutely.
And then I just remembered somebody created an Instagram account just to support Donut Friend, the owner rather.
And again, I will say these workers are not calling for a boycott of Donut Friend at the moment.
Uh, they, that is not part of their strategy at the moment.
You know, they're all, they're all either employed or trying to be employed at that store.
So boycotting the store will not help them.
Uh, also like, you know, talking shit on that, on the product of, of the store.
Not a, not a good idea considering it's the workers who actually make the product.
Support them again by, you know, following them on social media and sending them kind words and following the script that they provide and giving their employer a call.
But yeah, this account is called Friends of Donut Friend.
Go report this, go report this account.
Go report Friends Donut Friend.
Or just laugh at them, you know, just talk shit to them.
They comment, what you propose, so they're commenting on the Donut Friends United Instagram.
What you propose is socialism, plain and simple.
And again, like unionism is the alternative to socialism.
That's not socialism.
That's the compromise.
The compromise is unionism.
It still involves private ownership.
It's just like the only historical way to prevent capitalism from collapsing in on itself.
So maybe unionism is a bad idea in and of itself.
But I mean, it's material benefits for people.
So it's what we got right now.
We're working within the space we have.
What you propose is socialism, plain and simple.
I'm listening.
I'm really, wow, that's crazy.
I didn't know that.
Go ahead.
I'm excited to hear what the rest of what Friends of Donut Friend has to say.
The U.S., while not perfect, has the most entrepreneurial environment in the world.
I love that as like, as like a pro.
I love that as like a Like, hey, well, you know, there's a lot of, you got a lot of complaints about America, but when you think about it, there's, there's a lot of pros to, to America.
And that's that it's, it's got the most entrepreneurial environment.
Oh, whoa, sick dude.
That helps me a lot as a, as a fucking delivery driver.
Well, I mean, you know, you can get up earlier, right?
You can get up earlier.
You can, you can rise and grind.
I mean, I'm waiting for this podcast gig to pay off, because if not now, then when, you know?
I think that's why you need to start working with people around the world so you can record an episode at 4 o'clock in the morning before you go to work.
That's rising and grinding.
It's like the thing I've said before on the show, but one time somebody told me, and it's the thing that made me the most upset that anyone's ever told me.
They said, just start a business.
I started two.
And they said it so casually, and I was like, what do you think I just said right now?
Because that's not an option, my friend.
These motherfuckers are so stupid.
I hate it.
Why are you in poverty?
The U.S.
has the most entrepreneurial spirit in all of the world.
Yep.
All you gotta do is you gotta tap into that entrepreneurial vein.
You just gotta get a little mental pickaxe and just hack away at that gold stripe running through the core of America that is entrepreneurialism.
You can't strike gold without dynamite, baby.
Worker-owned co-op?
That is a pipe dream!
Do you have the capital, management skills, and most importantly risk tolerance it takes to run a profitable business?
I love that he's admitting it takes capital to own a business.
Hey, U.S.
is the most entrepreneurial place in the world.
Do you have capital?
No?
Okay.
Not for you.
America's not for you.
Sorry.
Why don't you try a different country?
Yeah.
Listen, listen, this is America, and I might not have capital, but what I do have is tenacity.
Yeah.
I've been described as vivacious.
Look at all this elbow grease I got.
Look at how greasy these things are.
Look at it.
Showing the elbows.
Glistening.
Oh, shit.
Oh, damn, dude.
I didn't know you were a go-getter.
Here's a loan for $100,000.
"You were a go-getter, here's a loan for $100,000." - - Oh, why didn't you-- - I noticed the elevation of your bootstraps, and I decided that you, in fact, need $100,000.
Why didn't you tell me you had gumption?
Here you go, right away, sir.
Here's a chain restaurant.
I mean, I've actually measured the cut of your jib, and you do in fact qualify.
Wow, the marbling on this jib is beautiful.
You do in fact qualify for a no-interest loan.
And honestly, it's just because I need the tax write-off.
That is the pipe dream.
Yeah, well, do you expect existing DF owner donut friend ownership to just hand you the keys to the business without paying for the equity?
