Nationwide — Two employees at a North Carolina auto shop have left their jobs after a viral video showed them mocking Juneteenth, sparking public outrage, online backlash, and a wave of bad reviews that hurt the business. The incident began when a customer asked why banks were closed that day. An employee at Synergy Auto Care in Wilson, North Carolina, responded, “Juneteenth, a new holiday they started a few years ago.” Another customer replied sarcastically, “Okey dokey,” while a second employee laughed and added, “I know, right.”
A Black woman inside the shop overheard the conversation. She asked for her truck to be returned. “Give me my ******* truck. Pull my truck around. Please. Give me, give me my truck,” she said. Her reaction quickly went viral online and was widely praised.
Instead of issuing an apology, the shop posted about the exchange on Facebook, calling it a “WOW moment.” The woman warned she would speak publicly about what she saw as a racist encounter. In response, an employee threatened to release surveillance footage.
Shop owner Josh Dougherty said the flood of negative reviews and hate forced him to take down the post and shut the store’s social media page. He also revealed that the employees involved weren’t fired, but left on their own after receiving death threats.
Dougherty claimed one of the employees didn’t fully understand the meaning of Juneteenth. “She was thinking the holiday had a whole other meaning,” Dougherty said, according to WRAL. “She was believing it had to something with school letting out, teenagers, where the ‘teenth’ came from, and she was believing it didn’t need to be a day, a serious day per se.”
Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021 to mark the day in 1865 when Union soldiers arrived in Texas to announce that enslaved Black Americans were free. Dougherty said he’s educating his staff now about the holiday’s history. He added that the employee involved now regrets the incident and is trying to learn from it.
As backlash grew, the store’s Google rating dropped to 3.4 stars. Customers, both new and old, slammed the business in reviews and comments. Some reviews questioned how employees could be so unaware of such an important holiday.
The business is now trying to repair its image amid heavy criticism and lost trust.