What’s a small business to do when it’s dragged into the left-right ideological rift that has divided so many Americans?
That’s the situation that Eve Williams, founder and president of Mojo Burrito, found herself in the wee hours Monday morning when she was shocked to discover that the business she had worked to build for 15 years was being trashed on social media because an employee who attended last weekend’s Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., had been called a Nazi by a co-worker.
“Just a heads up, Mojo Burrito in St. Elmo knowingly employs a literal Nazi,” restaurant employee Lillie Stubsten posted on her Facebook page the night before. That was after Stubsten gave two week’s notice, because she said the restaurant’s management didn’t plan to do anything about the co-worker in question, Terrance Hightower, even though Stubsten said Hightower had a pro-Hitler sticker on the moped he drove to work.
“I really see no reason for y’all to continue giving them your business,” Stubsten wrote.
Stubsten’s Facebook post gained traction on social media, and others gave the restaurant one-star reviews and chimed in with such comments as, “Seriously, the idea of eating food prepared by a white supremacist makes my stomach churn.”