Featured Image Credit: WACH FOX
Topics: Burger King, TikTok
Lara Owen
A single mum of three has gone viral after footage showed her holding down an entire Burger King restaurant by herself - answering phones, flipping burgers, running the drive-thru and even cleaning up.
And now, after being dubbed 'Burger King Mom', she's launched a GoFundMe to help support her family.
Nykia Hamilton, 25, from Columbia, South Carolina, was filmed by a customer who couldn’t believe what he was seeing - one woman doing every job in the place, completely solo.
The TikTok clip blew up, racking up over 130,000 views, with commenters calling her a machine and saying she deserved a raise at the very least.
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On the advice of her new fans, Hamilton started a fundraiser to help ease the pressure of working two jobs while raising three kids.
"I am a 25-year-old single mom of three who works two jobs," she wrote. "I just went viral for working on TikTok. If you wanna contribute, it's ok. Thank y’all for the support. I wasn’t expecting my life to change how it did. I really do everything for my kids."
And people have seriously shown up - her GoFundMe has raised more than $23,400 (just over £17,000) so far, with over 680 people donating to support her.
In an interview with WACH Fox, Hamilton explained just how rough it’s been: "I’ve been missing out on my kids’ life, and I work a lot so I’ll be able to provide for them, and I really don’t be having time to spend with them, and it hurts me a lot."
She said she ended up working completely alone after one of her co-workers quit: "There was nobody else to come here [...] I had to work by myself and close by myself. It was too much.'
Hamilton now has one other person helping out but admitted: "Nobody wants to work no more."
Despite the chaos, she said she’s grateful to her manager for giving her a chance: "I wouldn’t have had no job, because I do have a record, and it’s hard to find a job with a record. But by grace of God, she gave me a job, so that’s why I stayed for her."
Burger King responded with a statement to WACH saying: 'It is our policy that all company and franchise-owned restaurants require more than one team member to be working per shift. We are working with the franchisee [...] to understand what happened.'
As for the original TikTok that sparked it all, the customer filming summed it up perfectly:
"We got one beautiful person working here by herself, she’s doing everything… Y’all need to get some help here.'"
Burger King has been contacted for comment.