KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A Facebook Live video quickly surfaced Friday, showing an irate customer arguing with a Metro PCS employee on 59th and Prospect Avenue in KCMO.
The employee was equally irate as they both began screaming racial slurs at each other.
“You can’t just pull guns out on customers,” Nakisha Harden said in her Facebook Live, which she told FOX4 she started after he pulled the gun out.
As you watch the argument go from bad to worse, you can hear the employee scream “Who’s going to stop me?” and tell Harden that pulling a gun out is what he’s supposed to do in these situations.
Harden told FOX4 that she purchased a phone from the store two days prior. When she got home, she learned that the phone did not work.
“I took it back up there for him to fix it, and he was very polite and helpful,” she said.
However, Harden said the phones issues persisted the next day, so she showed up to the store again.
“He acted like he didn’t know who I was when I went back up there, which irritated me,” she admitted. “He ended up giving me the money back for my phone, but I still had questions about how this would affect my plan.”
Harden told FOX4 that’s when the argument started.
“He didn’t like the way I was talking, and I didn’t like the way he was talking. But you don’t pull guns out on people for that,” she said. “Once he wanted us to leave, he pulled that gun out like that’s something he does all the time.”
That’s when Harden said she started her Facebook Live video. In the video the Metro PCS employee is repeatedly yelling for Harden to give a phone back.
“I still had questions about the plan, but once he pulled that gun out, I got so mad I didn’t care,” she said. “If I was trying to steal the phone, I wouldn’t have stuck around for the police.”
The police were called to the store and Harden made a report. Shortly after, the Metro PCS store commented on Harden’s Facebook Live video, apologizing for their employee’s actions and confirming that he had been fired.
“At first I felt like it was movement in the right direction, but I think more needs to be done,” Harden said. “You can’t have these businesses in these urban areas if they don’t want to deal with us. We’re people just like everyone else. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
FOX4 did research on the store location and found that the address on 59th and Prospect has had three owners over the last 4 years and each owner has had issues.
In 2015 a boy was shot in the leg for stealing cookies at that same store location. This is something that Harden told FOX4 she remembers well.
“It was a convenience store back then,” she explained. “These are the types of things we have to deal with in our own neighborhoods.”
FOX4 reached out to the current owner of the Metro PCS store via email and phone and has not heard back, though we did speak with other Metro PCS locations that said they have higher standards for customer service.
