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•💬 What: A Mills employee allegedly used a homophobic slur, sparking outrage and thousands of calls to the company
•⏳ When: Incident surfaced today; calls flooded in within five hours of the viral video
•📍 Where: Mills Heating and Air, which serves Santa Rosa, Okaloosa, Walton, and Bay counties in Florida
•❓ Why: The viral video accused the employee of discrimination, leading to public demands for accountability
Mills Heating and Air announced on Friday that, after conducting an investigation into an employee accused of using a racial slur against a popular TikTok influencer and allegedly encouraging her to commit suicide, they have fired the employee at the center of the investigation.
In a statement on social media, owner of Mills Heating and Air Chris White said, “While it is not our usual policy to make personnel actions public, we feel it is necessary in this instance to ensure transparency and uphold the trust of our employees, customers and community. Our priority remains the safety and well-being of our 50+ hardworking and dedicated employees as well as the customers we serve.
There have been questions regarding whether the employee in question was allowed to continue working and entering customers’ homes after we became aware of the situation. While we did not make this information public at the time, we want to assure everyone that we took immediate action by suspending the employee while conducting a thorough investigation.
At Mills Heating and Air, we are committed to integrity, inclusivity, and ethical behavior in the workplace and beyond. We have zero tolerance for conduct that promotes hate or discrimination in any form.
Following our investigation, we have made the decision to terminate the employee effective immediately, reaffirming our commitment to these principles.
We sincerely apologize to the businesses, organizations and community members affected by this incident. We recognize the impact this has had, and we want to assure our partners and customers that we remain the same company that we have always been – guided by strong values and dedicated to building a better community together.
Thank you for your continued trust and support.”
The avalanche of messages started while Mills Heating and Air owner Chris White was at lunch.
“We’ve sort of been the victim of systematic outrage,” White said over the phone, “We’ve had phone calls, emails, all of our social media being bombarded with comments, mostly uninformed comments. But, you know, people have seen one side of the story and decided we were guilty of something.”
By the time he got back from lunch- the seven customer service reps and the marketing person at Mills were in full crisis mode. They estimate they’ve received somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000 calls in the five hours that have passed since one of their employees allegedly called a TikTok influencer a homosexual slur. White says the communication has ranged from a demand to fire the employee to death threats against the employees answering the phone or comments.
“It makes you feel paralyzed to some degree because now you are dealing with something that has nothing to do with your day-to-day operations. I’m sure most people have felt a certain amount of dread answering the phones.”
The people who’ve commented, emailed, called, and otherwise communicated with Mills demanded that the HVAC company fire the employee immediately.
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According to this video by TikTok user @campcallout, a Mills Heating and Air employee contacted @campcallout and told her to kill herself because of her sexual orientation. The video has been seen 181,700 times as of 5:30 this evening.
We asked White directly whether or not he would fire the employee. He told us he wouldn’t make an official comment on whether or not he’d fire them. “That is something that needs to be handled personally with the employee,” White said, “In person, face-to-face. I’m not able to do that today due to just normal business reasons, We’ll be talking first thing in the morning,” White said, “I would really hope people could understand, take a pause and be more patient with something like this. Allow people involved to do the right thing before you just automatically assume that they’re not doing the right thing.”
Mills Heating and Air serves the Santa Rosa, Okaloosa, Walton and Bay County areas.
We’ve reached out to both @campcallout about the situation. We are waiting on a response from @campcallout. We’ll update the story as we are able.
Dr. Misti Schneidewind is a parent of an LGBT child who graduated from Niceville High School. We reached out to her because of her connections to the local LGBT community and her comments after an incident last year at which the LGBT community was compared to the Ku Klux Klan at a Niceville City Council meeting. She said that her child was bullied in the school district due to her sexual orientation and feels that more should be done in the school district to end discriminatory behavior against sexual minorities in Northwest Florida. “So somebody local decided to troll an online account and they got called out and now they are having to face the consequences of their actions. Seems fair to me,” she wrote to us in an email.
