When it comes to his employees, Dave Forgit doesn’t play around.
“I swear to God. STOP YELLING AT MY F—— EMPLOYEES,” the co-owner of Coldstuff Ice Cream in Blackstone, Massachusetts wrote in an Oct. 4 Facebook post from the official shop page.
“They are children,” he continued. “This job, for most of them is their first. They are going to make mistakes. They aren’t in charge of anything. This can all be fixed with a smile and a polite attitude. It’s ice cream for crying out loud. Grow up and act your age.”
And just in case his point wasn’t already crystal clear, he doubled down in the comments: “And NOBODY gives a s— if you don’t come back. We’d prefer it that way.”
Forgit’s post went massively viral, garnering more than 295,000 likes and 23,500 comments.
“Not sure how I got here, I live in Alabama but hell yea!” one person commented.
“I’m canadian 🤣 but still following! Lmao protect those babies,” wrote another fan.
Someone else added, “Looks like a trip to Massachusetts for some ice cream is in order…”
Forgit told NBC affiliate WJAR that he was inspired to write the post after seeing a woman scream at a teenage employee over a 25-cent price discrepancy.
“She was just being rude and disrespectful, making all sorts of comments to the team, “this place sucks, do your job right,” he told WJAR, which led to a “crash out on Facebook.”
After his post drew crowds to the shop, Forgit posted a video introducing himself to all the new faces.
Kevin Miller, Coldstuff’s co-owner and Forgit’s brother, says they just opened the ice cream spot in August but have already seen a lot of unkindness toward the teens who work there.
“I stand behind that post 100%, to be totally honest with you,” Miller tells TODAY.com. “I’ve realized that servers even have it easy compared to the kids at an ice cream station. It’s a bigger societal thing: They see a 16-year-old kid that’s defenseless, so they have that attitude of ‘There’s no repercussions to anything that I’m gonna say.’”
The brothers also own barbecue spot Goodstuff Smokehouse, where Meghan Jarvis is the general manager.
“People are just comfortable with being snarky with younger kids,” Jarvis tells TODAY.com, adding that the brothers have always been quick to defend their employees. “It does tend to happen a lot more often at the ice cream stand. I don’t get it as much, but I also don’t tolerate it as much.”
Meanwhile, Goodstuff has been absolutely inundated with customers who want to show their support.
“Yesterday was absolutely off-the-wall crazy-busy over there,” Miller says.
“I think the biggest part of the response online iswe said something a lot of people have been waiting to say. Workers have been saying this for a long time.”
