Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Exclusive: TheBlaze Interviews the Guy Fired for Berating a Chick-fil-A Employee
The Blaze ^ | Aug. 3, 2012 | Mike Opelka

Posted on 08/03/2012 9:22:00 PM PDT by StAnDeliver

Should someone be fired from their job and threatened with violence, torture, even death because they have an opinion different than yours? Of course not. And yet, that is what Adam M. Smith of Arizona says happened to him.

Adam Smith’s life has been turned upside-down in the 36 hours that followed his posting the video of his protest at Chick-fil-A, which involved letting a young, female employee at the drive-thru know what he thinks about the company. (You can watch the video here.)

We had an exclusive conversation with Smith where he shared his side of the story. Here’s a taste of what he said:

•He has lost his job as Chief Financial Officer at Vante. (Smith claims that he was not given a chance to really explain himself before being terminated)

•His family has been threatened with violence and death. (At one point, his email account was getting 3 messages a minute, mostly vulgar and threatening)

•Because his home address was made public, he cannot live in his house. (And Mr. Smith is a married father of four – two of his children are adopted, special needs kids.)

•Smith said that his original intent was to follow guidelines laid out in an online video, which included quoting a scripture.

Before the original Blaze story ran and then again following the news of Adam’s termination, I reached out to him for further comment and clarification. I wanted to see if he wanted to apologize or possibly speak with Rachel, the girl he’s seen berating in the video. There was no comment or reply from Adam until early this morning.

Mr. Smith asked me to watch the video that he claims inspired him to act. It is a YouTube clip from a Christian writer named Jackson Pearce. In the video seen below, Ms. Pearce explains her thoughts on Chick-fil-A and suggests that people go to the restaurant on August 1st and ask for a large water and mention Proverbs 25:21, and if you video your protest, she will post it as a response.

Smith’s initial reasoning for his protest at Chick-fil-A springs from his belief that same-sex marriage is a Human Rights issue and that any laws denying it must be changed. And he chose to protest against the restaurant using the method suggested in the above video.

After he returned home from his now-infamous protest, Smith posted the video as a response to the YouTube video on Ms. Pearce’s page. He claimed that this was the first video he ever posted on YouTube. He later walked that statement back saying that he had only posted a few personal family videos, but nothing of a political or protest nature.

Shortly after his video reply hit YouTube, Smith claims that threats started hitting his email inbox. Threats to his family and to himself. So, he removed the video as quickly as he could, but it had already been saved and was in the process of being re-posted by others. One re-poster is tied to the group Stormfront.org. In fact, before he actually spoke with me on the telephone, at 9:34 this morning, Adam sent an email stating:

read this……"

The link he attached to that email took me to a blog site from someone who identifies themselves as “Florida Squeezed.” The headline of the post read:

Chick-Fil-A Becomes Iconic for Neo-NAZIS & Tea Party

Young-Adult fiction writer’s idea accidentally leads to Arizona Chick-Fil-A protester being cyber-bullied by “White Power” website based in West Palm Beach, Florida

I was a bit confused by this. Was Smith now claiming that he was the victim of cyber-bullies that he claims are Neo-Nazis? No. He wanted me to see how Stormfront.org had re-posted his initial video and also added his contact information. As the video went viral, the threats and emails increased.

“My inbox was getting 2-3 emails per minute,” he explained via phone. He added later: “I’m not even at my house, you don’t know that. I can’t live in my house right now. I’m in an undisclosed location right now.”

I wondered about his terminations. Did both the biotech manufacturing company (Vante) and the college react without giving a “hearing?”

According to him, “The college has not fired me at this point.”

When asked if there is any chance to appeal his abrupt termination from Vante, Smith said he doesn’t not have legal counsel and thus has “no idea.”

So often in cases like this, a lawyer or law firm will step up and offer to assist, so I wondered if anyone had made such a proposal:

“I don’t think anyone can find me right now. I can’t find the emails through my ***** account because… it took me an hour to find your email, and I knew you did it, I knew you sent it, and it took me an hour.”

Smith started reading off some of the offensive emails he was receiving, telling me how people were referring to him and his family:

“I’m a fa**ot, I’m so glad you got fired, it’s so funny, I hope you’re slitting your wrists, your kids have a horrible example of a father, ya know, all kinds of real tolerant stuff…. Ya know, they have free speech so great… they can do whatever they want… they can do it.”

So given all the fallout, I wanted to know if he cared to see Rachel again. “If you encountered her again, what would you say to her?” I asked.

“I will say to her… what I will say to her… and I will figure out what the right words are,” he responded. And then he shed a little more light, saying that he had already gone back to Chick-fil-A the next morning to talk to Rachel.

She refused to talk to him.

“I wanted to see if she was OK, that’s all,” he explained. “She was actually working there, and her manager went to get her… and she wouldn’t come back.”

