By Eric Levenson @ejleven
Boston.com Staff | 01.14.15 | 4:44 PM
A video of car dealership employees in Westport getting into a heated argument with a local pizza delivery man over $7 has led to Internet anger and a personal apology.
The video, posted on Liveleak, begins with a delivery man returning $7 in cash to the dealership that he had thought was a tip. By the end of the video, one dealership worker threatens to “put my foot in your ass” and another says he will call the delivery man’s manager and get him fired.
(Warning: The video contains some NSFW language.)
The delivery man in the video is an employee at Palace Pizza named Jarrid Tansey, according to two employees there. Lianette Hernandez, a cook and cashier, and Adam Willoughby, a manager, confirmed the video came from an interaction at the nearby dealership F&R Auto Sales on Saturday.
The total bill for the pizza and drinks was just over $42, Hernandez said, and dealership workers gave Tansey $50 in two twenties and two fives. In the video, Tansey says he confirmed that they wanted to give the whole $50, and then left with what he assumed was a $7-and-change tip.
However, the dealership then called the pizza place back and forced him to return the $7-and-change, and he was left without a tip, leading to the heated conversation on video.
“It just doesn’t make sense why you’d hand me a bill that you were just gonna have me drive back here to give you back anyway,” Tansey says in the video. “I’m not mad, I just had to waste my resources coming back here.”
But the office-workers are adamant about their position in the video.
“So listen: The manager apologized once for you. Do you want him to apologize again for you?” the worker in blue says.
“Out the door before I put my foot in your ass,” a female office-worker in green says.
“Get the f---ing owner and the manager on the phone, I want that mother-f---er done,” another man in the office says after Tansey leaves. “I want him fired.”
The video was originally posted on YouTube, but it has since been made private. However, a Google index of the video shows the title as originally being “irate pizza driver.” The angle of the video suggests it comes from a stationary security camera inside the dealership’s office.
Willoughby, who was working that night, said he got a call from F&R Auto Sales saying that Tansey had “verbally berated” them. He said they took the call seriously at first and asked Tansey about the interaction. After Tansey explained what had happened, managers decided not to discipline the driver.
“This isn’t the first time we have had problems with F&R Auto,” Willoughby said.
“All the time, there’s always a problem, always an issue,” Hernandez said. “We’ve been going back and forth with them for a long time.”
Palace Pizza has been getting supportive calls all day from across the country, and several people have pledged to raise or donate money for Tansey.
In addition, the owner of the dealership and his son came by to apologize to Palace Pizza in person on Wednesday.
“I was the manager on that night, and today they came and spoke to me, profusely apologized,” Willoughby said. “We both want to make things right between us. We don’t want any bad blood.”
Commenters who claim to have seen the YouTube video before it was made private identify the dealership as F & R Auto Sales in Westport. Review pages of that dealership on
Yelp and
Google were being flooded with negative ratings on Wednesday. In addition, the dealership’s website struggled to load.
Calls to the dealership through their main phone line did not go through. Messages left through the site’s Google Connect link, Facebook account, listed email, and on Twitter were not immediately returned.
