BP Boycotts Hurt the Little Guy

BP could be the most hated company in America right now, and popular anger is taking the form of boycotts against its gas stations all over the country. But BP stations are individually owned, so protests really just hurt the small-business owners who had the bad luck to sign up with BP, writes Michele Catalano for True/Slant. “I sometimes go for as long as an hour without a single customer,” an employee of one RI station says. "People go by, yelling ‘BP sucks,’ ‘Don’t buy BP.’"

Those looking to let off some steam toward BP have to ask themselves if they're "willing to sacrifice some hard working citizens to make a point about their disgust," Catalano writes. "A protest is going to hurt the workers there; the cashier, the stock boy, the local baker who sells snack cakes to the store, the guy who mops the floors at night—the wrong people are going to feel the brunt force of it." (More Gulf oil spill stories.)