Working in a coffee shop isn't as glamorous as it may appear. Just like any other service industry job, baristas have to deal with difficult and entitled customers every single day. From ignorant people who don't understand coffee lingo to freeloaders who just come in for the free wifi, it seems that the population of difficult coffee shop patrons just keeps growing and growing. These baristas took to the internet to spill all the (coffee) beans about the most entitled customers they've ever had to deal with. Content has been edited for clarity.
They Tried To Warn Him
“Today was ostensibly a normal day at our coffee chain. Things were a bit slow, but we chalked it up to the upcoming Easter long weekend that everyone is preparing for.
I’ve just come back from my ten-minute break, taking over for the barista. The fridges are stocked, the syrups are full, the sharpies aren’t completely dried out. Everything is surprisingly calm for noon on a weekday.
That is, until a man comes storming up to the hand-off point, lidless coffee in hand, looks me in the eye and said, ‘This is half full!’
I look down at the coffee. It’s a flat white, filled to less than 1cm below the top of the 16.5cm cup. It’s at least 90% full.
He stares at me with the kind of fury that only a man with nothing better to do than terrorize minimum wage workers can have.
I wait a second to give him a chance to be polite and ask for it to be filled further. He doesn’t.
‘Would you like me to top that up for you?’
He responds by only gesturing at the coffee. I’m not important enough for the effort of words, apparently.
I sigh. I steam the milk. I make sure I have his attention as I fill the coffee.
‘I’ll just let you know, filling a flat white to a centimeter below the top of the cup is the standard for us here at [Coffee Chain]. Many people like to take off the lids to add sugar and such, and since a flat white has no foam at the top to stabilize the liquid, it’s much more likely to spill.’
He ignores this attempt to save the patience of future baristas, and he takes the coffee, still lidless, without a word and stomps back over to his table.
His wife has an incredible, tired expression of ‘This again? Really?’
But, y’know, maybe he’s right. He paid $5.50 for this coffee, he deserves to have it how he wanted it! It’s not like most of that cost comes from the four shots of espresso in it, rather than the 450ml of heated milk to go along with it. It doesn’t matter that adding another 30ml of milk is not going to change a thing about the taste. This is his coffee, and he gets to have it the way he wants it. Policies be darned!
He sits down heavily, and in the struggle to put his coffee down on the table, he freaking spills it.”
Coffee Should Not Be Complicated
“It’s 11 sharp in the evening and all my partners and I can finally take off our headsets and deal with the aftermath of a busy Saturday. I take the last register to count and set my safe and finish the count in less than a minute. Easy.
I walk towards the lobby to check on some things and see a car in the window of the drive thru. I give them a sign that we are closed. I walk back and see that they are still there and ignore them since the customer base in my area are abnormally entitled and believe they can get away with anything. Anyway, these are strangers to me. The last thing I need is robbers after the awful day.
Nope, this woman with red emotional eyes goes up to my front door asking to speak to me and I am telling her I can’t open the door.
She calls the phone. I pick it up. I asked her how I could help her.
Apparently, she was lost and spent 30 minutes trying to find my store. She continues saying that she placed a mobile order and expects us to hand it to her. I told her I cannot because I can’t open the door, for safety reasons of course. Not to mention if people don’t come by in 15 to 20 minutes, we throw away any drinks. I tell her that, too.
Now she wants a refund. I tell her I cannot.
She asks, ‘Why not?’
Did I just not tell this person I could not open the door?
She’s then telling me and I quote, ‘…so you’re scamming me out of a drink and refund?’
I’m trying to be nice to this obviously emotional person that I cannot do anything at this moment and that we can either fix it the next day or she can call corporate to give her a refund. But guess what? She won’t listen and wasted like 15 more minutes of my time ranting. Time that I should be helping out my partners and finishing my other shift duties.
Finally, I give her the number of my DM and she leaves. My DM comes by Sunday, since he lives nearby, and starts telling me what a hag this lady was to him too. Coffee should not be this complicated.”
