“My father is not marketing copy.”
They released something shorter.
Foster Automotive Group has placed involved personnel on administrative suspension pending an independent investigation. We have preserved video and electronic records, contacted the affected customer, and are cooperating with law enforcement regarding the physical removal. The customer’s relationship to company ownership is irrelevant to the standard we expect. No customer should be treated this way.
Theodore read it.
“Good.”
Elliot looked relieved.
“Anything you want added?”
“No.”
“Name?”
“No.”
Theodore declined interviews.
Morning shows.
Podcasts.
Documentary requests.
He answered one local reporter outside his house.
The reporter asked:
“Mr. Foster, do you feel vindicated knowing the employees discovered who your son was?”
Theodore thought.
“No.”
The reporter looked surprised.
“Why not?”
“Because if I had been nobody’s father, they still would have been wrong.”
That quote traveled farther than any corporate statement.
The independent review found the first major problem within forty-eight hours.
Derek had customer complaints.
More than Elliot knew.
Most had never reached the executive team.
Three years.
Seventeen complaints involving discourteous treatment.
Eight involved customers who described feeling profiled based on clothing, race, accent, or assumed ability to pay.
Five were from Black customers.
Two Latino.
One Middle Eastern.
None had resulted in serious discipline.
Why?
Because Derek’s store performed.
Complaints were classified as “service mismatch,” “unqualified walk-in,” or “customer expectation issue.”
Regional leadership had accepted Derek’s explanations.
Then investigators pulled sales lead data.
A pattern appeared.
Walk-in customers Derek marked “low probability” were disproportionately people of color compared with the store’s overall inquiry pool.
That did not automatically prove discrimination.
But it justified deeper review.
Then former customers started contacting the company.
Dr. Patricia Coleman was one.
Pediatric surgeon.
She had entered the Fifth Avenue showroom two years earlier wearing hospital scrubs because she had just finished a long shift.
She wanted to surprise her husband with a birthday car.
Derek asked whether she was waiting for someone.
When she said she wanted to see a vehicle, he told her appointments were required.
They were not.
A white couple entered minutes later without an appointment.
Derek served them.
Patricia left.
Bought a Porsche elsewhere that afternoon.
She never complained.
“Why?”
The investigator asked.
Patricia answered:
“Because I was tired.”
That sentence appeared in the final report.
It bothered Theodore more than Derek’s insults.
People often imagined discrimination produced dramatic confrontation.
Sometimes it simply exhausted someone until leaving felt easier.
Another customer was Jerome Watts.
Retired Army colonel.
Three deployments.
He entered wearing jeans and a polo.
Asked about a Ferrari Roma.
Waited fifteen minutes.
No one approached.
Derek later told staff Jerome was “window shopping.”
Jerome purchased elsewhere.
Then Nathan and Denise Arlington.
Both attorneys.
They said Derek asked what they did for work before showing them the car they requested.
After learning they were lawyers, his entire manner changed.
“That was the part we remembered.”
Denise said.
“Respect arrived after credentials.”
That phrase reached Theodore too.
Respect arrived after credentials.
Theodore had lived that moment many times.
Meanwhile, the internal message archive became worse.
Not every employee participated.
Several had said nothing.
A few had objected privately.
But the store group chat contained jokes about “tourists,” “credit ghosts,” “mall walkers,” and other phrases employees used for customers they assumed could not afford luxury cars.
Derek contributed regularly.
So did Brenda.
Kyle had shared jokes but also, investigators found, had once asked another manager whether dismissing customers based on appearance violated policy.
The manager told him:
“Follow Derek’s lead.”
That became another problem.
Culture.
Theodore had been right.
This was not one manager having one bad afternoon.
Derek had normalized judgment.
Employees learned that the safest way to survive was to mirror him.
Some enjoyed it.
Some hated it.
Most simply adapted.