Chick-fil-A manager lends drive-thru skills to COVID vaccine site in South Carolina
Hundreds of people were stalled in traffic at a drive-thru vaccine clinic on the coast of South Carolina last week when the computer system handling registration went down, Mt. Pleasant Mayor Will Haynie told news outlets.
As wait times inched up to an hour, Haynie decided to put a call in to the professionals.
“Chick-fil-A is right across the street,” he said during an interview with Fox News on Wednesday. “Jerry came over and got us fixed.”
“Jerry” is Jerry Walkowiak, the manager of a Chick-fil-A on Long Point Road in Mt. Pleasant, just north of Charleston. After the event, Haynie posted a video on Twitter of Walkowiak standing in the rain with an umbrella directing cars at the vaccine site.
“When you need help, call the pros,” he wrote in the caption.
The Chick-fil-A where Walkowiak works is less than half a mile down the street from Seacoast Church, where the Medical University of South Carolina hosted a mass vaccination event in collaboration with two area hospitals on Jan. 22.
South Carolina is currently vaccinating health care workers, long-term care facility staff and residents, and people ages 70 and older, according to the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control.
At least 1,032 people signed up to receive a vaccine during the drive-thru event Friday, Haynie said.
“Right at the start, the registration went down,” he told Fox. “We don’t know what happened — Murphy’s Law got the thing again.”
That’s when Haynie called Walkowiak, whose number he already had from a friend who worked at the restaurant, WTVT reported. Walkowiak identified the problem almost immediately and — within 20 minutes — had the wait time for getting a shot down to about 15 minutes, according to Haynie.
“What Jerry did is he helped us go from a medical-type mindset where you pull up and speak to one person, to a retail mindset where you figure out how to get as many cars through the first entrance as you can,” he told Fox.
Walkowiak said he was happy to help, WCBD reported.
“When Mayor Haynie asked us to come over, we took a look at what was their drive-thru system,” he told the TV station. “We saw a little hiccup in their drive-thru system and we needed some more people, so we gathered some of the wonderful rotary volunteers and went down there and just was able to expedite the registration part.”
The video of Walkowiak waving cars through as he asked “got your paperwork yet?” has been viewed more than 34,000 times on Twitter.
Some users think Haynie might be on to something.
“My wife has been saying we needed Chick-fil-A to run the Covid-19 testing and vaccinations as well,” one person wrote. “They have it down to a science!”
“@ChickfilA is #1 in drive thru management!” another said.
This story was originally published January 27, 2021 at 4:16 PM with the headline "Chick-fil-A manager lends drive-thru skills to COVID vaccine site in South Carolina."
