Last week, a delivery driver for a Lowe’s store in Danville, Virginia, was the victim of a disgraceful act of racism. He was delivering an item when the store manager told him to turn around because–wait for it–the driver was black, and the customer didn’t want a black man on her property. Fortunately, corporate headquarters got wind of this disgraceful act, and now the store manager is out of a job.
Last Monday, Marcus Bradley was in the midst of making a routine delivery run when he got a call on his cell phone saying that he needed to come back to the store. When Bradley asked why, he was told that the customer had specifically requested that Lowe’s not send a black delivery driver to her house. Watch the story from WSET-TV in Lynchburg here.
As you might expect, Bradley was flabbergasted. So was his partner, Alex Brooks, who is white. Brooks and Bradley have both been with Lowe’s for 11 years, and have worked together for virtually all of that time. Brooks told WSET-TV in Lynchburg that “it just ain’t right” for a business to go along with such a blatantly racist request. Brooks was so upset that when he and Bradley returned to the store, he refused to go along with the white driver who replaced Bradley. He believed this was a situation where “I just had to put my foot down.”
Bradley was very disappointed that his bosses refused to let him make the delivery. “I mean, I thought Lowe’s would take up for me,” he said. Maybe Bradley’s bosses didn’t take up for him, but the corporate office in Mooresville, North Carolina did. A few days after WSET reached out to Lowe’s corporate headquarters, the company released a strongly-worded statement declaring:
Under no circumstances should a discriminatory delivery request be honored as it is inconsistent with our diversity and inclusion core values and the request should have been refused.
The company added that as a result of an internal investigation, “the individuals involved are no longer with the company.” That includes the store manager; according to WSET, the manager has been replaced. Needless to say, this was the only acceptable response.
Bradley said he planned to go back to work. Although he’s disappointed with how his now-former manager left him in the lurch, “I gotta work.” He does hope, however, that Lowe’s would “think about what they’re doing next time.”
Bradley’s tolerance level is much higher than mine. Being a black man myself, if something like this happened to me, I’d have to think very long and very hard about going back to that store after having to endure something like this. When you’re a minority who deals with the public, you shouldn’t have to ask if your boss will stand up for you when you encounter this sort of knuckle-dragging racism. If it had been me, I’d have gotten plenty of assurances that this would never happen again before I would consider coming back to work.
That being said, Lowe’s deserves to be applauded for cutting ties with this spineless manager. The corporate slogan, “Never stop improving,” was more than apt in this case.