It's it's easy to judge quote greedy owners until you sit in their shoes for a while.
That's not what you do with shoes.
I mean, I'm already doubting your experience here, even just with shoes.
How do you know?
Run a business not knowing what shoes are.
Shoes off once I'm sitting.
Yeah, until you sit in their shoes.
You put a cheek in each foot.
I don't know.
For a while.
And have to make hard decisions.
Like who to fire.
Oh god, it's so hard.
That's the first one.
Because you have to fire somebody.
Even if no one's done anything wrong, you have to fire somebody.
Well, you want to open that second store.
Yeah, you need quarterly examples as well.
Okay, moving on to our next topic of the night.
Something incredibly death cult.
Just astounding, like, I don't know, probably shouldn't be surprising at this point, given the minion revolution we had here, you know, a little less than a month ago.
Yeah, people are emboldened.
COVID deniers, vaccine, you know, anti-vaxxers managed to shut down a vaccine distribution at Dodger Stadium in LA a couple days ago.
They were out there protesting and they caused such a stink that the actual entrance to the test to the vaccination site had to be closed for like two hours with hundreds of people waiting in line in their cars.
Now this is when we need to start using words like terrorism.
I'm not exactly sure what happened.
California is not an open carry state.
I mean, you know, California is not an open carry state.
It's barely a concealed carry state.
I don't know if I would cite terrorism for this.
I would say that these people are huge fucking assholes for sure.
Huge.
Definitely endangering the lives of a bunch of people because of their stupidity.
I once again don't think the answer to this is uh you know more I'm not suggesting you think this but is is more policing uh is is more labeling of terrorism it's possibly just getting these people health and help Yeah, through something like healthcare.
Getting them help through that.
It's also, you know, through a long and steady process, changing the nature of America not to breed alienated psychos like this, you know?
From you know based on you know, I don't know by virtue of a system of Actually dependable health care like you said I don't know Benefiting average people instead of always redounding to the benefit of you know Corporate stakeholders and pharmaceutical companies like every time I get I I get the criticism.
I get the skepticism of a vaccine.
I understand that.
We're not given the tools to understand whether a vaccine is healthy or not.
We have to trust the people who are telling us that it is healthy.
We have to trust the people in charge, essentially, that are telling us it's healthy.
I don't blame people necessarily for not trusting who's in charge.
Yeah.
I don't think that the people in charge would lie to you about giving you a vaccine necessarily.
I don't think I would distrust them considering they do want people to survive coronavirus so we can continue working for slave wages and generating profits for them.
Yeah, but what we're talking about, where it's coming from is anti-vaxxers and that type of whole holistic mentality that sometimes are largely intertwined is a direct byproduct of people being failed by the current healthcare system.
Yeah, absolutely.
You know, when I had the kid and we had her at home and everything like that, everything was a comparison to how the hospitals run.
You don't want to do what they're doing because it sucks.
It's not good.
It's a failure.
Our infant mortality rates are abysmal.
So we've been failed the whole time.
So yeah, they have ammunition for this.
So yeah, why would I trust it?
It's all bad.
But I do know that peppermint makes me breathe clearer.
I don't blame people for being like, I don't fucking know what's in this vaccine.
Yeah.
You're not supposed to know.
Like, no, like it's not even that you're not supposed to know.
It's just that you're like not capable of knowing.
I'm sorry.
Like you didn't study, you know, fucking pharmaceuticals.
You didn't study chemistry, like, you know, uh, upper degree chemistry.
You have to rely on other people to tell you that this shit is okay.
And so I don't.
I don't blame people for not trusting the current people in charge or whatever.
However, I probably wouldn't block access to a vaccine distribution center.
I think that that's an intense form of psychopathy, an intense form of narcissism and sociopathy to think that you're Extraordinarily ignorant opinion about the- and that's me being charitable.
Extraordinarily ignorant opinion about the vaccine is all the background you need to deny other people access to it.
It's important to kind of separate.
These are anti-vaxxers.
They're not necessarily anti-maskers.
