A Build-A-Bear employee allegedly refused to print Charlie Kirk’s name on a teenager’s stuffed animal birth certificate, turning a mall outing into a political confrontation.

Evi McCormick, 16, visited the Build-A-Bear Workshop at Southcenter Mall in Tukwila, Washington, on Friday with friends, King5 News reported. The Southwest Washington teen wanted to name her bear after Kirk, the Turning Point USA founder who was assassinated last month.

“I was just mesmerized and captivated that he could speak with such elegance,” McCormick said, the outlet reported. “He was a role model.”

The store employee reportedly rejected McCormick’s request when she tried to complete the birth certificate that comes with every Build-A-Bear purchase.

“She just didn’t agree with it. She didn’t support it and she told me, ‘We’re not doing this,’ folded it up in a force and threw it away,” McCormick said.

The teen gave her payment card to her friend Kailie Lang and left the register. “It definitely made us all very uncomfortable,” Lang said.

Amber McCormick, the teen’s mother, spent 45 minutes on the phone with Build-A-Bear’s corporate office. The company first offered a $20 gift card, then called back days later with an apology, the mother said.

Build-A-Bear acknowledged the incident shouldn’t have happened and promised to retrain staff in Seattle and nationwide to keep politics out of the workplace.

“She said that their goal is to try to prevent this sort of situation from happening to anybody else,” Amber McCormick said.

The Tukwila store displays a policy asking customers not to use “indecent or distasteful names for furry friends.” “It wasn’t political until she made it that way,” Evi McCormick said.

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