Considering the controversy that’s erupted, you can’t really blame her.

By the way, we have repeatedly reached out to his former employer Vante for comment and have not yet received a reply.



TOPICS: Front Page News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: adamsmith; chickfila; homosexualagenda; vante
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-80 ... 101-102 next last
To: StAnDeliver

Cry me a river.

I bump into these smug d-bags all of the time.
This one could go jump off a bridge for all i care.


21 posted on 08/03/2012 10:14:45 PM PDT by mowowie
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: tennmountainman

Oh, of course he is trying to play the victim. Since when have Liberals ever done anything else? In their minds, they are always the aggrieved party because the very fact that anyone in the WORLD has an opinion that is different than their own causes them immense pain. If those rotten, hateful, bigoted, nasty Conservatives would just see the light and agree that they are right, all would be well in the world, and they wouldn’t have to suffer.

This guy is a perfect example of that mentality. He left his work space while on company time to disrupt a business operation and severely abuse a young working woman who he had never met, will probably never meet, simply because she is working for a company that is owned by a person who holds views that he disagrees with.

Not only does he do that, he records it and posts it on YouTube so all his Liberal buddies can see what a wonderful person he is, ready to stand up to the nasty bad people who aren’t Liberals.

I am sure he is absolutely dumbfounded that he was fired. Nasty things like that simply do not happen to good Liberals! It must be a Conservative plot! Where was George Bush!!!


22 posted on 08/03/2012 10:14:47 PM PDT by Ronin (Dumb, dependent and Democrat is no way to go through life - Rep. L. Gohmert, Tex)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: StAnDeliver
...and I wonder if Rachel will accept his “apology” when she hears him refer to her as “acceptable collateral damage”.
23 posted on 08/03/2012 10:16:10 PM PDT by Tex-Con-Man (T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII 2012 - "Together, I Shall Ride You To Victory")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: tennmountainman

I sincerely doubt that this man will be working in an executive capacity for any corporation any time soon, if ever again, and certainly not as CFO.

Executive search firms typically vet their candidates pretty well, and every background check on him will turn up that he was that awful Chick-Fil-A guy who recklessly flushed his career down the toilet and self-inflicted unnecessary chaos upon his company during the worst national economic crisis in modern history. Not to mention his family of five who depended on him. Even the welfare of his own family wasnt enough to cause him to pause and reconsider his impulsive behavior.

Some new outfit is going to recruit a guy like that their new CFO/Treasurer? Fat flippin’ chance.

Also, corporations like to do fairly extensive psychological profiling on executive candidates. All you need to know about this man is in his own YouTube videos -— recopied endlessly on websites who’ve got him down as a villain who shrieks at teenagers and religious folks while insisting he’s not a queer.

This man is totally radioactive in the corporate world. At best, he just set his career path back to about age 22. Believe me. He gooned himself massively and that’s all he can think about right now.


24 posted on 08/03/2012 10:19:10 PM PDT by The KG9 Kid (Semper Fi)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: Tex-Con-Man
"...and I wonder if Rachel will accept his “apology” when she hears him refer to her as “acceptable collateral damage”.

I mean, that gave me the chills. Like I said, CFA needs to ban this guy chain-wide.

25 posted on 08/03/2012 10:21:01 PM PDT by StAnDeliver (=)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 23 | View Replies]

To: StAnDeliver

Americans don’t have much respect for bullies. We have to put up with one another’s differences - we are all free to think what we want to think and associate with who we want to associate with.

Nice of Beck to try and help him off the hook he stuffed into his big mouth. If he can serve as a lesson to liberals that they don’t own people, they don’t own our cultures, customs and morals, that would be good. Believe me, if liberals were honest, they would see themselves in Adam’s crazy video. They abuse and bully people they disagree with all the time.


26 posted on 08/03/2012 10:38:01 PM PDT by SaraJohnson
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: StAnDeliver

“Especially people who care about strangers, who care about evil and social injustice” — Easy to be Hard, from Hair


27 posted on 08/03/2012 10:41:06 PM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (let me ABOs run loose, lew (or is that lou?))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 25 | View Replies]

To: StAnDeliver

Proverbs 25:21 “If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat;

And if he be thirsty, give him water to drink:”

BUT note verse 22 “For thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head,

And the LORD shall reward thee.”

Sure got to snicker at the one verse Adam.


28 posted on 08/03/2012 10:43:43 PM PDT by Just mythoughts (Luke 17:32 Remember Lot's wife.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: StAnDeliver
he had already gone back to Chick-fil-A the next morning to talk to Rachel. She refused to talk to him.

She should file a restraining order against him.

29 posted on 08/03/2012 10:54:23 PM PDT by P-Marlowe (There can be no Victory without a fight and no battle without wounds.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: SECURE AMERICA

Not only did he post it, but he posted his email, LinkedIn profile, and **stated** he was CFO of Vante. Thus, by his own actions, he linked his ranting to his employer. . . who let him go for conduct detrimental to the company. . .