Because a lot of anti-maskers, their whole thing is like freedom to do what you want.
Freedom, like free will.
Where these people are literally impeding on other people's free will.
I would push back.
I think you're right.
This anti-vaccine That protest was sponsored by an anti-mask group.
No, there's a huge overlap.
There's a huge sharing of the swaths.
Call it an overlap, I would call it just like incoherent ideology.
I found one of the accounts that was responsible on Facebook for promoting this anti-vaccine protest Uh, in front of Dodger Stadium.
And it's like, again, like I don't...
I don't know what the response to this should be.
I mean, everybody apparently got their vaccines, so it really wasn't that big of a deal.
They did shut down the entrance for like an hour, so everybody had to fucking wait at least an hour longer, which sucks, which maybe some people drove away.
I don't know.
Maybe some people had appointments to go to, so maybe everybody didn't get their vaccine.
The news reported it that everybody got their vaccine or whatever.
Don't trust those motherfuckers, though.
I don't know, like, get some like...
Get some people to, like, push them away from the entrance.
You know what I mean?
Like, just, hey, go.
Go on.
Get out of here.
Get the guys that are guarding the bull.
Get those guys.
Like, you don't have to, like, I don't know, arrest them for terrorism or send them to Guantanamo Bay or whatever.
You just push them away from the entrance.
Keep them away from people's cars.
That's all you gotta do.
They couldn't do that, though, because they'd have to violate the six-foot social distancing in order to do that.
And then be hypocrites, and you could call them out on that.
Yeah, so one of the Facebook pages that was promoting this event was a page called Shop Mask Free Los Angeles.
And this page, just by cursory investigation, they're a page that they like to go around and shop free, without a mask.
And then they yell at the people in the stores that they're allowed to be there.
They document it?
We'll hear some video from that shortly.
But yeah, Shop Mask Free Los Angeles.
They have a post here from January 27th that reads, Facts do not cease to exist just because they're ignored.
Which is like the even dorkier way to say facts don't care about your feelings.
Yeah.
It's so you don't get sued by Mr. Shapiro.
Like imagine taking a Ben Shapiro quote and being like, how can I make this even less relatable?
How can I make this even less catchy?
Spread the word far and wide, friends.
Hashtag unmask together.
Hashtag free at three.
And I think, I don't know, three is like the time they want to meet up?
I don't know.
The text post says, Dodger Stadium, all things, line break, COVID, line break, protest slash march, Saturday, 12 p.m.
to 3 p.m., meeting on Sunset and Vin Scully, period.
Did disrespect to do that?
On that street.
Very much so.
Hey, we're gonna go trample all over one of Southern California's greatest heroes, Vin Scully, and pitch a fit about not wearing a mask.
Bullshit.
I want to play some audio that was recorded not by Shop Mask Free Los Angeles, but by a fan of the page, a friend of the page.
It's a short burst of audio, video rather, but you're of course only going to hear the audio, that was taken with people walking up and down the line of cars that was waiting at the entrance of Dodger Stadium.
So this is, you're hearing the female voice of the person recording the video, and you'll hear another voice of a guy walking by.
Sheeps running to their death, Bible said it.
Cuomo is a murderer.
He murdered all people.
And he ordered body bags.
And ordered body bags from Amazon.
Go look.
There's a video in Port of Long Beach.
like Last week, they ordered thousands of body bags.
Okay?
All these people are waiting to bring their bags in.
Oh my God, and they closed the gate.
Because they said they are afraid we attack it.
We told the police officer, Nancy Pelosi, doesn't know we are here.
There will be no attack.
I could be in any attack.
She doesn't know.
We made sure she wouldn't know.
Run to your death!
Only sheep run to their death!
Okay, so that was one video I have there.
That was incredible.
One of the anti-vax protesters.
I don't know if I caught it on the capture, but she's screaming at the people waiting in line, Run to your death!
Only sheep run to your death!
And then she says, It's in the Bible!
Read in the Bible!
Only sheep run to their death!
And it's like, hey, has this lady never heard of lemmings?
They also, I've heard they also do that, but lemmings are not in the Bible though.
