Woman Unleashes Racist Tirade On Asian Nail Salon Owner: 'Your Language Sounds Nasty'
Recent footage of a woman’s interaction with a nail salon owner has sparked fury across the internet.
Facebook user Robin L. Roether uploaded the clips after her friend, who was at Bali Nail Salon in Lutz, Florida, filmed an unidentified fellow customer insulting the woman doing her nails, who’s since been identified as owner Karen Vu.
In the footage, the two appear to be having a dispute over payment as the customer starts to personally attack Vu, who is Asian, for her English skills.
“If they don’t understand the language, they should go back to their own country,” the woman can be heard saying in one video, later telling Vu, “If you can’t explain something you’re charging for, then yeah, there’s a problem.”
The customer then attempts to solicit support from other people in the room, yelling, “Who all agrees with that?”
At one point, she brags about dating a “Channel 13 news adviser” in a bizarre attempt to support her comments.
She also takes jabs at Vu’s use of a foreign language. “You sound nasty. Your language sounds nasty,” she says, adding, “it actually sounds like you were born out of a fucking hermit crab ... It’s a gross language.”
The woman goes on to tell the salon owner to “learn your ABC’s, maybe one plus one” before Roether’s friend interrupts her to speak out against the racist tirade.
Throughout the entire video, Vu remains composed, calmly telling the woman to refrain from insulting her several times or sarcastically thanking the woman for her “advice.” She even briefly resumes working on the woman’s nails.
Since the videos were posted, they have drawn hundreds of thousands of views each and thousands of shares. Facebook users flooded the clips, leaving messages of support for the salon employees and condemning the customer. One viewer, Jennifer Verge, even drove 30 minutes to the establishment to give the salon a tip after seeing that the angry customer never did so.
“I just wanted to come over here to tell them they don’t deserve to be treated the way that they were from that lady, or from anyone else for that matter,” Verge said, according to ABC Action News.
Roether herself encouraged people to disseminate the videos to show that “no one deserves this kind of treatment ever.”
This story has been updated to identify salon owner Karen Vu and include information about the community’s response.
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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
