GREENVILLE, Mich. — A teenager is speaking out about the aftermath he’s facing after a video of him taking a bath in a Wendy’s kitchen sink went viral.
The video showed 19-year-old Paul Kash inside an industrial-sized sink in the kitchen of a Wendy’s restaurant in Greenville. Kash had posted the video to his TikTok page the day after a friend recorded it during a slower Sunday shift.
The next day Kash woke up to the surprise of his life. “I fell asleep at like 6 p.m., took a nap, woke up at like 11 to my friend calling me saying, ‘hey you’re on the news’ and I was like ‘what?'”
Kash said he began seeing his video on news outlets around the world.
“But the next day my manager found it and immediately went to them talking about if I was going to be suspended or fired,” Kash told FOX 17 Friday afternoon.
In a statement, Vice President of Human Resources for the company that owns the Greenville Wendy's said in part, "This egregious behavior is completely unacceptable and counter to our safety, training and operational standards.”
Kash was eventually let go from his job at the restaurant.
The Montcalm County Health Department even looked into the sanitary situation at the Wendy’s after the incident went viral. They found no violations there whatsoever.
The teenager says the whole situation arose because he was trying to make his coworkers laugh. He says he was originally having a hard time with some of the overly-negative comments he was receiving from people who saw the video online.
“I was like, OK, its calming down, then just, it didn’t,” he said. “The first place I went, like I said, I received death threats.”
Kash openly acknowledges he probably shouldn’t have taken part in the sink stunt.
“I can guarantee you, right now, it was probably the dumbest mistake I’ve ever made," he said. "But I would like to see half those people’s dumbest mistakes they’ve ever made.”
Now Kash is trying to make the most of a difficult situation. He says his father has been helping him through it all.
“He’s been telling me just 'keep it up.' If you look at a positive outcome, you’re going to receive a positive outcome. And if you just sit there and look at all these messages and just think ‘oh maybe these people are right, maybe I’m such a bad person,' you’re not going to be able to live your life like you wanted,” Kash said Friday.
The teenager is looking ahead to a career in either broadcasting or the entertainment industry. “I’m trying to make the best of it, looking at career options, trying to better myself,” he said.