Chill Dude, It Was Just A Joke
“I used to work for that really big coffee chain that you see on every corner and is slowly taking over the world. You know which one.
Every few months, corporate would demand we rearrange the pastry case because reasons, and it would take forever to sort and never quite fit. Personally, I think they did it solely to mess with the poor openers who already have to get up at 3 am.
Anyway, one morning I had set up the case to what I thought was the new layout, but around 9 am my shift supervisor sees that I messed up a few things and told me to fix it. So, I put on my gloves and start fixing the case. Now, my team members absolutely loved giving each other trouble, so when they see that I messed up, they start making jokes about how I put the case together with my eyes closed. Whatever, I can take a joke. So I fire back and say, ‘Well I did get up at 3 am. I don’t think I was even fully awake until 7.’
(This is obviously a joke, okay? I meant it as a joke. And not even a good one.)
At this point, I finish putting everything in order, and when I look up from the case there is a man at the counter just standing and glaring at me. Our register person is…somewhere, and he obviously needs help.
Me: ‘Hi! I didn’t see you there, how can I help you?’
Angry Guy: ‘I want a large regular coffee. Black.’
Angry Guy never breaks eye contact, glaring so hard I can feel his retinas beginning to burn my soul.
Me: ‘Great!’
I get him a large medium roast and hand it off to him. He looks at it and then back at me. Somehow his glare intensifies.
Angry Guy: ‘I wanted dark roast. Maybe if you hadn’t been SLEEPING your whole shift, you would know how to do your job.’
I seriously wasn’t expecting that kind of response, so I just stare for a few seconds, blinking in confusion.
Me: ‘…I’m sorry about that sir, let me get you a dark roast.’
I get him his large dark roast, and apologize again. He snatches the cup and points a finger at me, really violating all of my personal space.
Angry Guy: ‘Just so you know, you are the MOST unprofessional person I have ever met. I would NEVER allow this behavior at my restaurant. I’m a chef at Whatever Restaurant and I would fire you immediately for this. I’m going to talk to your manager.’
Angry Guy walks out, leaving my coworkers and I in stunned silence.
He did actually come back later and complain to my general manager, and demanded that I be fired for my incompetence. Luckily, my shift supervisor backed me up that I did nothing wrong, and my general manager didn’t care about these kind of complaints, so nothing happened to me because of it. But I will always remember Angry Guy and the time my bad joke put his panties in a twist.”
The Birthday Drink Scammer
“There is a man who comes to my Starbucks every single day and orders the most horrible drink in an infuriating way.
He purchased 365 Starbucks cards and registered every one of them online with a different birthday so that he gets a ‘free birthday drink’ EVERY DAY OF THE YEAR. Even though I know exactly how he ‘beat the system,’ he pretends that his app is just malfunctioning and it magically gives him the same free birthday drink every day.
If he was a nice guy, I might not be so irritated. But he’s not a nice guy. Here is a sample of our exchange when he orders:
Me, scowling on the inside: ‘Hello.’
Him: ‘I need a Venti cup and a marker.’
Me: ‘Oooooohkaaaay. Here ya go.’
I reluctantly give him the cup and marker. He draws lines and arrows and writes all over the cup while telling me: ‘Two pumps of white mocha here, then add five pumps of vanilla. That should take us to this line here where you’re going to add cold heavy cream up to this ridge here. It should be halfway between this line and this line. Make sure to add the heavy whipping cream before the espresso, it changes the taste if you do it out of order. Then add your four shots, three regular and one long shot. That long shot is important since you guys reformulated your machines, it’s been a nightmare trying to get my drink right. That long shot helps balance it. Then stir it for me, Mister Brad. Now do me a favor and add ice to the top there and it’ll be easy as pie. I’m not picky so don’t worry about shaking it or anything like that.’
Me: ‘Okay. Easy as pie.’
Him: ‘Now they ring it up for me like this: one quad espresso, add white mocha, sub vanilla, sub heavy cream.’
