Woman Flabbergasted After Reaction To Complaint About Driver

Follow CBSDFW.COM: Facebook | Twitter

FORT WORTH (CBS11) - Whitney Hughes was expecting an apology when she wrote a Fort Worth company about an employee she saw driving recklessly.

"I'd almost been hit twice. I was a little agitated," she said. "This guy needs to have his privileges with a company vehicle revoked immediately," she emailed Fort Worth Fire Extinguisher Co.

The company replied. "I'm sure you are (a) perfect driver. Please send us your full name whereas we will be sure we never do business with you."

"A response that blew… blew me out of the water… I had no breath in my lungs," Hughes said.

"When you think you've got a kook, you treat it like a kook," said the company's owner, Tommy Spurrier.

Over several e-mails he called Hughes "a nut" and told her she had "way to much time on her hands."

"I mean you're really usually not nice when someone starts calling and picking on a lifelong friend," he

Spurrier said, he's known the driver involved for 54 years, worked with him for 7, and never heard a complaint.

After Hughes posted their e-mail exchange on social media, though, he's been hearing plenty. "The reaction was insane," said Hughes.

Spurrier says he asked everyone who wrote in during the workday to share the names of their companies… "…so we could let their boss and the owners of their company know how they were productively spending their time for their company," he said.

He admits he could have – and maybe should have held his tongue, but he generally speaks his mind.

"Political correctness has run way amok!" he said. "Political correctness is I can't call you what you are because it's the wrong thing to say."
Hughes says the best response would have the easiest.

"All it took from the business owner was an apology," she said.

Spurrier said, no one ever did tell him where they worked, so he never did file any of his own complaints.

He claims his employee only cut Hughes off after she refused to let him in her lane. He says, she should have been courteous.

She says, the driver should have used a blinker.

(©2015 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)