Oh, the Bible didn't know about lemmings yet.
No, lemmings aren't real because they're not in the Bible.
They're like dinosaur bones.
The video game Lemmings was put here to tempt us by the devil.
Yeah.
I think that the Mormon people put lemmings there.
Um, okay.
Hot take.
Mormons are the devil.
No, they just put lemmings there.
With help of the devil.
Okay.
Yeah, so she is saying that they closed the entrance because they thought we would attack.
But how are we going to attack?
Nancy Pelosi doesn't know we're here.
That is true.
You cannot attack without permission from Nancy Pelosi.
Attacks are not official unless she at least knows about them.
And that's a reference to something off, off, you know, audio that she had said, which was that everybody who invaded the Capitol was actually BLM dressed up like Trump supporters put there by Nancy Pelosi.
So she's having like a private joke to herself where she tells the cops We're not going to attack.
Nancy Pelosi doesn't even know we're here.
And the cops are like, uh-huh.
Okay.
Cool.
That's great.
We're here to solve your ketchup problem, lady.
And then they put her in a straitjacket and take her to the nearest insane asylum.
They put her in a body bag that Cuomo ordered thousands of, which is funny because that probably is true.
I believe that The city of Los Angeles probably did order body bags.
They probably do it through Amazon.
Cuomo's not the governor of Los Angeles, by the way, Tony.
I don't know.
I don't know what they said.
Did they say Cuomo for some reason?
Yeah, which is odd because Cuomo is the governor of a different state than California.
Dodger Stadium's not in Brooklyn anymore.
That is weird.
Yeah, that is weird.
Yeah, it's it's I think what it is Tony.
It's a bunch of cranks yelling about shit The guy who yelled about Andrew Cuomo is so funny He's wearing a top hat Yeah, he walks by duh, but it's not like a real top hat.
I'm pretty sure it's like one of the construction paper top hats your kids make when they're learning about the Civil War and They're like learning about Abraham Lincoln or the Pilgrims.
You know, you can interchange those lessons.
They both ate turkey.
It didn't have a buckle around the top.
Well, yeah, I can picture this.
I'm pretty sure it was literally a construction paper tube on top and a paper plate around the rim.
Awesome.
I'm pretty sure that's what his top hat was.
But yeah, I love the way he said it.
He was like, she yells at, oh yeah, and they ordered body bags.
He's like, yeah, Andrew Cuomo ordered body bags.
Yeah, he almost sounds like he's making fun of it, but he's not.
No, he's trying to do like an announcer voice.
He's trying to do like, he's trying to entertain these people while they're waiting for their vaccines, which I appreciate.
Which again, yeah, a lot of major cities probably have ordered body bags because a lot of people are dying from this virus.
Like lots of people are dying from this virus.
Yeah, body bags are probably being ordered.
And she, um... I mean, fuck Andrew Cuomo.
Fuck Andrew Cuomo.
Like, he fucked up big time.
And he's trying to make, you know, make money off of it with a book or whatever.
But... She said, hey, we didn't... we're not the ones who attacked the entrance to Dodger Stadium.
They're just closing it down to make us look crazy.
We're not crazy.
Andrew Cuomo is the one who's crazy.
And I have another little video here.
A large group of us here at Dodger Stadium to try to educate people on the dangers of the vaccine, but all of these sheep all the way down the hill are lined up to get it, and we actually shut down the main entrance.
They're not letting anyone in now, so mission accomplished!
Uh, yeah, so what you heard was, uh, seemingly, like, a fake woman.
Like, she looks like, uh, the...
She looks like the girl from the Goofy movie, Roxanne.
She looks like Roxanne from the Goofy movie.
I think she has like three different Instagram filters over her face saying, hey, they closed the entrance, so we won.
We did it.
And contrast that with, hey, I don't know, we were just informing people.
I don't know why they had to close the entrance.
No big deal here.
I do like it when these people aren't on the same page with messaging.
It's good.
It's good.
But hey, it worked.
They closed it down.
We did it.
Did it, guys.
