A Black Kansas man is opening up about a startling message he received in July after taking his truck in for an oil change.
Wichita resident Larry Martin didn’t even notice the racial epithet on a service reminder sticker placed in his front window.
It wasn’t until he received a phone call from an employee at Rusty Eck Ford that he saw the n-word plain as day. The pre-printed sticker read: “Thank you, come again! n-word.”
Martin said he felt “humiliated” knowing he had been driving with that sticker in his window. “It carries a lot of weight, and every time I get in my truck, this is what I’m thinking. It doesn’t go away. I feel belittled,” he told local station KAKE News. “And I just want to know, why?”
The damage control call from Rusty Eck Ford raised even more questions.
In a screenshot, Larry’s daughter, Kelsey Martin, shared on Facebook, the dealership told him it had fired the employee but suggested other customers had also been affected.
The message read in part: “We’re trying to take corrective action to replace the oil change stickers, while also reassuring our customers that this unfortunate and careless act of one individual does not reflect nor represent any of our company’s values or beliefs.”
The person asked him to check the oil change window sticker for “anything that looks off.”
Kelsey turned to social media and local news stations, believing it wasn’t “just a careless mistake,” as the dealership implied.
“How does a business allow its official printing systems and service department to be used to print and distribute hate speech to paying customers?” she asked in a September 11 Facebook post.
After the story broke, a KAKE News reporter said she left multiple messages with Rusty Eck Ford before they issued a public statement.
The company condemned the former employee’s actions, saying it “does not tolerate racial, hateful, discriminatory, or otherwise inappropriate conduct in the workplace.”
But Martin and Kelsey say it’s not enough. Kelsey told the outlet an apology “doesn’t suffice for the embarrassment that my father has experienced.”
It’s unclear how many Black customers received the stickers or how long the behavior continued.