A car salesman’s honest opinion about a vehicle on TikTok has reportedly cost him his job. The incident shows how what employees post online can follow them into the workplace, even when shared on personal accounts during their own time.
TikToker Ali, who goes by the username @keys.approvals, posted a video that quickly went viral with 10.8 million views. In the clip, he shared his thoughts about one car that customers always refuse to buy, no matter how badly they need a vehicle. According to Ali, the car is rejected by all types of customers, from young women to older men.
“Something about this car is just so ugly to every single genre of audience,” Ali said in the TikTok video. While he did not say the car’s name throughout most of the clip, he showed the Nissan Leaf at the end. The video got millions of views, but it may have also caught his employer’s attention.
In a follow-up video, Ali said he believes the viral TikTok led to him losing his job at the dealership where he had worked during his late teens and early twenties. One commenter pointed out the strange situation, writing, “So your video, at their dealership, got 2.3 million views, and they punished you for it. It’s the end times for sure.”
What happened when Ali was called into the office
Ali said he was called into the office on October 2, where his manager told him straight up that he was being let go because of performance issues. When Ali asked about this reason, the manager’s answer was unclear, saying only that there were other things involved too. Even after asking for more details, Ali says he never got a real explanation for why he was fired. His TikTok profile bio now says that his job fired him for sharing honest thoughts about a vehicle on the lot.
The situation brings up important questions about employee rights and social media use. In most states with at-will employment laws, employers can fire workers for almost any reason that is not illegal, including social media posts they think could hurt the company’s reputation or cause problems at work. The First Amendment protects people from the government but does not stop private employers from taking action against employees for their online posts.
Similar cases have happened where employees lost their jobs over viral TikTok videos, showing a growing trend of work problems coming from social media activity. Employers don’t have to give detailed reasons for firing someone in at-will employment states, making it hard to prove whether a specific social media post was the real reason for getting fired.
Even with this setback, Ali has kept a positive outlook about moving forward. He said that people can either be upset and give up, or they can say thank God and move on to find the next step. Many commenters on his videos have been supportive, with some saying he should work for a competing dealership or that companies will soon pay social media managers to create the kind of real content he made naturally.
Published: Oct 9, 2025 10:06 am