A Black North Carolina woman waiting to have her truck serviced decided to spend her money elsewhere after two employees and another customer appeared to mock Juneteenth.
The woman, the only Black person in Synergy Auto Care in Wilson, North Carolina, at the time, told an employee to, “Give me my f***ing truck! Pull my truck around, please. Pull my truck around and give me my truck.”
“I don’t want nothing done from here,” she continued. “Please go get my truck, thank you.”
She then promptly turned and left the store.
The woman was triggered by a conversation between a customer and an employee. The customer had asked why banks were closed on Thursday.
The employee responded, “Juneteenth, a new holiday they started a few years ago.”
The customer replied, with a sarcastic tone, “Okey dokey.”
Another Synergy employee, standing at the corner, joined in laughing, “I know, right.”
After the Black woman left, one of the employees admitted he didn’t know what Juneteenth was. “Something about reparations or something,” he said.
Juneteenth, which became a federal holiday in 2021, commemorates the day Union Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, and announced that enslaved people in Texas were free, enforcing the Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863, though it only applied to Confederate states.
Slavery wasn’t formally and fully abolished across the United States until the 13th Amendment was ratified on Dec. 6, 1865.
It’s a history lesson unknown by many white people, including the ones working at Synergy. They could also use some pointers on customer service, it seems.
Though the unidentified Black woman was clearly offended, no one from the store apologized. Instead, they went after her on Facebook, calling it today’s “WOW moment.” One of the employees repeated the story accurately but felt no offense should’ve been taken.
The employee said he followed the woman outside and asked her what happened.
“She told me she was going live with this and that we were racist,” he said in the Facebook posting. “She told me that we all laughed at her and we’re chuckling and mocking the holiday and that I didn’t know how that made her feel because she was Black. She said I’m still going live with this.”
The store employee told her if she did the store would post its footage, “so we’re not unfairly judged off one side of an event.”
It backfired. Badly.
”They knew what they were doing by bringing up Juneteenth,” wrote one woman, one of more than 12,000 people to comment on the video on TikTok, where it was shared. “Most were negative towards the store employees. She was the only Black customer in there and they wanted to antagonize her. I’m glad sista stood on business! These cowards have become emboldened!”
Another commenter claimed that Juneteenth has been celebrated in the Black community for years.
“White people not knowing what it is doesn’t make it an invalid holiday,” she wrote. “If they don’t know what it is, look it up. They’re so willfully ignorant.”
“I bet they know what Juneteenth is NOW!!!” added another commenter.
