The customer shouted negatively
Ben Hunte, former LGBTQXYZ correspondent for the BBC, talks to the former Starbucks worker who screamed at a customer to GET OUT because she “misgendered” him.
Exclusive: Luna Spain lost her manager’s job after an interaction with a customer was covered by right-wing media. She told VICE News she is being treated as a criminal despite being the victim of transphobia.
Define “transphobia.”
Luna Spain said the customer called
herand another trans colleague “trannies” and shouted negatively about gender in the packed Starbucks store.
What does “shouted negatively about gender” mean?
After two years as a manager, Spain said
shewas fired without even having a meeting withherbosses at work.Police have told us they are investigating the incident, which took place in April, as a potential transphobic hate crime, and Spain said
shewas considering legal action against the customers as well asherformer employer.
Why aren’t the police investigating the incident as a potential misogynist hate crime? Maybe they are, but if so Ben Hunte didn’t see fit to mention it. He’s not the most reliable journalist I’ve ever read.
It’s also interesting that Hunte seems to agree with the fired starbucky that being “negative” about trans ideology is a good and justifiable reason to shout at a customer to GET OUT!!!, including when the customer is at a physical disadvantage compared to the shouting starbucky. I differ with Hunte on this pointe.
Spain, 28, said that her name, address and contact details were published online after the video went viral, and that “transphobes have started knocking” at her home and her family’s homes.
Not in the reporting I saw they weren’t.
Footage taken at the Starbucks in Southampton, in southern England, showed Spain arguing with a woman, identified as Vanessa Thomas, while a man, understood to be the woman’s partner Mark Andrews, filmed the incident.
So Ben Hunte sees fit to publish the customer’s name? I take it he’s hoping people will knock on her door?
The video also features Spain asking the customer to leave the store while clapping in her face, and calling her “Karen.” The video ends with Spain walking up to the man filming the incident and apparently knocking the phone out of his hand.
Yes, so how is Spain the victim here?
But in an interview, Spain told VICE News that the video only showed the end of the incident, and was not reflective of what really happened.
“The viral video doesn’t show the customer calling us trannies and going on a rant about gender. It doesn’t show how it started with her screaming about why we don’t accept cash, and demanding that we do. The internet’s been filled with lies,” she said.
That’s his case? It’s pathetic. Maybe she was a rude customer, maybe she was a rude and demanding customer. That’s certainly possible. Such customers do exist. But is it Starbucks policy for employees to respond to rudeness with orders to GET OUT and name-calling and face-clapping? I doubt it. I think the policy in customer-facing jobs is generally to be as calm and non-confrontational as possible with angry and/or rude customers, to de-escalate as far as possible, complete the transaction, and move on.
“I’m the victim of a transphobic hate crime, but I’m being treated like a criminal,” Spain said – visibly shaken.
Oh fuck off. Take your pity party somewhere else. He towered over her, so no, I don’t believe he’s “visibly shaken” a week later. Visibly in a misogynist rage, yes, but shaken, no.
“The woman in the video was rude and abusive all the way through us trying to serve her,” she said. “She was furious about not being able to pay cash, but it’s quite a common reaction from some older customers in our store, so I was ready with a response. But she just wouldn’t accept it.”
So he called her a Karen and screamed in her face and told her to GET OUT, GET OUT.
Nope. Not acceptable.
Spain said the customer started “losing her mind after she deliberately misgendered my colleague standing next to me and I corrected her pronouns,” adding that “it was deliberate and spiteful, not a mistake like she seems to be claiming online.”
Surely it is not part of Bozo’s job description that he needs to “correct” what pronouns customers use to refer to other employees. Especially when what he means by “correct” is the opposite of ordinary usage. Starbucks customers don’t need to be educated on the magic gender specialty pronouns of the baristas. They’re there to buy a caffeinated drink, not get the exciting details of the identity of the guy who hands out the chocolate peanut butter toffee espresso.
“She said, ‘what is it with you trannies and all this gender stuff’ and ‘with you trannies it’s always all about gender’ – I cut her off and told her she’s not getting served. I asked her to come to the till and get a refund. But instead, she started getting louder and louder. She was calling me ‘a man’ as much as she could, and calling my colleague who is a trans man ‘a woman’ in front of a full store of customers and colleagues.”
I don’t care. Nobody cares. Give her her drink and shut up. Move on with your day.
Asked why she grabbed the customer’s partner’s phone, Spain said: “I wanted the video to be deleted. I didn’t want to be online and shamed like so many other trans people have been. When I didn’t get it, I grabbed the other customer by the bag and escorted her out of the store, then immediately closed the door – which unfortunately cracked the glass.”
Hahahahahaha how unfortunate – and nothing to do with how he closed the door of course.
Asked what is happening next with the incident, Spain told VICE News she has reported the female customer to the police. Spain said, “she very clearly committed a hate crime against me – and my colleague – just for being trans.”
Did she clap her hands in his face?
Spain knocked the cell phone out of the fellow’s hand? Sounds like a crime committed there.
I’m not up on English law, but it sounds like assault to me.
The world has lost its mind. Calling a man a man and calling a woman a woman is a hate crime. Okay, so maybe the woman was rude. Customers are rude sometimes. I used to work at McDonalds, and I’ve been called worse. I smiled and handed them their food. I didn’t let it shake me, because I had a job to do. A manager was not going to throw them out just for being rude; if they were violent, disruptive, or wouldn’t move once handed their food, I would call the manager in, and they would deal with it. I rarely saw them thrown out, unless they continued to obstruct business.