We prevented people from getting the vaccine that eliminates the virus that we don't like.
Can we get a W in the chat?
People are gonna die now.
Another video that was great was them being like hassled at Trader Joe's.
Yeah.
She was like standing off in the corner, the proprietor of Shop Mask Free Los Angeles.
I went back to To just get a gander at what these folks are up to, what they're spending their free time doing.
And she has a video from Trader Joe's where she is like videotaping everybody walking up to the check stand.
She's like, fucking hate you.
You're all fucking hypocrites.
You're all pieces of fucking shit.
You're all, you're all, you're all fools.
And she, like, she is like the weird kid that is muttering at the popular kids off in the corner.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But I do need to say, if we're going to listen to audio of this, we need to let people know.
This might be, this might be some sort of weird kink thing.
I don't know.
There's the element of like wanting to be publicly shamed going on.
I feel it feels really weird and gross.
Um, the secondhand embarrassment in this is, is unparalleled because it's real.
Just to let you know, Tony, I'm never playing audio on this podcast again.
Cause it makes me want to break my fucking computer.
They're trolling the whole time.
They're not very good trolls either though because they go up to buy something and the guy behind it, Trader Joe's, which you know, I think Trader Joe's have a fairly like I think they pay their employees fairly well.
I think they do have safety measures in place.
I think the Trader Joe's employees have some amount of autonomy on the storeroom floor, which is good.
So they go up to the register and the guy's like, hey, I can't sell anything to you if you're not wearing a mask.
She's like, oh, well, we have a doctor's exemption and I'm going to show you your rules.
And he's like, I know your, I know our rules.
Like there are rules.
Uh, I, I know our rules.
Like, do you have a doctor's note?
And she was like, Oh, well, uh, I had a doctor's note, but, uh, the security guard took it from me.
And he's like, well, what security guard took it from you?
And she's like, Oh, it was a different Trader Joe's.
I go around doing this.
And it's like the lowest bar to clear for these people.
You don't have the card that you bought for $15 from the website that says you're exempt from a mask.
You don't even have that.
You're just trying to...
Half.
You're like, my dog ate my doctor's note.
And I slept in too late and I'm just having a really bad day.
What's wild too is at one point she's like, my heart's racing.
This is so exciting.
I just got booked two days ago.
This is like exhilarating.
There's that element to it that makes it feel real weird too.
Because it is like an adventurous type thing.
Just getting off on it.
Yeah, yeah.
I think you would have to.
I think this shit would otherwise be so fucking boring.
Just getting kicked out of various department stores and grocery stores.
Yeah.
My line with that, when I was working at the bakery and people would come up and they'd say, I have a medical exemption, I'd be like, oh, well then I probably shouldn't be talking to you anyways.
Like, it's okay.
Bye.
Bye.
So another video they posted was one of them getting arrested at Family Dollar.
I hate that.
And it's funny because leading up to this they posted Maskless shopping this Saturday in Lake Elsinore.
It's time to walk the walk, folks.
Come out and show up.
No more excuses.
Hashtag unmask together.
And it's like a little fake flyer for their maskless shopping at Family Dollar in Lake Elsinore.
And I hate this.
This is like class violence.
I hate this.
Is this a little close to home, Tony?
This makes me so mad.
Because you know why?
When you're in Family Dollar, I will say that's a place where I see, at least where I'm at, that's one place where I see everybody in masks.
I see less people in mask at Trader Joe's.
Sure.
And it's just like, man, fuck you.
We're all just trying to survive over here.
We're coming to go buy the weak old artichokes because they're a dollar.
Fuck you.
Don't come bring that shit in here.
Yeah.
I hate it.
People in there got enough problems.
Yeah.
This is skinny girls buying extra large clothing and making them into small dresses.
Um, this also reminds me, though, of like a beleaguered leftist organizer.
Like, Maskless Shopping this Saturday in Lake Elsinore.
It's time to walk the walk, folks!
Come out and show up!
No more excuses!
Like, they've been hit hard.
Attendance has not been great.
People have been like, oh, I support you, but I can't get out there.
