This KFC isn’t the first chain restaurant to create an uproar over how it treats certain customers. Yet the manager’s response is unique.

Police officers have become controversial figures in the United States.

Sadly, the actions of a few have damaged the reputations of many honest people who want to protect society.

The manager of one KFC in Gallipolis, Ohio wanted to show his appreciation for police officers.

So he printed a sign that said, “All uniformed police officers eat free every day all day.”

Then the manager put the sign up on the door of his restaurant. He wasn’t expecting what was going to happen next.

Someone took a photo of this sign and posted it to Facebook. Many people were appreciative of this policy. In no time at all, the post had gone viral, gaining over 10,000 likes.

But like most things posted online, some people were offended. Pretty soon, the post was flooded with comments criticizing the policy. People said that the managers at KFC were being disrespectful for not offering free meals to all first responders.

The manager who had first devised the “cops eat free” policy was upset over this criticism.

He hadn’t wanted to offend anyone. Instead, he had just wanted to show his appreciation of the police, in the best way that he could think of.

But then the manager started getting calls from police departments all over the country. Police chiefs from everywhere in America were thanking him for supporting them.

With this encouragement, the manager decided to keep the policy in place.

This story went viral. More KFCs in Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia have created a similar “cops eat free” policy.

On the whole, people have been positive about these policies.

With the current divisions between people in America, controversies over things like “cops eat free” policies are bound to happen. It’s a shame that society has reached this point.

Clearly, by creating a “cops eat free” policy, the initial KFC was not saying that other first responders were not as important as cops. The store was appreciating the risk that police officers put themselves into for others. And the store was definitely not advocating for police brutality or any of the awful things that a tiny minority of cops do.

People need to heal the societal divisions that are currently affecting America. Surely there’s a better way of going about it than attacking a restaurant policy?

Complaining about a KFC showing support to police officers will not do anything to unite people.

And if people are going to unite, then it also means that people should not vilify the complainers.

This is one of the problems with the social media age. It’s so easy to demonize anyone or anything even remotely connected to an issue that you disagree with. But when people meet in person and hear each other’s perspectives, a greater sense of understanding comes through. Perhaps that’s what this situation needed?

Luckily, most people have been able to acknowledge that the manager of the KFC in this story was just trying to show his support for the police. He wasn’t trying to cause controversy.

If everyone could appreciate that fact, then perhaps there would have been no controversy?

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Source: WKYT