Burger King employee goes viral on TikTok for running restaurant solo, then says she was fired

A Burger King worker who went viral on TikTok for running a restaurant alone has been fired, prompting outrage and $70K in donations for the single mom.

A 25-year-old mom of three who went viral for holding down an entire Burger King on her own says she’s now been fired.

It all started when a customer filmed Nykia Hamilton in action at a Columbia, South Carolina branch and threw it up on TikTok.

With no coworkers around, Hamilton was flipping burgers, dropping fries, frying chicken, running the drive-thru, and scrubbing up – basically every job in the place – for 12 hours straight.

She explained that another worker had bailed mid-shift, leaving her to cover it all solo.

Hamilton pointed to the bigger problem of short-staffed fast food joints, saying: “We just ain’t got no employees, nobody wants to work no more.”

@the.gossip.loop 🍔👑 BURGER QUEEN’S BETRAYAL 👑🍔 Burger King fired the viral mom who ran a store all by herself because she was late due to her kids. From hero to unemployed… fans are outraged! #BurgerKing #ViralMom #WorkingMoms #FastFoodDrama #JusticeForMoms ♬ original sound - The Gossip Loop

She’d only been at Burger King about three months, grateful to the general manager who hired her despite her criminal record, when this all went down.

TikTok users quickly nicknamed her “the Burger King Mom,” calling her effort “superhuman” and showing plenty of love and sympathy online.

In an ironic twist, Hamilton revealed that she had subsequently been fired as a result of showing up late for work, despite it being because of parental responsibilities.

She broke down in tears in a personal post which struck a chord with other TikTokers, with one commenter replying “if I was the manager [and] if she was doing all that work, I'd let being a little late slide. They aren't gonna ever find another her.”

A second wave of empathy and public backing swept across social media, with a GoFundMe pulling in $73,000 in just over a month, not far away from the $90,000 target set.

For now, it looks like the “Burger King Mom” will keep getting support, with her story putting a spotlight on the grind single mothers face every day.