SEATTLE — A "boycott Wet Seal" sign, put up by a Seattle manager after learning her store would close, has now gone viral.
On the sign, it reads employees were only given one day to find new jobs. The sign reads, “Make Our Voices Heard!” as well as #BoycottWetSeal and #ForgetWetSeal.
KIRO 7 went to Northgate Mall Monday to speak with manager Andrea Friesner of Wet Seal, a company that sells clothing to teenage girls. S
he put up the sign in the store on Sunday because, she says, she and other employees were lied to that their jobs were safe.
"The day after Christmas, my two assistants called our district director to ask, are we losing our jobs? It really does seem that way, and they were told no,” said Andrea Friesner.
A week later, she and others found out the store would be closing and most of the 11 employees had just one more day of work. "I feel like my family's been ripped apart, and it sucks,” said Friesner.
So she put up a sign, covered with reasons why Wet Seal betrayed its employees. She wrote the chief financial officer received a $95,000 raise despite the company's financial hardship. After taking responsibility for the sign, she told KIRO 7 she was fired on the spot for misuse of company time.
"I never wanted to be a mouthpiece for this, it just kind of happened,” said Friesner.
Online, she has seen similar signs posted in storefronts from Ohio to Florida that appear to show other Wet Seal employees claiming they were given no warning -- and their stores, too, are closing down.
KIRO 7 found that the company recently warned of a bankruptcy filing and admitted it has serious doubts that it could survive.
Wet Seal lost more than $150 million in the past two years. When we called around stores in Western Washington, we found stores in Puyallup, Olympia, Southcenter and Nortghgate are closing or already have closed.
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