To play the part, you gotta look the part. It’s an ideology that a restaurant guest embraced wholeheartedly when she dressed in all black, pretending she was an employee of the establishment.
It seems employees who worked there assumed she was just one of their co-workers, and she used this acceptance-by-ruse as a means of finagling herself some free food.
And it worked.
Tsionna (@wesickandtired) posted a viral TikTok that accrued over 2.3 million views as of Friday where she records herself wearing a black t-shirt and sweatpants in what appears to be the kitchen area of a restaurant.
She speaks to someone off-camera, stating, “Umm, where is you guys’ aprons?”
A text overlay in her video reveals her intentions behind the all-black ensemble, stating, “Want free food at any fast food restaurant? Dress up in all black & pretend you work there.” Her caption sported the #lifehacks hashtag.
The camera then cuts to her speaking directly into it, now wearing a black apron. Her attention then turns elsewhere.
“Don’t we eat for free?” she says while scratching the top of her head. Another woman can be heard replying to her off-screen, “I think so. I don’t know…”
Tsionna, committed to the character, says out loud that she wants one of the “uniform” work shirts, which are presumably the ones other people she’s talking to off-camera are wearing.
Someone repeats her question back to her, “Yeah, the one that everybody got,” she asks. The individual off-camera responds that they’ll need to order one, before Tsionna says, “OK.”
Showing how dedicated she was to “playing” an employee, she finds some dirty dishes in the sink and begins cleaning them. This appears to be a calculated move on her behalf as she remarks that “everybody hate[s] doing them.”
It’s not hard to imagine that seeing a new hire immediately attacking a task that most workers don’t enjoy doing would more than likely put them in their co-worker’s good graces. Tsionna is pretty much living the role at this point.
The clip then cuts to her at a cutting board by a meal prep station where she holds two pieces of bread in her hand. She wears black nitrile gloves and has added further touches to her outfit that makes her look like even more of a mainstay at the restaurant—a pen hangs from the middle of her apron as well.
Tsionna tells a co-worker that she’s about to go on her break in the next 10 minutes. The clip then transitions to her grilling up a burger patty with a slice of cheese on it, which she places in a to-go container. She’s not done, however—she makes it a double, then garnishes it with what looks like chopped lettuce.
She hovers around the sandwich and looks around for ways to improve it—she spots a bottle of some sauce, grabs it, drizzles some on the top of the burger, and then seals the deal by grabbing the top bun and sandwiching the ingredients she just prepared. She closes the box, which reads, “Juicy, Yummy” before telling co-workers that she’s planning on taking her break.
She begins to exit the kitchen, and then the video ends.
One commenter thought that Tsionna was putting people on, remarking that she must’ve worked at that place and was just tricking people online. Tsionna, however, says that this wasn’t the case and that she genuinely pretended to be an employee in order to get free food from a restaurant.
Someone else said that they couldn’t believe the lengths that Tsionna went to to get a burger, but washing a few dishes for a bit seemed like a good trade-off for the TikToker.
“The actually doing work part is a little toooo in character for me,” they said.
One user said they engaged in a similar type of food finagling by rocking their old Chipotle shirt while visiting the chain, despite not working there for months.
“I literally put on my old chipotle shirt so I could get the 50% discount,” they said. “I haven’t worked there in months.”
The Daily Dot has reached out Tsionna via email for further comment.
Update 5:10pm CT, Nov. 11, 2023:
In an email to the Daily Dot, Moten said she has had fast-food experience before, which is how she knows that “they tell you to wear all black” if there is no uniform available.
“I’ve used my old Popeyes uniform to get a chicken sandwich when the sandwiches first went viral,” she said. “Nowadays, you don’t need an application, you just go suited and booted and act like you belong there and they will add you to the roster. Oh, and bring your routing / account # and 2 forms of iD.”
