Video of Starbucks employee in UK branch

[FisherthemsFriend]

https://twitter.com/RupertMyers/status/1655477645184835586

It’s not clear what the customer said, it’s presumed she misgenders the employee as he calls her transphobic. He calls her Karen and then either grabs the phone or the person who’s filming.

Asking someone to use the opposite sex pronouns for someone whose actual sex is obvious is like trying to say the colours and not read the words on the graphic below.

Sometimes it’s manageable for a short period, or perhaps a person will try really hard for a loved one, but for lots of people it’s really bloody difficult and if you throw anything else into the mix (eg cognitive difficulties, neurodiversities, memory issues, aging, dementia, even just tiredness) it becomes an impossible ask.

I worked a great many years in retail and faced dreadful people. When a man called me a cunt and threw something at me I just asked him to leave.

I have listened a few times and I have not found that. But ok. I am happy to be wrong

I'm not sure that the customer would have had a clue that the barista was trans-identifying, @EveryWitchWaybutLoose (great username btw). The only clue is his long hair, which is back in a ponytail, so may not have been visible to her and - even if it were - obviously plenty of non-trans identifying men have long hair.

She looks to be a similar age to me and, if she is anything like most people our age, she would not have been able to read his name badge without reading glasses on.

So, from her point of view, she refers to a man who is presenting as a man, as a man, then gets abuse screamed at her. She did really well to hold her ground.

@Helleofabore
00:09
"You're being transphobic Karen"

Have Starbucks not commented yet?

Well said

Are you Clint Eastwood?
Go on punk. Make my day

Narcissistic rage in full view.

The employee looks male (they certainly act like one).

Not a good look for Starbucks, but frankly given their long term support for a certain charity, I wonder if this employee felt "safe" enough to verbally abuse a customer and physically assault the person filming as they felt their stance was in line with company values.

Not very ladylike! lol

Sadly I suspect it's a franchise and the fact that he feels entitled to behave like this, and has a history of throwing people out from the reviews, suggests he is possible the franchise holder or manager so there may not be much Starbucks UK can do to sanction him.

Vote with your feet is the only response to poor service like this, as well as a police report for the assault.

Yes, if I had thrown every patient who has been abusive to me out of A&E, I could have solved waiting times overnight! Only the other night, one of my colleagues patiently carried on suturing some tosser while he was calling her a fucking cunt.

I have often observed that patients with 'uncontrollable' rage are miraculously able to control it, if a couple of large police officers turn up. With a tiny number of exceptions, when someone is genuinely psychotic or demented, violence is - as @ArabeIIaScott says - a choice.

Of course. Just as normalising the use of 'Karen' as an insult emboldens people to abuse middle aged women.

It honestly feels like some deliberate psychological tactic like when in The Taming of the Shrew (love Shakespeare, hate that play) when Kate is forced to say day is night and that the sun is the moon. And then back again. Or for a more pop culture version, in Star Trek when the Cardassians are trying to force Picard to say there are five lights, instead of four.

Hmmm, inspiration has just struck me... 1 moment. There we go:

Totally agree, @MissLucyEyelesbarrow - I was reflecting on a similar situation I found myself in, when I new the sex of the barista, but saw the pronoun badge claiming the opposite sex.

I doubt n this video that the customer thought anything other than that the barista was a fairly camp man. That's what he sounds like to me - as well as rude, aggressive and ultimately violent to the people filming him - from what I could tell from the video, it was probably common assault (am not a lawyer though).

Starbucks coffee is crap so I never go there. But in the US I love their coffee cake - another one to cross off my list, clearly.

Gah - what is it with image attachments on this forum! On the Kiwifarms thread it resizes it so you cannot read it. And on the above it cuts off the text so that unless someone clicks it, it makes no sense.

I agree with the poster above who said it looks like he was fulfilling a fantasy.

Didn't Starbucks have a mermaid cookie for that controversial charity with major vetting issues?

I like the comment
“Make sure you tell them your name is Twam.”

Awful behaviour, Karen is a known insult and no-one should use it. Makes me even happier that my local Starbucks closed a few years ago, not that I went and gave my money to the tax avoiders anyway.

My question though is how this started. What did the woman in question do or say to get this kind of response? The only way she would have used this person’s pronouns is if she was talking about them.

That said it doesn’t really matter what she did or said, the employee shouldn’t have behaved that way.

Well quite, let's not go blaming women for men's violence please.

The reviews of the place 'where the staff assault the customers' are starting to mount up.

You can see in the footage that the woman is trying to not react to him, and he's just getting himself more and more wound up and losing his temper and then he starts with the more directed aggression followed by the fairly prolonged assault.

I’m not in the slightest. I’m just saying that the context would be interesting. At no point should this behaviour be the result.

It’s interesting that he local paper is rather quiet about this all.

I suppose in a Starbucks style set up (where there are multiple staff doing little bits of the ordering/making process and they sometimes get out of sync with each other) it’s not unusual to say something like ‘I’ve already given [pronoun] my order’ or ‘[Pronoun] is already making my coffee’?