Hyundai worker in NC takes joyride, uses homophobic term in viral video
A local car dealership employee was fired after being accused of going on a joyride in a customer’s vehicle and using derogatory language in an incident captured on video.
In the footage posted earlier this week on TikTok, a speedometer on the dashcam shows the car traveling at speeds up to 60 miles per hour on what appears to be Crownpoint Executive Drive near Keffer Hyundai in Matthews.
Most dashcams sold today have built-in GPS receivers that can record the speed and location of a vehicle, according to VehiclePeek, a company that specializes in automotive aftermarket parts and services.
The employee is heard laughing while testing the car’s acceleration and saying “This car’s gay as f---, man.” He and another employee are heard laughing and making fun of the car’s paint job, which apparently includes a flower design on the outside.
The employee and another also in the car with him then speculates the customer is gay because he visited the dealership with a friend. “He’s a big ‘ole flaming-ass redneck is what he is. He’s a hillbilly. He’s got an inch and a half of grass on his car. He’s got flowers on his car.”
At the end of the car ride, the male employee drives close to a man near an entrance to the dealership and shouts from the car: “Hey, you single?” then laughs again.
According to the unidentified customer, he was there to test drive a car and said an employee asked for his keys to check the vehicle’s interior in case he wanted to trade it in.
“They waited for me to leave the lot and then drove the car without my knowledge,” the customer said in the comments of the video.
Yelp has temporarily suspended review abilities in light of the deluge of negative comments were left about the dealership.
“This business recently received increased public attention, which often means people come to this page to post their views on the news rather than actual consumer experiences with the business,” Keffer Hyundai’s Yelp page says. “We’ve temporarily disabled the posting of content to this page as we work to investigate the content you see here reflects actual consumer experiences rather than the recent events.”
The video, also posted to Reddit, received several comments about the situation.
“Well this just reinforces the notion that car salespeople are scumbag parasites,” one commenter said.
“Hope they get fired,” another wrote. “This is absolutely unacceptable.”
In a now-deleted Facebook post, the dealership said the unnamed employee who drove the vehicle was fired shortly after the incident.
“We are aware and have taken actions to terminate this team member,” the dealership’s statement said. “We reject intolerance, discrimination, bigotry, and hatred in all forms and we are very sorry that someone who was a part of our team made these comments. There is no place in our culture or our company for this kind of mean-spirited belief system for this behavior.”
Keffer Hyundai declined to further comment on the incident when contacted by The Charlotte Observer. A reporter was advised to direct all inquiries to their legal representatives, but the dealership representative would not provide a lawyer’s name or contact information.
This story was originally published January 13, 2023 at 12:17 PM.
