This morning’s story comes to us from a parking lot outside of the Bojangles Famous Chicken n’ Biscuits restaurant in Charlotte, North Carolina. Last week, President Trump held another one of his rallies in Charlotte with the usual large number of supporters in attendance. After it ended, a large group of his supporters showed up at Bojangles for a late-night meal. Upon arriving, however, they found the door locked by the manager, who some of the attendees claimed was refusing service to people wearing Trump paraphernalia and carrying Trump signs. Things quickly went downhill from there. (American Mirror)

The manager of a Bojangles’ restaurant in Charlotte, North Carolina who locked out Trump supporters after leaving a rally for the president has now found himself out of the job.

Donald Trump had given a speech to over 10,000 of his supporters at a venue that is less than a ten-minute walk from the restaurant, according to The Charlotte Observer. Michael Furick, who attended the rally, took to Facebook afterwards to recount how he and other Trump supporters were barred from entering the Bojangles’ restaurant.

“Bojangles locked the doors to the Trump rally last night and denied service,” Furick wrote. “Ironic because the rally was at Bojangles arena. @bojangles this is pretty distasteful. I walk up to the door and people are gathered around and stated they would not serve Trump supporters.”

This brief report from WCNC in Charlotte includes a short interview with the guy who caused the story to go viral.

By all accounts, the encounter never turned violent and no damage was caused. The shift manager eventually called his own boss who promptly came down and opened the restaurant back up. He also fired the shift manager who had locked the place up. The company quickly took to social media to apologize, saying that the manager “made a bad decision to close the dining room. We apologize. That manager is no longer employed by Bojangles’.”

For what it’s worth, the company attempted to explain this away by saying that the manager felt “overwhelmed” by the large number of customers, leading to the decision to lock the doors. Witnesses on the scene weren’t buying that, however, reporting that the manager had made his intentions clear. Also, photos taken during the dispute appear to show only a couple of customers inside the establishment.

This was just an epic failure on multiple levels. Even if we were to believe the excuse about the manager being “overwhelmed,” he probably still should have lost his job. The restaurant is in business to sell food. If dozens (or even hundreds) of people show up and the line stretches out into the parking lot, that’s a good thing. It means that the shift is going to be turning in some killer number and management will be happy. If you’ve risen up through the ranks from the fry machine operator to being a shift manager and you can’t handle a surge of customers coming to your eatery, you’ve chosen the wrong line of work.

But if, as seems to be the case, the shift manager locked the doors to keep out Trump supporters, that’s not a decision that he or even his boss can make. This is a franchise. The owner and the board of directors are the only ones who can set that sort of policy, suicidal though it might be in business terms. And this manager should have been able to guess that the owners aren’t all that woke. For Pete’s sake… the Trump rally was held at Bojangles Stadium and they apparently didn’t have any problem with the President using their facility.

I think the lesson to take away from this cautionary tale is not to let that shift manager title go to your head and set you off on some sort of power trip. If you want to operate a business that doesn’t allow people in MAGA hats to patronize your establishment, earn a couple of billion dollars and go start one of your own. Of course, after you do you’ll probably lose in a discrimination lawsuit brought by Trump’s lawyers and be broke again, but at least it will have been a fiasco you were entitled to attempt.