Manager Fired From Pet Store After Threatening To Punch Breastfeeding Mothers
Carly Clark, a manager at Petsense from Spartanburg, South Carolina, has been fired after threatening to punch breastfeeding mothers and their babies in a rant on Facebook.
Clark posted a status on Facebook that read “The next female that tries to whip her boob out to breastfeed in front of my kids will get a black eye, move that baby bc [because] I’ll punch it too.” After Clark posted this, parents stormed the Petsense store in Gaffney and showed employees the screenshot.
Petsense have since issued a statement on their Facebook page, stating that they do not condone violence and Clark’s views did not represent the views of Petsense.
“We absolutely would never condone violence such as was recently posted by a Petsense employee. These are her individual views and do not reflect the views of Petsense or its employees.”
Another post Petsense Gaffney put up read;
“Petsense demands the highest standards in ethical and personal behavior from our employees. We absolutely would never condone violence such as was recently posted by a former Petsense employee. These are her individual views and do not reflect on the views of Petsense or its employees. This individual is no longer employed by Petsense. We sincerely apologize to all of those who have been affected by this situation.”
After reading Clark’s post, one mother – Jessi Vogel – wrote;
“I was angry. I am a nursing mum with my second baby. I already find that breastfeeding is quite hard on my body. To see another woman with kids say that she’s willing to give the woman a black eye for feeding in front of her children – it really takes us a step back to have other women saying this. It made me angry because it’s not right for someone to say that at all. I was really shocked.”
“Breasts have become so sexualised and it’s perfectly okay to use them for advertisements and things like, but as soon as you start breastfeeding in public you get looks and it is not right. I believe on one of her comments her reasoning was that she didn’t want her kids to see [another woman’s breast]”
