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That's enough to conclude the employee shouldn't be arrested; not enough to conclude the employee shouldn't be fired. If Billy Bob is among your customer base and there's now only one way to make him feel safe walking down your rope aisle then maybe you do what you need to for him to feel safe.
IIRC the (ex-)Home-Depot lady didn't even go that far, it was more like "Billy Bob's favorite candidate deserves to be hanged", with Billy (and his compatriots) in no danger, but it's still defensible for a judgement call to land somewhere in between "we should just ignore this" and "we need to call the cops right now".
Being a communist will upset some customers too; however, it shouldn't get you fired. OP stated that employees' political expression should be protected as long as it doesn't "affect your ability to do your actual job":
I do not think that the Home Depot lady's opinions affected her job performance. If, instead of saying that the shooter shouldn't have missed, she had expressed literally any other political opinion, I assume OP would have defended her.
But OP's standards for who to fire suddenly change here. This political expression is out of bounds. But why?
Politics will inevitably make some customers uncomfortable. If you decide that employees have the right to express their political opinions, then you, as an employer and business owner, will have to just suck it up and deal with the uncomfortable customers.
This one includes an implied threat of violence. I don’t think it’s that hard to follow. Most companies already covered this in their “zero tolerance for violence and threats” policy.
I also don’t think I’m defending politics at work. This was her own private page, and to my knowledge she wasn’t going around talking about politics to everyone who walked up to her area. On the clock, I would expect anyone checking people out to stick to business and not harass people with political opinions.
Just to be clear. My policy in a perfect world would be that employees opinions posted on their own social media on their own devices on their own time are none of my business unless they promote or condone violence. The only exception would be public roles (media or marketing directors, C-suite, paid actors) or people making hiring decisions directly related to the political opinions they’re giving.
If it’s not that hard to follow, please explain it to me, because I don’t see any implied threat of violence here.
If you were assaulted at gunpoint, and I posted on Facebook the next day that I’m “very sad the shooter missed,” would you feel threatened by this?
No.
Then you are weird enough that your reactions should not be used as a guide for rules dealing with ordinary people.
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