A man is claiming that he was told he could not wear his American Flag Covid-19 protection mask at his part-time job at a Food Lion Grocery store in Havelock, North Carolina. We called the store and asked the woman at the customer service desk if she could verify the story.
She did verify the rule in fact. The woman we spoke with was friendly, and clearly not the one in charge of making the decision. She said it was up to corporate and that people had complained about masks offending them. It appears as though people were offended by the man’s American flag mask but we can’t verify that specific detail for sure.
The Food Lion employee said that all masks that had any meaning were banned and that only colors and patterns were allowed. Regardless, it begs the question, what kind of outrage would there be if a person working for the store was told they can’t wear a “Black Lives Matter” mask? Remember what happened when the Taco Bell employee did this and it backfired on Taco Bell? Taco Bell was forced to apologize…
So perhaps Food Lion should apologize for not allowing their employees to represent the country the very store is selling their goods in? It was made very clear to us that the ban is only for employees and not customers. The man’s name appears to be Gary Dean, or at least that’s the Facebook account this gut-wrenching story comes from.
Read his story below where he tells about his health issues, love for his country and veterans, and that he just wants to be able to be proud of his own country. The Facebook poster said that among other things, you can “feel free to get out of my country if my American flag offends you”. See below:
This story is developing and if we get any responses from the man or updates from Food Lion we will update it. Original post below:
