At first it sounded like an April Fool’s Day news story, or at worst, a politically motivated smear campaign against the outspoken Parliament president Zoi Konstantopoulou.
As Tuesday morning continued into the afternoon, however, it emerged that Konstantopoulou was actually involved in “verbal incident” with a gas station attendant in Aidipsos (Edipsos), a coastal town in northern Evia island.

According to reports, which include a statement by the gas station owner, Zoi became enraged on Easter Sunday when the employee declined to change a flat tire on the Parliament president’s personal vehicle – saying he was the lone employee at the business and that it didn’t have the proper equipment. She also returned a day later again demanding the tire be changed, with another round of shouting and threats heard.

The incident was confirmed by protothema.gr on Tuesday, after speaking with the petrol station’s owner.

“I was not present when it (incident) occurred. I was told about it by my employees. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” he said, while charging that Konstantopoulou demanded the name of the employee and threatened to have him fired!

The Greek Parliament president was also accused of threatening two women customers at the station and actually taking away their mobile phones and deleting the video they took of the incident.

One woman, Valia Panagiotidou, related the entire experience in a post on her Facebook page.

The entire fracas trended on Twitter earlier on Tuesday with the hashtag #lastixo_zoitsas , meaning “lil’ Zoi’s tire”