An employee for a Panda Express restaurant located in Washington who called local police on a conservative influencer sporting a MAGA hat ultimately wound up crying on the sidewalk after cops informed her the customer did nothing wrong. Creator Chris Sims and his friend, fellow influencer Danny Rebel, were livestreaming at the Lakewood location on May 10 when employees threw a fit over his pro-Trump hat and shirt.
After the two men entered the Panda Express and ordered their food, Sims noticed a cook was giving him the stink-eye. Feeling uncomfortable, Sims asked him if something was wrong. Employees responded the problem was his hat. He gave the guy a thumbs up as he continued to stare him down. Staff soon demanded the two men, who were ordering food and talking to their online chat, leave the restaurant.
Both said no problem and went outside, continuing to stream. Two male employees followed them outside and told them they were not allowed to film on the sidewalk, which was public property. Lakewood Police later confirmed the incident and determined the men did nothing wrong, leaving it to the leadership of the chain to address the employees’ conduct.
According to a report from Seattle Red, Sims, speaking with “The Jason Rantz Show” on Seattle Red 770 AM, said that he wasn’t filming the workers when he entered the restaurant. The two were ordering food and chatting with followers in the livestream chat when the two cooks started watching them closely. “So I walk in, I’m not even filming them, I’m just looking at my phone,” Sims said.
“My buddy Danny, at Danny Rebels, ordering, I’m just kind of, you know, showing the [YouTube channel livestream] chat the food, what they have, talking about what I might get, looking at orange chicken and chow mein, stuff like that. And initially, right when I walked in, they’re staring at me, the two cooks that came out and kind of hassled me, staring at me,” Sims continued.
Sims recounted, “They kind of look at each other and laugh, and I’m like, ‘Ah, whatever,’ you know? I just figured maybe they saw my hat, they don’t like stuff like that. And so I’m just kind of walking around, but I can see the guy that had the dreadlocks kept staring at me like eye contact, staring, and he looked pissed off, like I did something, so I keep looking up at him, he’s still staring at me, just, you know, putting stuff away.”
“As we’re checking out, he was still staring at me, so I kind of just gave him a thumbs up, and then he had no smile, no acknowledgement. I was like, ‘Everything okay? I do something to you guys?’ And he said something like, ‘What you’re wearing, it’s your hat. I was like, ‘You support my hat, you like my hat?’ And that’s when they walk over and get kind of mad, so they confront [us], and they’re like, ‘You got to go,’” Sims said.
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The host of the program asked Sims if he or Rebel might have done something to contribute to the hostility of the workers, but Sims wasted no time stating that he believes it was because he wore the MAGA hat and a shirt with President Donald Trump on it. Sims said he noticed the 911 call happening as he exited the restaurant. What the employee told police over the phone must have been much worse than what actually happened because four units responded to the call within five minutes.
The officers listened to Sims and Rebel tell their side of the story and then spoke with workers in the restaurant concluding there was nothing to investigate. “Well, like five of them came out. They were all talking to the two different officers that were out there. After I talked to the officers, I kind of walked more toward their direction recording, and I can hear yelling at the cops, like saying I was so disrespectful,” Sims told Rantz.
“That’s a lot of what I was hearing about how disrespectful we were. And then seeing her kind of flail her arms around, then she put her hands in her face, and then started crying, and then kind of ran off to the back of the place, and that’s pretty much what I saw that they were doing,” Sims said. Thus far, it’s unclear if the employees were in any way reprimanded for their actions.
Featured Image: screenshot from embedded video