Oh, I've made this post.
I've made this exact post.
What the fuck is it gonna take?
Is it gonna be your kid wearing a mask in school?
Is that what it's gonna take?
Could be you next.
Imagine somebody you love at a Walmart wearing a bandana in front of their face.
Um, and in the, uh, the first line of this post is, if there was any evidence of a deadly emergency, why is our movement growing?
And then if you watch the actual video from this Lake Elsinore event, it is four adults and three children.
It is four adults and their three kids that they dragged along.
Oh man, that's fucked up.
So at this family dollar they barge their way past I think her name is Denise or Diane or somebody who's like hey you can't come in here and they're like it is not illegal for me to occupy this space without a mask and she's like it's not law it's just our policy it's not like a law it's our policy and they like barge and they're like we will read the laws to you She's like, uh, I'm going to call the cops now.
Yeah.
And so the sheriff's come and while the woman is filming, while Shop Mask Free Los Angeles is filming, she's just like yelling about how the cops aren't real cops.
The Riverside Sheriff, uh, the Riverside County Sheriff Department aren't real cops and they're thugs in suits.
And they're just like standing there kind of like watching her and talking to the, uh, you know, the manager, Denise or whatever.
Uh, and they're like, you know, they, they like try to get everybody out, but they're, these people are really intent on like, you know, standing up for their beliefs or whatever.
And so at one point, Denise says, I want her arrested and points to the other woman, the only other adult woman who's not recording and the cops and the sheriff's department just grab her and they arrest her and they take her away.
Woah.
Woah.
Because, again, that's the way police work in this country.
Like, they work to serve the family dollar franchise owner and the people they have endowed with authority over their store.
Like, Sheriff Department, they're not going to arrest you unless you want to press charges.
And then you say, I want to press charges, and then they fucking arrest you.
That's exactly how that works.
And it's funny because I'm watching this and it's horrifying to me that a manager, my personal enemy, My sworn enemy, a manager, points at somebody and says, I want them arrested.
And it's without asking a second question, the sheriffs grab her and arrest her.
And this is, this is literally a month after somebody in Estated Brothers told the Riverside Sheriff's Department, I want that man arrested.
And they beat that man to death.
And that was Ernie Serrano.
Same police department, a month ago, in a grocery store.
Ernie wasn't even doing anything at all.
And so that manager was like, yo, I mean, show them your real cops.
They don't know about Ernie.
Yeah.
They think you're a fake cop.
Go show them about what you can do.
Yeah, and it's funny because their argument the whole time is like, we're here to teach Family dollar the law.
We're here to teach them what the actual laws are.
And then Family Dollar is like, yeah, these are the laws, like Booker.
And it's like, how, as a, as a patriot, how do you reconcile this in your mind as like a, a freedom fight?
Like the only way is to be like, oh, these are fake crisis actor sheriffs.
They're not the real sheriffs upholding the real constitution.
Yeah, they're not upholding the real law, which is the First Amendment, and that's all you need for everything ever.
That's what I was.
I was doing that, and that's the law.
It's sad they're not getting the interpretation.
And even still, like I said, in the one video, she's like, I just got booked last week.
This happens.
This is happening a lot.
And like I said, you said, oh no, these are fake cops.
They don't know the real deal.
Well, it's funny.
Like, yeah, they might be fake cops, but they took you to real jail.
Listen, there's only one cop I acknowledge, and that's Jesus Christ.
That's right.
The greatest cop of all.
Best cop.
I'm going to get a few responses here to the arrest at Family Dollar, because it was great.
Christine Renee Briggs commented, I love, love, love that you know your laws, dot, dot, dot, even better than the cops most of the time.
And again, this is, like, this is a very cucked argument.
This is a very, like, lib argument.
Like, oh, the cops look so fucking foolish as they're dragging you with your arms behind your back off to prison.
Don't they look stupid, folks?
She knew what she was talking about, and these dumbass frickin' thugs, uh, they stepped in it big time when they booked her and held her in prison.
They're lucky that she didn't pull out her slip of paper that declares her an autonomous citizen.
