A white Amazon manager who unleashed an angry tirade on a Black driver because he didn’t like the way he’d parked the delivery vehicle has been fired.
When Amazon delivery man Nikolas Mayrant dropped off a package at Brad Boynton’s Cornelius, North Carolina, home, he was subjected to verbal abuse while trying to deliver on the Boynton’s block and to his home.
The encounter was captured by a Ring camera on Sept. 6. Video was posted to Reddit on Sept. 7 by a user who said Mayrant was her boyfriend and shows a man she identified as Boynton yelling at Mayrant while apparently speaking on the phone with another Amazon manager to complain about the delivery.
Mayrant’s sister Heather Rose and Amazon’s statements about the details surrounding the tirade and its aftermath conflict with one another.
Rose said Mayrant was fired after complaining about Boynton’s conduct and claims the manager used the N-word during the incident.
But according to Amazon, Mayrant was not fired. The company also confirmed that Boynton’s employment had been terminated but said the manager didn’t use the N-word while speaking to Mayrant and was instead talking on the phone with “someone by the name of Nader.”
On Instagram, Rose shared a short video of the encounter and wrote, “I know racism is still alive, mean I see it all the time on the internet & it hurts me then, but it’s a little more heart breaking & shocking to see when it’s my blood brother.”
The altercation began after Boynton disliked the way Mayrant parked the delivery vehicle.
“I told you seven times, walk the f–k away,” Boynton, who was standing in the doorway of a home told Mayrant, who was returning to a delivery vehicle.
“Dude, on the grass too? Do you not know any of the f–king policies?” Boynton continued.
“I was walking on grass just like everyone walks on the the f–king grass,” Mayrant said as he approached the vehicle. At that time, Boynton twice made the comment Amazon says is the word “Nader.”
“My brother was FIRED from his job for asking the guy why the pics & walking on his grass after he called him a n—er,” she wrote.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump also said on Twitter that Mayrant had been fired but Amazon disputed the claim.
The incident began to come to public attention with a Sept. 6 Reddit post apparently by Mayrant himself in the AmazonDSPDrivers subreddit under the account VenusInDocMartens, which seems to be his girlfriend’s account.
Mayrant explains that the altercation began over Boynton being upset about the way the delivery vehicle was temporarily parked:
“Today while driving I had to park in a fashion that took up most of a street. There was no parallel parking and parking on the other side of the street would have still made passing through impossible.
In comes a customer yelling at me about how I am parked. I run to deliver the last package of the stop so I can move the truck for him.
He is, of course, my next stop. I walk up to deliver two packages and he slams the door in my face. I put the packages down. Realize i forgot a package in the truck. Go back to his doorstep. This time he comes out and starts cursing me out. To be honest, I may have also cursed back in the heat of the moment.
I leave and tell dispatch who tells me to call driver assistance. Explain issue and get the go ahead to keep delivering.
Fast forward, I’m back at the station and when i hand in my bag, I am told I am suspended after “hearing further details” Manager let’s me know it’s because the customer is a “close friend of the big guy.”
A GoFundMe for Mayrant appears to have been deleted. After Rose shared Boynton’s LinkedIn and Facebook accounts, they were removed. It’s not clear how the footage from a camera on Boynton’s home surfaced on social media.
Amazon told Daily Mail in a statement, “We were deeply concerned by what we observed in the video and opened an investigation into the incident. After speaking with both parties and working quickly to understand exactly what transpired, we took immediate action.
We do not condone bullying or harassing behavior of any type and as a result of our investigation, we’ve terminated the individual shown bullying our delivery partner.”