30 posted on 08/03/2012 11:01:25 PM PDT by Salgak (Acme Lasers presents: The Energizer Border. I **DARE** you to cross it. . . .)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: Baynative
I’ll bet he’s a quick hire at Progressive Insurance, Ben and Jerry’s, or maybe HuffPo.

. Maybe Obama could make him a czar of asinine behavior.

31 posted on 08/03/2012 11:01:37 PM PDT by oldbrowser (As long as Obama's records are sealed, any discussion of Romney's past is off limits.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: Just mythoughts

How about Proverbs 25:28,

He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that has broken down, and without walls.

Amen.


32 posted on 08/03/2012 11:25:12 PM PDT by dr_lew
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 28 | View Replies]

To: Ronin

The fact that he was getting death threats and being barraged with emails, tells me its the left doing this to try and make supporters of Chik-Fil-A and the Tea Party look bad. Conservatives DON’T post people’s personal information to be used as a bully tactic.


33 posted on 08/03/2012 11:26:42 PM PDT by Catsrus
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: dr_lew

Oops. s/b “... is broken down” ... I was looking right at it!


34 posted on 08/03/2012 11:32:18 PM PDT by dr_lew
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 32 | View Replies]

To: StAnDeliver

Cry me a river. I know of may cases where people have been fired for comments about ssm. Ask any researcher the discrimination they encounter when they dare to publish anything unfavorable to the LGBTWTF community. Ask them how many death threats they get. We don’t have to go back very far to the Prop 8 battle. Did the press even our “conservative” press really cover the church vandalism and the indivdials who had their vehicles and houses vandalized and the businesses that were harassed because they dared to support traditional marriage? Hell no. The time is over for sympathy to these cry baby lgbt minions. This isn’t about human rights as they like to falsely claim (even some of dumb ass Faux GOP/Libertarians spew that BS)its about individual freedom to tell them to “GET THE HELL OUT OF OUR FACES!”. We aren’t the problem. They are. We have tolerated them beyond all reason and its never enough! Its so good to see so many ordinary folks standing up and saying “This will not stand!”. I just wish our cowardly conservative icons in the media would do the same intead of dance around the issue. Yes they support it but they could do what they do with global warming. They could totally deconstruct the gay activist premises. They could have on Phds who do research like the Regnerus study. The left has nearly totally taken over social sciences. Is the goal just to cede the sciences forever to the left and behave as if their leftist funded studies are valid while conservative funded ones aren’t?

That is what I find frustrating. Don’t get me wrong what those like Rush and Glenn have done is great but they are leaving out critical pieces. I think Glenn Beck actually gets it better than Rush who I think is just happy to be Rich and married to a hot wife. Anyway. My feelings on this guy is he can stew in his hate as can any emotionally soft in the head Republicans/Libertarians who confuse being pleasant and civil with taking it up the “*ss”.


35 posted on 08/03/2012 11:48:16 PM PDT by Maelstorm (Now lets return to our regular scheduled deprogramming.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: StAnDeliver

an apology goes something like this....

I am sorry, I was wrong, please forgive me, I was so wrong. What I did was wrong and I am ashamed of my actions. My name is _____ and I _____ and I am ashamed of my actions. please forgive me.

Anyone with a real apology will get a thumbs up from me.


36 posted on 08/03/2012 11:55:48 PM PDT by coon2000 (Give me Liberty or give me death!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: dr_lew
How about Proverbs 25:28, He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that has broken down, and without walls. Amen.

Yes indeed. (correction noted)

37 posted on 08/03/2012 11:56:23 PM PDT by Just mythoughts (Luke 17:32 Remember Lot's wife.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 32 | View Replies]

To: StAnDeliver
mostly vulgar and threatening)

Notice how he blends these two together like they're the same thing?

VULGAR ISN'T THE SAME AS THREATENING!

Just trying to get a pity party going.

King Douche of the Millennium (so far. hat to see a bigger one though!)

38 posted on 08/04/2012 12:01:39 AM PDT by HeartlandOfAmerica ("We have prepared for the unbeliever, whips and chains and blazing fires!" Koran Sura 76:4)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: StAnDeliver

Karma is a beach. He deserves all he is getting and is due to get. Just another commie atheist freak. Nice to see one get shellacked for being a jackass. They think they can abuse people with impunity and often with anonymity. Nice to see this punk coward got his comeuppance.


39 posted on 08/04/2012 12:10:47 AM PDT by Freedom_Is_Not_Free (REPEAL OBAMACARE. Nothing else matters.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: tennmountainman

Maybe Sandra Fluke will hire him.


40 posted on 08/04/2012 12:12:02 AM PDT by Freedom_Is_Not_Free (REPEAL OBAMACARE. Nothing else matters.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-80 ... 101-102 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson