Not every crisis is a major facility fire or data breach. Companies must watch for the smaller crises, too. Let’s say, for example, a salesman in your car dealership refuses to sell a vehicle to a customer unless she agrees to a date with him — and video of the discussion goes viral. That’s what happened to Metro Honda in Montclair, California.

As featured on the YouTube channel The Reckoning on Jan. 29, a woman identified only as TikTok creator “rockerfoo13” uploaded a video of her interaction with the salesman at the dealership in Montclair, 35 miles east of downtown Los Angeles.

“@Honda is this how you sell your cars to your customers?” she asked in the Jan. 21 post. The video, which has more than 10 million views, features the salesman saying to the customer that if she buys the car, she has to take him out on a date. At first, she tries to humor him (“I don’t think the date is included”), but he persists. There’s a lot of back and forth that gets more and more tense.

The customer’s sister is also there and is more adamant about shutting down the salesman. “You’ve been at this for like the past hour,” she says. “At this point, it’s not funny anymore.” “It’s a joke,” he says. “Relax.” He repeats several times that it’s a joke.

Ha-ha.

‘Internet Creep’

At one point, according to rockerfoo13’s account, the salesman said he was raising the car price by $10,000 because she “wouldn’t go out with him.” In other words, the situation got very creepy. As The Reckoning host says, if he had done the date routine once “he probably could have gotten away with this without becoming a viral internet creep.” But he persisted.

On Jan. 23, the sister posted the same video on her Instagram and Threads, revealing that, not surprisingly, they “left without a car.” The Threads post was significant because the corporate Honda account replied to it. It said it had reached out to the independently owned dealership, and the employee was suspended while that business investigates. Honda also asked the dealership to communicate with the customer (which it apparently never has).

“Thank you for bringing this to our attention,” Honda wrote. “Sexual harassment and similar behaviors are contrary to our values and our business practices.”

As is typical in a situation like this, a lot of people called the dealership and complained about the salesman’s behavior. The dealership had to respond. It did so with a pop-up statement at its website (seen as recently as Feb. 2 but not thereafter).

‘Unprofessional Behavior’

“It was brought to our attention that an employee of Metro Honda recently exhibited unprofessional behavior towards a customer that does not align with our standards of conduct,” it wrote. “We do not condone or tolerate the behavior exhibited by the employee. The employee no longer works for Metro Motors.”

So, there you have it. A smallish crisis (enlarged by social media) handled in a manner we would grade B-minus. Corporate responded but deflected blame onto the dealership. The dealership responded but only after the public pressure got too great. It fired the person in question but, according to the customer, never reached out to her.

The true lesson — other than train your workers! — is to be prepared for even smaller, more-local crises.

Image Credit: Honda

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