Comments on Roundly Chastised

This must be the coffee house where Vivace baristas are trained.

He'll punch him in the dick AND not serve him iced espresso. That devil!

Long ago, when I worked for a company that made all employees take special week-long customer service classes, they informed us that for every customer complaint you hear, there's ten more you don't because most people are too polite or too shy or too conflict-avoidant to say anything.

I think this guy counts for two, three hundred easy.

Sorry about being a dick but isn't DEFCON 5 the normal peace time condition? I think Defcon 1 would be more appropriate.

I'd be pretty pissed too if I went to a coffee shop and was told I couldn't have my drink the way I want it because it wasn't the perfect way for the coffee. Same if I went to a bar and was told I couldn't have the drink I wanted because it wasn't good enough.
It's like the barista is saying 'you're too stupid to know what you like.'

Both the barista and the customer are dicks.

This reminds me of a favorite description of a snobby barista's reaction to some obscurely gauche request: "He looked at me like I'd asked for ice cubes in my wine."

online man drama yay!

the joke of blogs.. divided we fall. instead of him making a deal out of it in real life he goes home to his little passive-aggressive blog and writes about it. sound familiar?

Dude, you looked him in the eye and POURED THE ESPRESSO RIGHT ON THE ICE? Tiny, tiny world. Is my umbrage at the American "the customer is always right" snooty sense of entitlement the reason I can't find a job right now? Yuck.

Wow. I've had bad coffee experiences in California -- which is hardly surprising, but this is just.. wow.

If that place was in Seattle, it would be like some art/comedy installation.

Why was no gunfire exchanged? Pussies.

Eh, this is a guy who had to shut down his original DC branch because he didn't pay his taxes. Like, hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxes. He's clearly got some issues.

i think they need to lay off the caffeine...seriously

ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME
EGO EGO EGO EGO EGO EGO EGO EGO EGO EGO EGO
ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME
EGO EGO EGO EGO EGO EGO EGO EGO EGO EGO EGO
ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME
EGO EGO EGO EGO EGO EGO EGO EGO EGO EGO EGO

relax people, jeez, can't we fight about shit that matters?!

In the Czech republic of the 90's there used to be a set of rules for drinking beer in a bar.
The customers was supposed to leave a little beer in the bottom of the glass unless they wanted a refill. Additionally, pouring one beer into another was an ejectable offense. Mixing beer was considered disrespectful to the beer. They took their beer very seriously.

Coffee shop owner & barista = total douchebags.

Stop reading Boing Boing.

this is why i get my espresso at mcdonalds.

I thought the customer was always right...even if they ask for ice cube for their wine and ketchup for their salmon.

Oh, and bring me a ghetto latte. With 12 sugars. And a straw -- I'll froth the milk myself.

@ 17) This article explains McDonalds espresso, and the inevitable success therein, quite well.

There's nothing fucking wrong with an ice cube in your wine if you want it. Your four dollar house wine is not fucking Romanee-Conti La Tache, and oftentimes a nice rose or white wine needs a little more chill than it comes with -- and in fact most restaurants serve their red wine too fucking warm.

Language, Fnarf.

You're right about reds being too warm - "room temperature" probably meant 54 degrees back when they decided that was the temp reds should be served.

I'm not even reading the comments here. Only because I think that, automatically without knowing any other opinions, the people at this coffee shop and the owner are fucksticks who have no fucking clue what customer service is. You'll ruin the coffee!? Shut the fuck up you're taking his money you twats. Jesus Christ.

I've read the comments now, and and I'm pleased to see that Fnarf and I are on the same page.

Next thing you know I'm going to be stuffing quarters up my nose.

I'm sure the real reason they do not want to serve espresso over ice is because they don't want people making "ghetto lattes" with the milk from the condiment bar.

I'm reminded of the old jokes about cretinous American tourists and snooty Parisian waiters. Of course Pierre will bring Mr and Mrs Red State their ketchup, but not without spitting in the food back in the kitchen.

There's an even better blog entry from that blog:

I was kind of stunned, but ran outside. A man sat on my curb, feet in the street, swaying and drinking from a tall can of Old English, with a box of more cans next to him. Someone shouted “OH SHIT, it’s coming back!” and pointed up the street. I looked, to see a monstrous pit bull galloping down the street, full-tilt. I remember thinking that it looked just like one of those things from “Ghostbusters” as it leapt, soaring through the air and shoulder-checking the man with the OE cans, sending him flat and the cans scattering.

The dog then grabbed a can in its jaws and bit down hard, puncturing the can and shaking it like a baby — which sent streams of malt liquor shooting out of the holes around its fangs and straight down the monster’s throat. It spat the mostly-empty can out into the street, covered in drool and malt liquor and wagged its tail, happily burping.

The man picked himself up and yelled “motherfucker, what did I JUST TELL YOU,” and grabbed the dog by its neck and belly, clean-and-jerked it and threw the thing like a soccer ball as far as he could. It hit the pavement and skidded, snarling and growling and ran straight for him, knocked him down again and grabbed another can.

http://www.andiamnotlying.com/2008/healing-heart-drunken-pit-bull-making-peace/

holy shit this is hilarious i just lost it on some snooty barista bitch a couple weeks ago for talking down to me after i placed my order. i let is slide the first time she did it (cuz i was tired and hadn't had my coffee) but after the third i couldn't let it go. ya know if i go to a bar and get treated like shit over my drinks i understand because i'm drunk... but to get punched in the dick over coffee? i'd much rather get kicked in the nuts ya know...

#28, I was about to wonder if I was the only one who found "punch in the dick" the most alarming part of that story.
Seriously, a punch in the dick? How do you even negotiate that, let alone specifically avoiding the area of searing pain just an inch or two below.

i bet what the barista really meant was:
"hey, its not okay to be a cheap asshole. if you want an iced latte, order one, instead of getting espresso over ice, and then going to the condiment bar and filling it with the milk we provide as a condiment."

when i worked for The Big S as a barista, we used to hate it when cheap mo-fos would do this. its one of the fastest ways to irritate your barista, and apparently your coffee shop manager too.

Pissing off customers is always a bad idea.

Especially since they have other choices.

I can see being miffed as a barista over cheap customers at first, but that's just life working in retail.

NOTE TO EASILY AGITATED COFFEE SHOP OWNERS:
If it's that easy to make an iced latte, then maybe don't charge as much for an iced latte! Or if enough people pay the normal price for an iced latte, how's the occasional cheapo going to sink your business? Are all the previous people going to sit there for 15 minutes making condiment iced lattes too? It seems most people just want a drink in 5 seconds and need to get back to work or home -- and then there'll be one guy who has nothing better to do that day than to make an iced latte as cheap as possible. Why try to prevent the inevitable?

"POURED THE ESPRESSO RIGHT ON THE ICE?"

He should have poured it on the Barista's Head!

What Nerve!

Is the barista a midget? "punch him in the dick"? wtf?

I worked at *$ back in the day (only had 100 stores when I was there) and used to have people order a latte and then open and dump the entire contents of our chocolate shaker on the condiment bar into their drink, scattering chocolate powder everywhere. We would have welcomed someone just topping off their iced espresso with milk!

ex barista, you think it was about the cheapness? THe guy said it was about the integrity of the coffee or whatever. So he was lying? If so, why couldn't he just be honest, and cut out the "Hey man," crap and say "sorry, sir, but we're not supposed to let customers use a lot of milk without charging them the iced latte price. I know, I know..."

Is it okay to get an iced americano with room for cream or am I also being "cheap"?

Overly snooty barista vs. aggressive, egocentric customer. A match made in heaven.