organizations are in an uproar. Readers comments to the AOL article about the firing speak of boycotting Home Depot. They are missing the point. As a condition for Home Depot employment, this guy agreed that only buttons, badges, and pins that were issued by the company could be displayed on his work apron. When he refused to remove the item not issued by the company, he was terminated. End of story. What was printed on the lapel button is irrelevant. What I do find to be curious, is that he wore the button for a year before they asked him to remove it.
Let's look at it from the company viewpoint. They certainly don't want their employees, as representatives of the company, to wear or display anything that would offend customers. They are in business, after all. Yes, they could have stipulated that any item that was offensive could not be displayed on the work apron. But what is offensive? What is not? What is offensive to some may not be
offensive to others. Where do you draw the line? Although "One nation under God" is not offensive to me, it is to some. If you start making exceptions to the rule, you open a big bag of worms. When you allow some, but disallow others, that's discrimination especially when religion or nationality is involved. So the company arrived at the most reasonable and most enforceable solution: "Nothing may be worn on the work apron unless it was issued by the company." That would cover name tags, promotional stuff, badges, buttons, pins, etc.The guy really doesn't have a case unless he can show that the little old lady working in the garden shop was allowed to keep the "smiley face"
on her name tag. Then he would have a shot at claiming discrimination. Otherwise, the company's across the board ban along with the fact that free speech does not apply to private companies, leaves him without a pot to piss in. Write a book. What one has to keep in mind here is this: The guy was terminated for violating company policy; not for his love of God and/or country.The other day I drove by a condominium. Flags of every country hung from windows. Winnie the Pooh, Barney the dinosaur, Disney, and peace symbol banners draped down the sides of the building. What a mess....and visually unappealing. It reminded me of this guy a few years ago. He was about to be evicted for displaying the American Flag from his condo. He had signed and agreed to the homeowner associations rules, including the one that said: "No flag or banner of any kind shall be hung, draped or in any manner visible on the outside
of the building." The ALCU, DAR, VFW, DAV were all up in arms. Finally, I believe the homeowners association relented and let the guy display his flag. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's this same condominium.
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