According to emails recently acquired by BNN Bloomberg, Tim Hortons, Canada’s signature coffee and donut company, is facing a hiring crisis in at least twenty-two of its locations. The chain — a stupidly outsize part of “Canadian culture” due to its ubiquity and marketing efforts — is struggling to acquire new workers and retain existing ones. General managers, echoing the histrionics emanating from other quarters of the service sector, are now panicking in the business press.

This should be no surprise. In the last decade, Tim Hortons has become synonymous with its toxic brew of low-wage, no-benefit, union-busting, precarious, part-time employment. It has leveraged the low-wage labor market to attain coffee chain supremacy. Tim Hortons is undoubtedly the country’s dominant coffee chain — year over year one of fast food’s most profitable franchises, with nearly 4,300 restaurants across Canada.

Workers recently interviewed by BNN Bloomberg explained that, in addition to wage frustrations, burnout remains a top employee issue. During the pandemic, the company made little to no changes to workplace safety policies. They denied their essential workers adequate paid sick days, with some franchises even requiring doctor’s notes for unpaid sick days.