A manager at a Vancouver restaurant has been fired for denying service to a customer wearing a ‘MAGA’ hat.
Darin Hodge was fired from Stanley Park Teahouse after he asked the customer to take off his Make America Great Again hat.
‘I stand by my decision to ask the patron to remove his hat. The MAGA hat has come to symbolize racism, bigotry, islamaphobia [sic], misogyny, white supremacy, homophobia,’ he explained to the Global News.
‘As a person with a strong moral backbone, I had to take a stand against this guest’s choice of headwear while in my former place of work,’ he wrote.
Darin Hodge was fired from Stanley Park Teahouse after he asked the customer to take off his Make America Great Again hat
The former manager had been with the company for 18 months
Vice president of Human Resources for the Sequoia Group of Restaurants, Eva Gates, released a statement explaining the situation.
‘A gentleman came in wearing a hat that was a Make America Great Again hat, and our manager went up to the gentleman and asked him to take off his hat, that he wouldn’t serve him with that hat on,’ she said.
‘As a person with a strong moral backbone, I had to take a stand against this guest’s choice of headwear while in my former place of work,’ he asserted
‘And the gentleman said that he had a right to wear that hat. And [the manager] refused to serve him if he wouldn’t take off his hat, and so the customer had to leave.’
The company had called Hodge ‘a good person with a big heart and a right to his personal beliefs,’ in a previous statement.
He was fired, however, for violating the establishment’s ‘philosophy of tolerance.’
‘Sequoia does not support intolerance of any kind, and it is because of these principles that we cannot discriminate against someone based on their support for the current administration in the United States or any other bona fide political party,’ the statement said.
Hodges had been with the company for 18 months, staff told CBC.
The MAGA grew in popularity during the Trump campaign in 2016.
The company had called Hodge ‘a good person with a big heart and a right to his personal beliefs,’ in a previous statement. He was fired, however, for violating the establishment’s ‘philosophy of tolerance’ when he refused service to the customer with the hat