A woman who wore a baseball cap which read “America Was Never Great” while working at a shop in Staten Island has received death threats on social media.
22-year-old Krystal Lake said she had ordered the hat to make fun of Republican Donald Trump’s campaign slogan “Make America Great Again”.
As reported by The Staten Island Advance, Ms Lake said: “The point of the hat was to say America needs changing and improvement. I don't think it's a positive message to say, ”Let's look to the past.""
After wearing the hat at her Sunday morning shift at a Home Depot store, she speculated that a photo of her circulated on social media without her knowledge and she started to receive a vicious backlash on Facebook and Twitter.
It was the only time she had worn the hat to work and nobody had reprimanded her.
“They were actually threatening to kill me over a hat,” she said to the New York Times. “I couldn’t believe it. I was calling my best friend and I was like, ‘How is this happening? It’s just a hat.’ ”
So many calls came in to the store over the week, that staff stopped answering the phone.
Ms Lake, a media student who supports Bernie Sanders, took the day off on Thursday and a manager called to see if she was alright.
Stephen Holmes, a Home Depot spokesman, said that the company respected “the personal opinions and beliefs held by our associates and our customers,” but that the store was not an appropriate place for workers “to promote or display personal opinions, beliefs, political and religious affiliations or any type of proselytizing.”
When questioned whether she will wear the hat again, Ms Lake said: “Definitely”.
