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My position was the second window at the drive-thru. I don’t have a register there. My only job was to pass out the food and make sure the customers have their condiments. A red truck pulled up and it was three young Caucasian men. They were joking around. When I passed them their food, they asked me if they could get two free drinks. I told them it wasn’t on their receipt and they didn’t pay for it and they would have to come back around to purchase some drinks.

I don’t know if you know or not, but with drive-thrus, you get timed for each car. There’s a certain time the car is supposed to sit there, get their food, and get out. And so while they’re still sitting there, we’re trained to say out the window, “Next order ready!”— so the car in front can move along for the next car to come. When I said that, they turned around and called me a “Black b-word” and they spat toward the window.

The car behind them saw what happened. As soon as the car behind drove off she immediately called the store to let us know the three guys got back in line.

My unit director came out the office and sees me hysterical. I’m crying. I’ve got makeup running everywhere. I was a hot mess.

I told her what happened and her response was, “You don’t need to worry about that, the only thing you need to worry about is moving this drive-thru along and making sure the time doesn’t go up.”

Instead, my unit director decided to meet the guys at the first window, where you pay for your order. She instructed them to meet her in front of the store and she said they could have whatever they wanted. She briefly had a conversation with them and then came back and told me, “You don’t need to worry about them, they’re just kids. Don’t pay that any mind, just continue to work.” And she went back into her office.

After that, the guys were in the parking lot and sat outside their car and ate their food. It was kind of like a slap in the face, like, “Yeah we did that to you and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

That’s when I knew that this employer didn’t give a crap about me. The only reason I stayed as long as I did is because I have kids and I have to pay my bills at the end of the day.

I ended up leaving around 1:30, but the guys were still there, parked just a few cars down from mine. I’ve never had so much fear in my heart before. Because at that time, with everything that was going on, I didn’t know what they were capable of doing to me.

I immediately left. That was my last day actually employed with Bojangles. Seven employees quit after I did. One of the managers and another employee walked out that day. The rest of the employees started leaving within that same week.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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