Many companies have dress codes for their employees, and many companies also have specific uniforms that their employees are required to wear. For example, if you shop at Target, you might notice that all the employees wear red shirts, and if you shop at Lowe’s you might notice that many of the employees are wearing vests.
Back in 2020, after graduating from high school, Kyle Sales got a job at his local Lowe’s store. He planned to work there over the summer to save some money before going to college. He hadn’t been working there very long and hadn’t earned the right to wear a Lowe’s vest as part of his uniform yet. Instead, he simply needed to dress appropriately for work.
One day, Sales showed up at work wearing a t-shirt from one of his favorite movies, the hit Marvel movie “Black Panther.” The t-shirt was all black except for the writing which read “Black Panther” and “Wakanda Forever.”
When he showed up at work, none of his coworkers had a problem with what he was wearing. His manager didn’t complain. Everything was fine.
Then, later in the day, a white woman complained to the store manager about Sales’ shirt. Sales happens to be a black man, and the white customer called his shirt “racist.”
Sales said he was paged over the intercom, and the manger told him that he needed to change his shirt because a customer said it was racist. He was really confused and didn’t see how a t-shirt from a movie could in any way be racist; however, he complied with the manager’s request that he change his shirt. He went home on his lunch break and put a jersey over his t-shirt.
The next day, the customer came back to Lowe’s. Sales wasn’t at work at the time, but a friend who was there told him that the customer asked what punishment Sales was given for wearing a racist shirt.
After hearing about the ordeal, Lowe’s corporate released a statement agreeing that Sales never should have been told to change his shirt and that the managers at this Lowe’s store will be trained to make sure something like this never happens again.
Many people who have heard about this unfair situation agree that it was ridiculous for the manager at Lowe’s to tell Sales to change his shirt. One comment reads, “Wow, it was just t shirt from a movie. What if it said batman or captain America on it.”
Another person wrote, “The manager should of been fired.”
Why do you think the manager at Lowe’s told Sales to change his shirt? Do you think the white customer and the manager knew that “Black Panther” was a movie, or do you think they thought it meant something else?