I don't know why she didn't have that paper on her.
Big mistake on her part.
I think she did.
I think she waited to get all the way into the interrogation room and pulled that bad boy out.
Randy Lewis says, they cannot trespass when the store is open to the public and required to publicly accommodate you.
So he's saying that like it doesn't count as trespassing because the store is open to the public, therefore it's a public space.
Therefore they're required by law to publicly accommodate you and all your bat shittery.
It's vampire rules.
If the automatic door opens and you're welcomed in, You're good.
You can do whatever you want.
That's why you have to contact the CEO of Family Dollar, because once you own him by his own logic, that's like killing the master vampire.
Yeah, we should dunk on them with that.
That's what they're doing in Trader Joe's.
They called corporate and they were like, um, it says here that, uh, you can't discriminate based on health issues.
And they're like, yeah, yeah, that's, that's true.
Like we can't tell you, you can't come in cause you're not healthy.
That's a rule.
They're like, so yeah, we got to let us in with no mask on.
Yeah.
Once you vanquish the highest manager, you defeat all the other managers and their employees.
They all become sand.
Um, yeah, I love that.
Hey, this is a public space.
You have to tolerate my buffoonery.
Yeah.
This is, this is a public space in this store.
You have to let me annoy the shit out of you.
Yeah, it's required.
You have to accommodate it.
You need to entertain this.
And then finally, uh, Tajji Coleman says, you cannot reject an individual for refusing to be forced to wear a medical device illegally.
He's got that on a post-it, right?
He's got that in his notes.
He comments that a lot.
A lot of people were calling a mask a medical device in this comment section.
The same thing that they say does nothing is also a medical device.
Yeah, well it's like trying to put a fucking prosthetic limb on somebody who's got all theirs already.
It's nonsense.
What do I need an extra arm for?
I like has anybody I mean this would be kind of fucking tight to make just like ironically like I'm not I'm not a big proponent of ironic merch but I think an ironic a good piece of ironic merch would be to make like a fake face hugger mask You know?
I've seen it.
Or like a t-shirt that's like, oh, a mask?
I don't think so.
You know, this is what I think a mask is and it's like, yeah, a face hugger that latches to your face and puts a, you know, some sort of appendage down your throat.
Unfortunately, you have to wear that mask with an accompanying shirt that does explain, I'm not just a fan of the Alien franchise, I'm making a statement on the suffocation of these masks.
Because I have seen the face sucker mask and it's very cool, I kind of want one.
Have you seen those masks where the person wearing it just says, useless?
Yep, yep.
And I think it's in quotes.
No, it's not even in quotes.
It just says across their face, useless.
Incredible.
That's a good own.
That would own me.
If I ever saw one of those on the street, that would own me really hard.
If I saw somebody walking with the word useless plastered across their face.
So that's the episode, folks.
Wow.
What a weird way this country is going.
what a weird way this country is going.
Very cool.
Wacky wild times.
All I can suggest is to talk to your co-workers and say, Hey, we, we should like, you know, get better stuff for doing this job we're doing, you know?
And it's almost like we do all the work here, right?
When you think about it, like we could really like, you know, cause a, cause a stink if we wanted to.
Cause a hall of blue.
Remember guys, it's 2021 now.
We're in the roaring twenties.
We're in the Roaring Twenties.
Let's start dancing and bootlegging guns and booze.
Yeah.
Right.
Exactly.
We're on 20s.
That's what I was going to say.
So go ahead and follow DonutFriendUnited at DFUWorkers on Twitter and at DonutFriendUnited on Instagram.
And follow those prompts.
Give their boss a call.
Be nice, like the prompt says.
Be polite.
Do the whole civility politics thing.
But also, you know, tell them what they need to do with their business.
and support this show at patreon.com slash minion death cult p-a-t-r-e-o-n dot com slash minion death cult three dollars a month gets you a bonus episode every single week and we got some fucking bangers in the bag there uh including the entire month of december where we were only releasing patreon episodes because of our restricted schedule um It is a good way to support the show.
It is a good way to help us continue doing what we're doing.