He wants it rung up that way so he just has to pay $3 for a drink that really should be around $6.50 if it was rung up correctly as an Iced Quad Venti Vanilla White Mocha with heavy cream instead of milk.
Me: ‘Gotcha.’
Him: ‘Now I’m going to use my free birthday reward to pay. Did I tell you about my birthday reward app malfunction? The app is messed up and it’s been giving me the same free birthday drink for 12 days now! I mean, I’m not going to complain or anything. Maybe I should check my mail at my old house and see if I’ve won free Starbucks for life! Ha ha ha!’
He then takes a sip of his drink and frowns.
Him: ‘Mister Brad, why don’t you pour a decaf shot on top of this for me? It’ll be perfect then. It’s just a hair too sweet.’
I pour one decaf shot on top of his drink.
Me: ‘Thanks! Have a great day. Oh yeah, and HAPPY BIRTHDAY.'”
Gotta Love Working The Drive Thru
“When I was in high school, I used to work for Starbucks. I was probably 15 or 16 at the time, and I live in a crowded southwest city. The high school I went to was public with over 3,000 kids. I dealt with a lot of crazy. This happened within the first three months of me working there. Every single corporate barista knows the drill of making friendly, appropriate small talk with customers, especially if you are working a drive-thru and customers are waiting for their drinks and you have nothing else to do.
Well one night, a couple in a car pull up and order typical date night/family adventure drinks. Sugary fraps and a lemonade or something. They come up to the window and I see they have a little girl in the backseat. She couldn’t be more than two years old and she was definitely the daughter of the woman on the passenger side.
They come up to the window and I go through the motions of asking them about their day and if they have any plans, making eye contact with both of them, smiling, nodding, etc.
All of a sudden, the woman in the seat starts screaming at me with loudest, sassiest, thickest Mexican accent I had ever heard, ‘EXCUSE ME?! Why don’t you get back to your work?! Stop flirting with my man and back off. Get back to your work. Just turn around and do your job. Go. Go away. Don’t look at him! Turn around and GO!!’
The driver, a young man, has the widest apologetic eyes I have ever seen. The little girl in the backseat? Still there, silent. The customer still proceeded to spew her insecure nonsense on me for I don’t know how long.
I was flustered, since I was freaking 16 years old getting yelled at by an adult woman for no reason.
I replied, ‘I literally have no idea what you’re talking about. Talking to you guys is my job. This is what I do, but okay.’
I gave them their drinks and that was that. I told my coworkers what happened and went about my night.
But then, one hour later, a car pulls into the drive through and it’s that same young man from before but in a DIFFERENT car WITHOUT his woman or his child. He starts apologizing to me. I laughed and said it’s okay.
Aaaand then his voice changed. He got all ASMR (aka that shivery feeling down your spine) on me and started asking me for my number.
Me: ‘Uhhh, I don’t have a phone.’
Then he said, ‘We should be friends. Maybe you could show me some cool places around the city. Do you know of any cool places?’
Me: ‘Uhhh, I have enough friends.’
And then I turned around and left.
I hated them both, but I also ended the night kind of feeling a bit sorry for her.”
You Can’t Just Expect Things For Free
“I had a woman get mad at me the other day when I told her that 8oz of steamed milk had a charge. She had a 16oz white chocolate mocha, drank half of it, and wanted me to top it back off with steamed milk. I said sure, but there will be a charge. She proceeded to get confused and then passive-aggressively angry when I charged her for a kids steamed milk, which is our 8oz steamed milk.
Customer: ‘Why do you charge for steamed milk? It’s just steamed milk.’
Me: ‘Well, I’m giving you product and providing a service for you, so there’s a cost to it. Because, you know, labor and supply and electricity are all going into giving you 8oz of a drink.’
Customer: ‘You throw out leftover milk all the time! I watch you!’
