Hoping to stave off a nationwide backlash, Office Depot has fired a worker at one of its Michigan locations after a video went viral of office staff refusing to print posters for a vigil honoring slain conservative free speech activist Charlie Kirk.
Members of the Kalamazoo County Republican Party submitted the printing order at Store 3382 in Portage, a suburb of Kalamazoo on the west side of the state.
Michigan attorney and GOP activist Matthew S. DePerno posted the video on X with a copy of the group’s prepaid receipt.
But, as the video demonstrates, it went unfulfilled — with a worker who said she was “with management” calling the poster “propaganda.”
It’s not clear whether it was DePerno or someone else in the video who argued it was not propaganda, but for a “prayer vigil for someone that passed away.”
“What makes it propaganda?” a female voice asked.
“Because he’s a political figure and I don’t have to –” the worker says, stopping and then looking to a man who identified himself as the print supervisor.
The office outlet did not name who was fired, but it was the woman worker who had most of the interaction with the customers.
The office supply retailer released a statement saying that the “behavior displayed by our associate is completely unacceptable and insensitive, violates our company policies, and does not reflect the values we uphold at Office Depot.”
The video and retweets have generated more than four million views on X as of Saturday morning, Fox News reported.
Office Depot has 845 stores in 44 states and the District of Columbia, according to the corporation. Some viewers seeing the video on X called for a nationwide boycott.
In his X post, attorney DePerno revealed the immediate solution to the problem that night.
“We went to @Fedex,” he wrote. “They apologized and printing the poster for free. Thank you!”
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more