What this manager should have said was, “well, enough about me, what about making this work for you with respect to payment?”. I’m not at all accepting at face value their version of what happened of course, just that if it did there were better ways of handling it than getting in an argument with a customer.
Papito, could also be criminal damage if he cracked the phone screen.
Didn’t happen. That’s just what their Strawman Evil Transphobe would say because that’s how they think Strawman Evil Transphobes always talk.
Piglet, that may be why he’s insisting the video didn’t show the whole confrontation (which I imagine it didn’t, because you don’t go around taping every conversation; probably started after the employee started correcting pronouns). If it doesn’t show the customer doing any of the stuff she’s accused of, the only thing you could say is that the video didn’t show all of it.
I could believe it all happened more or less as described, but the difference between the way Luna handles rude customers and the way iknklast did is down to the fact that Luna is is a deeply, and frankly pitiably, insecure person. A little public humiliation was all it took to send him completely over the edge (a real woman has probably learned to deal with that). He’s probably not even a generally violent person.
I like the Stoic teaching: you always have the option of not having an opinion about something. Also:
Perhaps I’m missing something, but I don’t see the video in the Vice article. But a few clicks took me to the Daily Mail, which does have the full clip.
Spain might want to think twice before using the video in his defense.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12060053/Starbucks-sack-trans-worker-berated-female-customer-confrontation-misgendered.html?ito=social-twitter_mailonline
The UK has approximately 1 CCTV camera for every 3 people, so I’m fairly sure a couple of those will be in Starbucks. I doubt the world will see it, but I reckon the sacking may have followed after management reviewed the in-store video.
Oh that’s interesting.
Is there a pattern here?
So, the airline staff did their jobs, requested payment for the overweight luggage, and instead of either paying or calmly trying to negotiate a lower fee, “I started yelling, yelling”. I’m not sure that has ever worked as a negotiating tactic post kindergarten.
https://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/incidents/i-almost-got-arrested-queer-activist-deni-todorovic-speaks-out-about-melbourne-airport-ordeal/news-story/81a3ea64a0ef8ac5ca71b9ebbd3211fb
I’ve seen this movie before, and it doesn’t get any better on subsequent viewings. But, here is a new one.
Who knew that gatecrashing a major event wasn’t socially acceptable? Not only ill-informed about how sex works, but Todi is also unsure about who his friends are and who invited him. Was it the security guard, as it seems from his above quote? No, it was former WAG and drug snorter turned fashionista, Nadia Bartell.
As we say in this Great Land Down Under – What a fucking wanker!
[…] a comment by Rev David Brindley on The customer shouted […]
I admit to a bit of bias, here–as a retail worker (and even a department manager, probably about equivalent to a Starbucks shop manager), I know exactly how bizarre and insulting and aggressive customers get. (I had one ask me, over the phone, if I was “black, because you sound black”. I told my boss about it later, and he just stared at my melanin-deprived complexion as if I’d announced a decision to grow a second head. That same boss, who is Hispanic, has hung up on a customer who told him to ‘learn to speak English’–note, he has a faint accent, but otherwise, his speech is fully intelligible even to my ‘grown up who spent too much of his youth listening to heavy metal’ hearing.) So yeah, the pre-game description is at least plausible to me.
However, even with wanting to give Todi the benefit of the doubt… guh.
Even assuming the account of the pre-video interaction is accurate (and yes, “trannie” is a slur, about on a level with “TERF”, really, or “Karen”–it’s meant to be dismissive and rude, while retaining just a hint of plausible deniability), clapping hands in front of someone’s face goes above simple rudeness–by making it a physical gesture, Todi is escalating, and honestly is attempting intimidation. (If the customer’s behavior had truly crossed the line and you feel you need to hustle them out the door, you do NOT escalate. You tell the customer that they are not welcome, inform the staffer to stop assisting them, and then step away and contact the cops. It’ll be up to the customer to vacate before they arrive.)
And you never, ever, actually lay hands on them or their possessions. In the US, that’s assault, plain and simple, and likely to get the store sued, as well as getting your ass in jail. And that’s assuming you’re lucky and the customer isn’t the sort to respond to violence with violence, in which case you stand a good chance of getting into an actual brawl. That sort of thing is very much frowned upon by management.
+++++++++
And yes, it is of course perfectly possible, and even likely, that Todi is fabricating some portion of the events before hand. As noted above, the omnipresent CCTV cameras in most retail establishments will likely ferret out any inconsistencies in Todi’s story. (Hell, at my store, our corporate office, in a different state, can live-watch any camera in the company–and there’s a mic in our desk, as well, so they can listen to conversations and phone exchanges. All recorded, of course, for posterity, liability and accountability purposes.)
I managed to find the video on Tiktok and all I see is a man standing over a much smaller woman gesticulating aggressively. The woman remains calm though she refuses to back down. Spain then proceeds to physically assault the woman’s partner who was recording this. There’s also an interview with the woman herself who says that the whole thing started when she called a binary-identified woman a “lady”. So no one was called a “trannie” and this had nothing to do with “transphobia”. (I suspect there was an initial dispute over paying with cash but as far as I can tell it was just a disagreement. But of course, somehow disagreement has become ia refusal to validate and that’s “actual violence”.)