Me: ‘We do our best not to have leftover milk in the pitchers. Plus, whatever is left over is normally just foam, not steamed milk. I don’t just have extra steamed milk sitting around to give out for free.’
Customer: ‘Well what’s more of a sin? Pouring out your leftover milk or giving it to me for free?’
I had to reiterate once again that I can’t just give stuff away for free; if you want a product and a service, you have to pay something for it. And I was only charging her a dollar.
The kicker? She had applied to work at my cafe a couple days beforehand, and then had the audacity to come in and berate me and get angry over me charging her for steamed milk. Guess whose application I immediately threw in the trash?”
Sir, That’s Harassment
“This week at work has been stressful. We are incredibly short-staffed and the new hires come check it out, work two days, and then bail.
So, I’m having a pretty bad day (I worked a double the day before and had to come in on my day off before that) after being asked to stay late again. I usually don’t mind, but today I’m just upset and I want to go home.
Today, this guy walked up on his phone and before I could say ‘Hello, how are you doing, what can I help you with?’ he, without looking up from his phone, goes, ‘Three medium lattes with soy and vanilla, extra hot and a small hot chocolate, kid temperature, extra whipped cream.’
I figured he didn’t want to chit-chat, so I just took the drink order and go. I told him his total ($21.67), he handed me $22, and as I went to give him his change, he told me to keep it. I put the change on top of the register, say, ‘Thank you’ and turned around to make his drinks.
I could’ve sworn I said ‘thank you.’
I turned back around, put his drinks in a carrier, and wished him a good day. He then reached over the counter, grabbed my chin and said, ‘The appropriate answer to someone tipping you is saying, “Thank you sir.”‘ I was in shock and I obviously slapped his hand off my chin.
I work in a resort where we have security and surveillance and the entrance of every shop. The security guard saw him reach over the counter and reach for my face, so he asked if there was any problem. He turned to the security guard and told him that he was teaching me basic manners. I, at this point, was extremely embarrassed and my eyes started to tear up.
The security guard then asked why he thought it would be okay for him to grab my chin or touch me in general. He then explained to the angry man that reaching over the counter and touching me could be considered harassment and get him banned from the resort. The angry man started yelling at the security guard that he’s worthless and everyone that worked at this resort was rude and mean to the guests and that he’d never come back.
In the end, the security guard took the angry man to the office and got him to sign a ban agreement since he ‘never wants to step in this disgusting resort.’
All for 33 cents.”
Refills Don’t Work That Way…
“A guy waltzed into my store today and asked for a venti refill:
Me: ‘Sure, you got your cup there?’
Him: ‘No, I tossed it.’
Me: ‘Sorry, I can’t just give you a venti refill if I don’t know you had a coffee.’
Him: ‘I was in here this morning at 7.’
Me: ‘That’s cool, I was here at 6 and been on till until now (at this point it was around 8:00-8:30) and I didn’t see you.’
Him: ‘Look, I’ve been coming to Starbucks for years and they always give me free refills.’
Me: ‘Okay, well I’m happy to give you a free refill if you pay for a venti coffee first.’
At this point he just throws up his hands, pays for the coffee, about $3.10, and storms out.
Officially, corporate policy is that you have to sit in the cafe, but if someone comes in and hands me a clearly used cup for a refill, I’ll normally oblige. But don’t just come in and ask for one without a dang cup in your hand, you cheapskate.”
“I Refuse To Deal With Them”
“There used to be this woman who would come in with her daughter and the daughter’s poor beleaguered boyfriend. One day, they all ordered lattés, and so I made three lattés.
The mother said hers was too weak. The daughter said hers was too cold. Neither of them actually tried the drinks before making those comments. Not even a sip.
I went back and made the same drinks to exactly the same temperature. I set them down and they were fine with it. This happened a couple times a week for a few months.
A few times I actually just took the latté’s back and gave them the same drinks. They would just get off on sending drinks back. I can’t be too mad though, the mother owned a hot dog stand. Her life was being in a small box for nine hours a day making hot dogs.
