'We did not stage a walkout'
Tallulah – Just one day after The Graham Star published a story about the Huddle House on Tallulah Road closing Sept. 3, a former manager came forward with the employee’s side of the story.
Jessica Rattler was the general manager of the Huddle House during its final days and had been in that role since October, 2018. She sat down with the Star on Friday to discuss the chain of events that led to the “walkout” on Aug. 30, from the labor side.
“There were only six employees left,” Rattler said. “The discipline that he wanted to enforce, that I didn’t accept responsibility for, supposedly, was that he told us we would be working with no breaks. He told us that we could not have a drink, nor could we go to the store and purchase our own drinks. Those were his rules and four people quit immediately because of it, which left us very short-handed.
“We did not stage a walkout. I told everybody, because of an incident that had occurred the previous Monday, ‘Look, I’m not going to be here after tonight. I won’t be here anymore.’ They chose not to return the next day, unbeknownst to me. But we did finish the Friday night shift; we locked up the store and everything.”
The “he” Rattler was referring to was Roger Kersch, who had owned the property and leased the Huddle House franchise for 10 years. Kersch pointed to a lack of revenue as one of the main motivators behind closing the doors to the restaurant, a stance Rattler refuted by recalling a $44,000 profit during the final month of operation.
“Every payroll was blaming us as employees – for working the hours we worked and telling us it was too much – when in fact, at a time when we were fully staffed a few months ago, we were still below the average payroll percentage of any store,” Rattler said. “When you have to work under circumstances like that, who wants to?
“No one was fired for meth use. It was a callout. No one was given a drug test; we had them readily available.”
When asked if an employee quit after being asked to wear a beard net, Rattler disputed that report as well. “He, in fact, quit because he could not deal with the way Roger was treating people,” Rattled stated. “Not only did he threaten us with our money, did he implement his new discipline rules, he degraded people. It’s not that we were ‘retaliating’ against his rules; it was that you can only take so much before you leave.
“The account was very different from what he said (in The Graham Star).”
On the flip side of the dispute between owner and manager, Kersch reached out to the Star on Monday to indicate that interest was already being expressed by a restauranteur that operates in 11 locations – including Hayesville and Andrews – about leasing the location and converting it into an Italian-themed establishment that serves breakfast.