US employee sacked for social media racial controversy

An employee in the United States was sacked recently after a Facebook post led to his workplace receiving floods of telephone complaints.

by Chloe Taylor

Nordstrom has fired a worker after he posted on Facebook about killing police officers.

Following recent events in the states, Aaron Hodges, a sales associate based in Portland, suggested that a white officer should be killed for every black man killed by the police.

It was not long before Hodges’ employer had seen the post, which caused controversy and quickly circulated.

A spokeswoman for the company said that Nordstrom does not tolerate violence or encouragements of it.

“What our former employee chose to post from his personal account does not in any way reflect our views as a company,” she said. “We do not tolerate violence, violent conversation or threats of any kind.”

The post which cost Hodges his job was reported to have read: “Every time an unarmed black man is killed, you kill a decorated white officer, on his doorstep in front of his family.”

A manager from a Nordstrom store in Portland called Hodges to tell him that people were continuously calling to complain, and had found his employer’s details from Hodges’ Facebook profile.

According to Hodges, he was told that since the post gained publicity, the company “can't support [him] anymore.”

Hodges claimed that he understands the reasoning behind his sacking, due to the flood of complaints that his post received, The Daily Mail reported. 

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