Wayfair slammed by customers for 'displaying white supremacy book in coffee table ad'

vt-author-image

By Nika Shakhnazarova

Article saved!Article saved!

Wayfair customers were left shell-shocked after seeing a coffee table listed on the website decorated with a book that appears to read "White Supremacy" down its spine.

An eagle-eyed Twitter user spotted the huge blunder, before posting screenshots from the retail website, which shows a wood-topped rectangular coffee table.

"Shopping for a coffee table and what Wayfair," reads the Twitter caption.

Another then picked up on the obvious error, writing: "The not-so-subliminal messaging of coffee table books on Wayfair is… a choice. Why yes, it does appear to say 'white supremacy' backwards."

It wasn't long before others picked up on the outrageous mishap, as the initial tweet quickly racked up over 75,000 likes.

In the second photo on Wayfair's website, the cover of the book is visible, and it appears to match that of the 2011 book State of White Supremacy: Racism, Governance, and the United States.

Not long after shoppers discovered the error, the table with the offending decor was no longer listed on Wayfair’s website, reports Daily Mail.

Clicking the original link to the item redirects to the search results for "coffee table."

A spokesperson for Wayfair has since told Daily Mail that this indeed happened and seemed to suggest the issue was with the supplier.

"Like other retailers of this product, as soon as we became aware of the issue, we took immediate action to remove the product image from the site and are investigating the matter with the supplier," the spokesperson said in a statement.

Naturally, the blunder triggered waves of outraged responses from shoppers, who slammed the retailer for letting this happen.

One social media user tweeted out that he had been in contact with the company's customer service chat line and they had tried to rectify the error.

"Hello we apologize for that item on the table that you saw and we have reported this to our management teams that photo is in the process of being taken down," the representative allegedly said. "Our management team will handle the issue from here."

"Time to start firing some of your designers," wrote one Twitter user.

Another added: "I absolutely thought this wasn’t real," said another, until she clicked the link to the item page. "@Wayfair y’all wanna explain this one?"

The Wayfair rep also said they are "investigating the matter with the supplier".

Featured image credit: M4OS Photos / Alamy