ThrobbingHood
Breh&Breh Associates™
The mother’s teenage son went viral a month ago for helping his friends get summer jobs there to stay out of trouble and earn money for the upcoming school year.
CLINTON, Miss. (WLBT) - Nepotism is the reason a mother claims she, her son, and his three friends were fired from their local fast-food restaurant.
They say with so much violence happening in the metro, their jobs were like a safe haven.
“I felt like it was a good thing because we could have really been out doing violence or shooting or killing, but we went out and worked,” said 15-year-old Corderrion Valentine.
Valentine is upset that he and his friends, along with his mother, were let go from the Burger King franchise. “I felt like it was a fun experience to get you ready for the real world.”
Valentine’s mother, Shakayla Dixon, was the manager at the Clinton restaurant. She thought it was a good idea to hire four teenagers to earn some extra money before school starts in the fall.
After hiring the teenagers, she was so excited and even posted a photo of them working on Facebook. “After the post, probably like later that evening, the post started doing numbers. It got to like 1K at that point.”
The viral post also caught the attention of actor Nick Cannon. He then posted the picture on his Instagram. It received more than 90,000 likes and hundreds of shares.
Dixon says everything was going great until she received a phone call.
“I got a call from my area manager and my district leader. She said we don’t want to turn something good into something bad, but we have some concerns. The concerns she had were the fact that Corderrion is my son and how much money they were getting paid.”
She went on to say, “She told me that a minor is supposed to get paid differently than what an adult gets paid. It was never brought to my attention beforehand. My things were when it came down to policy. I feel like policy wasn’t in play in the beginning.”
Valentine admits losing his summer job is heartbreaking.
He says he’s always wanted to be a positive role model and show his generation that it’s OK to work hard and be a productive citizen.
“I hope that it portrayed a lot of people to do things good and stop the violence,” he said.
Shakayla Dixon has created a GoFundMe account to help with upcoming school expenses for her son and his friends.
WLBT reached out to Burger King’s corporate office several times for a comment about these claims, but could not reach anyone over the phone.
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