I have thought about buying one and sending it back though.
I had another customer who would come in about 10 times one week until I got sick of her and she stopped coming in. She asked for a decaf latté, extra hot and with a very creamy head.
Alright, whatever. I made her one, but the head wasn’t creamy enough and was separated from the liquid (like it’s supposed to). I made her another one. This one wasn’t hot enough. It was only about a half a degree off scalding, how hot does she want it? Hot enough so she can’t taste that it’s decaf anymore, I guess.
So I made her another one. I burned the heck out of this thing. Milk was fully boiled and the whole thing was terrible. She loved it. She even came in again and ordered the same thing.
Every single time, some unknowable criteria was violated. It smelled funny, there was too much coffee taste, stuff like that. After about five days of this, she came in again and ordered her usual latté, so I made it.
She complained about how the head wasn’t creamy enough. She started spooning it out and asked me, ‘See what I mean?’
I snapped and said, ‘No, I don’t,’ and walked off.
I was so sick of her crud. I get the feeling she burns her bridges at different cafés and has to move onto somewhere that isn’t sick of her after a few days.
I refuse to deal with either of those people ever again. Life’s too short to peddle my delicious brown caffeinated beverages to those morons.”
“It’s Not My Fault She’s Dumb!”
“I work for a very well known coffee giant, and have done for almost three years. I’ve dealt with my fair share of difficult customers over the years, but the woman today really took the cake.
We’ve just had a complete transformation of our iced blended cold drinks and have a new recipe to follow, which has to be followed TO THE LETTER, or else I can get into real trouble.
I had just started my shift and had gone straight onto the bar to make drinks. I had a few to catch up and had just made a plain, coffee flavored blended iced drink for a customer, who took it and walked away. Two minutes later, she was back.
Customer: ‘This doesn’t taste sweet. This doesn’t have any sugar in it. You NEED to make me one with sugar in it. It’s supposed to have sugar in it.’
Me: ‘Oh, they actually don’t come with sugar in them, but there is sugar over on the condiment bar that you could add to it.’
Customer: ‘No, that won’t taste right. I need YOU to make me a new one and put sugar in it.’
Me: ‘Actually, I can’t do it that way for you, as it would affect the texture and flavor of the drink, so it wouldn’t come out right. Like I said, there’s sugar on the condiment bar, which you could add to the drink. Or, I could add in a flavored syrup for you, such as caramel or vanilla.’
Customer: ‘No, this needs to have SUGAR in it. Why didn’t you make it that way? It’s supposed to be like that!’
I was slowly losing the will to live as I repeated everything I already told her.
Customer: ‘I need YOU to help me here, I want my drink and I want it with sugar in it! Why can’t you just do what I’m asking you too?’
Me: ‘I’m sorry, but as I’ve already said, I can’t do that. Would you not like to try a syrup to make it sweeter?’
Customer: ‘Yeah, you have that sugar-syrup, just add that.’
Me: ‘Actually, we don’t have that here, but we have plenty of sweet flavors, such as vanilla or caramel.’
Customer, who was stomping her feet at this point: ‘Fine. I don’t WANT this now. I’ll have strawberry one, will that be sweet?’
Me: ‘Yes, it will.’
Customer: ‘OK, and can you put sugar in that for me?’
Me, as I melted into a puddle of disbelief and anger and practically died on the spot: ‘No, as I’ve already said, I can’t do that for you. It should be sweet enough.’
Customer: ‘FINE. You know, you’ve been really unhelpful to me.’
What gives? She was too dumb to understand that I couldn’t make her drink with sugar in it for her. She thought she knew better than me what should be in our drinks. She rejected the concept of adding sugar afterward, and refuse to try a flavored syrup. Then she complained that I hadn’t been helpful enough. I genuinely don’t know what she wanted from me.
She came back in a few hours later, and when she saw I was still working, she was rude and gave me death stares the entire time. It’s not my fault she’s a dumb customer!”