North Carolina’s biggest newspaper has weighed-in on the saga involving the state’s Republican governor, a fired grocery store cook and now a Democratic mayor.

The verdict: Everybody ended up looking kind of bad.

An editorial published Wednesday by the Charlotte Observer acknowledged that Drew Swope “acted inappropriately” when he made a snarky remark to Gov. Pat McCrory (R) at Reid’s Fine Foods in Charlotte. The confrontation cost Swope his job at the high-end grocery store and he accepted the consequences.

After the firing drew some publicity, Charlotte Mayor Pat Cannon stepped in and offered to help Swope find a job — an action that the Observer panned as “a blatant and useless political ploy.”

“He did not offer to individually help the tens of thousands of other unemployed Charlotteans find a job,” the editorial board wrote.

But the harshest judgment, by far, was reserved for McCrory.

The editorial board wrote that the incident “reinforced his image as thin-skinned” and that a savvier politician would have played it differently.