What's a small business to do when it's dragged into the left-right ideological rift that has divided so many Americans?
That's the situation that Eve Williams, founder and president of Mojo Burrito, found herself in the wee hours Monday morning when she was shocked to discover that the business she had worked to build for 15 years was being trashed on social media because an employee who attended last weekend's Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., had been called a Nazi by a co-worker.
"Just a heads up, Mojo Burrito in St. Elmo knowingly employs a literal Nazi," restaurant employee Lillie Stubsten posted on her Facebook page the night before. That was after Stubsten gave two week's notice, because she said the restaurant's management didn't plan to do anything about the co-worker in question, Terrance Hightower, even though Stubsten said Hightower had a pro-Hitler sticker on the moped he drove to work.
"I really see no reason for y'all to continue giving them your business," Stubsten wrote.
Stubsten's Facebook post gained traction on social media, and others gave the restaurant one-star reviews and chimed in with such comments as, "Seriously, the idea of eating food prepared by a white supremacist makes my stomach churn."
Lillie Stubsten discusses her political beliefs during an interview Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2017, at the Chattanooga Times Free Press in Chattanooga, Tenn. Stubsten called a former coworker a Nazi on social media leading to his firing from Mojo Burrito. Williams fired Hightower Monday morning, and she took to Facebook to say she didn't know anything about the politics of Hightower, who was one of about 100 employees at the three-restaurant, local chain.
"Please don't try to hurt me. These bad reviews are meant to hurt me. I'm completely innocent," Williams wrote. "[You're] just ganging up on me like a bunch of bullies."
Williams also caught flack for firing Hightower, who denied being a Nazi and said he was just a right-wing Trump supporter who didn't want to see a statue of Robert E. Lee removed from Charlottesville's Emancipation Park.
"I will never attend Mojo Burrito in St. Elmo, ever. I respect everyone's right to protest or attend a protest," one man posted on his Facebook page.
Social media 'can be hate machine'
Small businesses have to be ready for attacks via social media, said Albert Waterhouse, president and founder of Chattanooga-based Waterhouse Public Relations.
"It can end the life of a small business," Waterhouse said. "Social media can be a technological hate machine, in some cases. Anybody can use it at any time to say anything."
Waterhouse said his PR firm has a full-service social media department and software that tracks what people say on the Internet about his client 24 hours a day, seven days a week in real time. That way, when a crisis arises - anything from accusations of food poisoning at a restaurant to a false charge of racism against a business' manager - Waterhouse's firm can swing into action.
"In most cases, we try to go privately, directly to the person posting," Waterhouse said. "For the most part, whether you're right or wrong, people just want an apology. Even if, in some cases, we're not wrong, we'll apologize and move on."
"Talking privately one-on-one in a lot of situations resolves the matter," he said, adding, "You never threaten anybody."
There's a natural tendency for a small business not to expect a PR crisis, said Amanda Carmichael, the co-owner of Mace+Carmichael Public Relations in Chattanooga.
"No one ever wants to think that anything bad's going to happen," she said. "What we find is a lot of people call us when they're in the midst of a crisis."
Even in that case, small business owners - who tend to be savvy and have an instinct for the right things to say - appreciate having a sounding board.
Amanda Carmichael"Even if you don't have a plan, having someone you can trust as a PR person is really helpful," Carmichael said. "They just know that they can call us, and we can walk them through this process."
Other advice she has for clients is to keep their message real.
"Canned responses sound terrible. You have to be real with people, because they can see through all the canned stuff," Carmichael said.
Time is on a business' side
This too shall pass, is another point that Carmichael tells clients to keep in mind.
"It's temporary. It's not going to be like this forever. And you're going to get through it," she said. "It's usually not anything that's going to have super-long negative effects, if you handle it the right way."
Robin Derryberry of Derryberry Public Relations also tells that to clients.
"One of the things that have on your side is always time," she said. "In a week, it will pass. And in a month, folks won't really call that much about it. And pretty soon, the story will be old news. Because of our news cycle, news pushes down very quickly on the page these days."
Derryberry says a crisis hitting a business is not a matter of "if," but of "when."
"We do a lot of crisis communications planning, so no matter what the crisis is, you'll know in a few hours how to go about your response," she said.
She recommends that businesses have a team of three people: one person to focus on nothing but the facts and what's been said, another person to determine if any of the company's policies have been violated and a third person to craft the message.
Derryberry says businesses need "to be able to fight the attack with fact. Facts matter. We don't do a lot of spin in our shop."
She'll also try to contact a client's social media critics directly.
"Social [media] is its own animal," Derryberry said. "It's so difficult when people are so very emotional. It's hard to get the facts out."
Contact staff writer Tim Omarzu at tomarzu@timesfreepress.com or www.facebook.com/MeetsForBusiness or on Twitter @meetforbusiness or 423-757-6651.