A McDonough, Georgia Wal-Mart employee refused to make a Thin Blue Line cake for an officer’s retirement party and it sparked an online firestorm.
The cake design was relatively simple, a black and white American flag with a blue stripe in it. I’m no pastry chef, but that seems fairly easy to me. Below is an example:
But it wasn’t the ease of the cake design that kept the bakers from fulfilling the order, it was the fact that “some could perceive it as racist.”
The customer, the officer’s daughter, then thought she could receive a more favorable answer by asking for just a thin blue line on a chocolate background, but the baker said she wasn’t comfortable doing that either.
Confused by the resistance to make such a cake, the daughter asked the baker, “Is there something wrong with cops?”
A family friend, who is also an officer, posted about the incident on Facebook:
The manager of the Wal-Mart reached out to the woman to offer her a gift cart, party supplies as well as a cake, but the damage was done. The daughter had also gone to Kroger to have the cake made.
The cake that the family received was poorly made and looked completely unprofessional, according to the daughter. A picture of the cake is below:
In an exclusive interview with Todd Starnes, the daughter said that if she refused a customer’s request, she would have been fired.
“I work in retail,” the officer’s daughter told Starnes. “If I didn’t want to deal with a customer — and said ‘No’ — I would get fired.”
So, let’s set something straight, conservatives have already made it very clear that nobody should be forced to make a cake that they object to and it’s true, they shouldn’t. The family here did what everyone should do and they moved on to another bakery that made the cake without objection.
What also happened here is what should also happen, the public put pressure on the company to either stand up for what they did, or to cave and make the cake. The free market should take care of the public’s opinion on a business. If you refuse business for any reason and you’re in a non-emergency profession, you should be able to do so. And that person who you refused should be able to go out and express their opinion about your refusal, and the public should decide whether or not to continue to visit your business and spend their money there.
If this Wal-Mart was in my area, I would refuse to shop there because I fundamentally disagree with the kind of people they hire. Just keep in mind that despite how much anger this story creates inside you, you should not fall into the trap of demanding someone comply with your desires.