A ceramics studio chain store in Santa Monica is facing backlash from the community after video surfaced of their employees disposing dirty water into a storm drain.
Color Me Mine Santa Monica, a franchise of the paint-your-own-pottery chain Color Me Mine, is located on Main Street in Santa Monica.
The video, which was posted, then deleted from Reddit, depicted an employee dumping what appeared to be green paint-tinted water or glaze down a storm drain with a “No Dumping” stamp above it while their coworker stood by.
In a video posted to Instagram by the user @psyskoh, one of the employees can be heard saying “Who cares? It’ll rain.”
Although the exact date that the video was taken was not immediately known, the Reddit post was published last Tuesday and the Instagram post on Thursday.
In a statement posted to Facebook, Color Me Mine Santa Monica apologized to the Santa Monica community as well as “customers new and old.”
“We at Color Me Mine want to give our deepest apologies and take accountability for our employees’ actions,” the statement read in part. “These actions were not enforced, condoned nor recommended by management nor ownership.”
The ceramics studio said that they are “ashamed that such a huge mistake…caused by one of [their] own” occurred just feet from their store and expressed that what the employee did was not only not standard procedure, but this was also the first time an incident like this happened in the 15 years they have been at that location.
“Please recognize that these actions are wrong and are being handled, and most definitely are not representative of the entirety of our store,” the statement continued. “We are working with the city to pay for fines and the cleanup process as well.”
Color Me Mine Santa Monica did note that the glaze in the video is non-toxic, water based and soluble.
According to the store’s statement, the employees in the video have been reprimanded and the entire staff has undergone training on how to properly dispose of glaze in the future.
Reports from the Santa Monica Daily Press indicate that Color Me Mine employees have received death threats and now fear for their personal safety due to the “lapse in judgement.”