After an Office Depot manager refused to print posters for a Charlie Kirk vigil, the company quickly stepped in to apologize for her heartless comments and announce accountability.
The Friday evening Office Depot statement stated that the “associate” who smeared the poster as “propaganda” was fired, and affirmed that the customer’s order was fulfilled after all.
The Office Depot employees in the viral video that spurred the controversy had claimed that the Kirk vigil poster that the Michigan Forward Network had requested constituted “political propaganda,” and therefore could not be printed. “It’s propaganda, I’m sorry,” snipped the Karen manager. “This is someone that passed away. This is for a vigil,” the Michigan Forward representative tried to explain to her, despite being interrupted repeatedly. “It’s still propaganda,” the manager proclaimed.
“What makes it propaganda?” challenged one of the Michigan Forward representatives. “Because it’s a political figure, and I don’t have to—” the manager started before other voices chimed in and the interchange ended in a confused cacophony.
A team member ordered and paid for a poster to be printed at @officedepot so he could bring it to a vigil for Charlie Kirk tonight in Michigan.
When he arrived to pick it up four hours later, the employees said they refused to print it, calling the poster “propaganda.” pic.twitter.com/WCitioCzZF
— Michigan Forward (@MIForward_Net) September 12, 2025
Related: Former Friend of Kirk’s Killer Calls Him ‘Leftist’
The subsequent Office Depot statement said, “We are deeply concerned by the incident that occurred at Store 3382 in Portage, Michigan. 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.” It added, “We sincerely apologize to the customer affected and to our community for this regrettable situation.”
Office Depot explained that once it saw evidence of the exchange, “we immediately reached out to the customer to address their concerns and seek to fulfill their order to their satisfaction. We also launched an immediate internal review and, as a result, the associate involved is no longer with the organization.”
In conclusion, Office Depot promised that it is “committed to reinforcing training with all team members to ensure our standards of respect, integrity, and customer service are upheld at every location. Our customers and communities deserve nothing less.”
But I think what this also tells us is that the culture has shifted in the last few years. We all remember very vividly how persecuted many Christians were for refusing to cater to homosexual weddings and other such events, not merely by customers — because every customer has a right to boycott a place and express irritation — but by the full force of the government and media. What we have witnessed in recent years, however, is that now conservatives, not in the government but ordinary citizens and customers, can protest a business’s actions, and see measurable results very rapidly.
And that is the way it should be. In a free market, a business has the right to refuse to serve certain customers, but the customers then have the right to protest that decision. The business then has to decide whether to make the customers happy or continue to uphold the decision. After Charlie Kirk‘s death, we have seen a horrendous amount of ugliness from leftists celebrating his death. But we have also seen how powerful our voices are now. Schools, businesses, and organizations in 2025 have to listen to grassroots patriots. And that is precisely the impact that Charlie Kirk hoped to see.
