A TikTok user went viral last week after exposing a so-called “Karen” customer mistreating employees at her Houston workplace.
In a video that received more than 110,000 views user @spectacula documents a white woman getting into an altercation with one of the Hispanic workers at a storage facility. The woman later told @spectacula, who was filming the situation, that she was an “evil, sick person.”
The TikToker provided more context in later videos.
“Me, the other employee, and the store manager… were minding our own business,” she said. According to @spectacula, the woman in question was moving items from her storage unit and had hired workers to assist her in the process. The TikToker later said that the workers were undocumented.
“She kept screaming and hollering at them to move faster,” @spectacula recalled.
From there, the situation got increasingly aggressive. “We could hear them from our office,” @spectacula said. “The way she was treating them was just, like, not OK.”
Things quickly got physical. “This lady was just screaming at the guy. She was like, ‘Man! Come on! You can’t do anything right!’ She said, ‘Move! Move faster!’ And she pushed this guy in the green shirt.”
Later, the woman allegedly moved her rented truck and struck a pole on the property, causing damage to both the truck and the pole. All of these events led to the altercation caught on video by @spectacula.
In the original video, other employees attempt to calm the woman down after the alleged incident, and she responds with anger.
“I need you to not go off on my employees,” one of the workers said. “This man has been working with me for 20 years.”
In response, the woman appeared to claim that the workers had been mistreating her. “They’re cheating me,” she said.
In her recollection of the incident, @spectacula said that she approached the workers hired by the woman and told them that they did not deserve the treatment on display in the video.
“I just want you to know that that was not OK, and you have rights,” she said she told the workers.
To the woman in question, her words were a little more severe. “You’re going to have to pay the price for this,” she recalled telling the woman. “If not now, then later on.”
Today, @spectacula said that the woman in the video is “banned from that community storage,” and that the video should serve as a message to all workers who have to deal with difficult clients.
“I want people to know that there are people like Karen who are very disrespectful to Hispanic Latinos. But we all have a voice. It doesn’t matter if you’re Asian, African American, Hispanic, Indian … from a different ethnicity, it does not matter,” she starts. “If you are here in the United States … this is your home now. You have to treat everyone with respect, and I don’t think people like Karen respect that.”
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