MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — A Surdyk’s employee resigned Monday over the owner opening on a Sunday. Jim Surdyk decided to open his store and sell alcohol on Sunday, even though the Sunday liquor sale law doesn’t officially go into effect until July. The city of Minneapolis fined Surdyk’s and suspended the liquor license for 30 days.

Surdyk took the law into his own hands when he decided to open on a Sunday, nearly four months before the law goes into effect.

A Surdyk’s cheese shop employee felt so strongly about the move she gave her resignation letter.

“I am not upset because of needing to work Sundays. But, I would never ever get used to working for someone who thinks they are above the law,” Kari Johnson wrote in part.

Employees told WCCO they were asked to work on a special project, not specifically to sell alcohol.

“We kind of just told them that we needed them to come in and work,” Surdyk told WCCO on Sunday.

The city of Minneapolis served Surdyk a letter, complete with a $2,000 fine and a liquor license suspension for 30 days starting July 2, the day Sunday sales become legal. Other liquor store owners were admittedly angry.

“The fact that I’m a really small store in a small, little corner of downtown and I’m competing with someone like Surdyk, I just felt that was really unfair,” Carl Callerstrom, owner of Mill City Wine & Spirits said.

“It really upset me because he was giving himself an unfair advantage while breaking the law,” Bill Princeton of Princeton’s Liquors said.

And they hope the suspension sticks.

“He thought he could do this and what goes around comes around. I mean everything that he sold on Sunday was gotten illegally,” Callerstrom said.

Surdyk can appeal the sanctions. If the store tries to sell on a Sunday again the city said it will pursue revoking the license.

Here’s the resignation letter in full: