The Kid Who Was Sent Home For Wearing A Kaepernick Jersey During "NFL Jersey Day" Needs To Learn How Jobs Work

NYDN- It was “Wear a Football Jersey Day” for employees at the Kroger grocery store in Springfield, Ohio, Sunday, as the NFL season kicked off with a huge round of games.

Elijah Scott was excited. It was a chance for the 16-year-old employee to wear his new Colin Kaepernick jersey. He put it on, went to work, clocked in and started bagging groceries like he normally would.

When it came time for his lunch break, he says his manager asked Elijah to go home and change clothes.

​Mind you, many employees were wearing NFL jerseys, but only he was asked to go home and change. Elijah says he was told a customer complained to the manager and said he "wasn't going to shop there again" if Elijah was allowed to wear the "disrespectful" jersey.



​Let's just get this out of the way right quick. Sending the black kid home from work for wearing a jersey that represents the athlete who has been most outspoken in favor of equality for African Americans is - for lack a better, less egregious word - discriminatory. Unfortunately for him, the world is a shitty, prejudice place. That may seem like a lazy rationalization for some Kroger manager who just wanted to get through his Sunday without dealing with pissed off patrons, and that's because it is exactly that. You see, regardless of the racial ramifications, the customer is always right...even when the customer is a simple minded dickhead that can't stock his fridge without causing a scene. Sadly, it's just business. The underpaid fan of the player that kneels during the National Anthem is more replaceable than the obnoxious jerkoff that threatens to boycott the store in opposition of the presence of said player's jersey. 

That may suck for low level baggers that want to make a social statement with their attire during a gimmicky casual Sunday, but it's true. I don't know too much about the type of person that complains to grocery store management about what one of it's employees is wearing because I generally try to avoid those people at all cost. I do, however, know that they will purchase their half pound of low sodium ham elsewhere out of principle. The demographical data of a grocery store's clientele is undoubtedly extremely diverse, and that means it undoubtedly includes a bunch of brainless jackasses that think refusing to stand for the National Anthem is an outright act of terrorism. Be that as it may, the money of a brainless jackass is worth just as much as the money of the most educated of intellectual. If there's one thing this kid should take away from this experience it's not that the world is full of hardheaded idiots. It's that working minimum wage public service jobs usually subjects you to more of them. Sadly, they usually don't stop until they get what they want...even if what they want is the person throwing their microwave dinners in a paper bag to change his shirt.