Well, sometimes the customer really IS right and the manager is wrong. Doesn’t happen often, but there are some managers out there who probably shouldn’t be working in customer service.
A lot of times situations like this come down to “he said, she said” and the employee usually gets the benefit of the doubt, but with people quick on the draw with cell phones now, it’s not hard to get proof one way or the other. Yay for technology, the Starbucks manager definitely needed to be shown the door.
I pride myself on the fact that in 40+ years I’ve never lost my temper to a customer, even including the time I had a psycho lady that hit me with her cane. (She eventually ended up being taken out by the police the next day, but that’s a story for another day.) It basically gets down to this–if you lose your temper, the customer wins. I don’t like to lose.
Starbucks employee fired after going off on customer in video posted online
NEW YORK — A Starbucks employee was fired after a video of her ranting at customers at a New York City store went viral.
NBC 4 New York reports customer Ruby Chen was at the center of the employee’s anger. Chen complained about the incident and posted the video on Starbucks’ Facebook page.
Chen says she ordered a Frappuccino and was pulling up the Starbucks app on her phone to pay. The Starbucks employee asked her name for her order. Chen says she didn’t hear her, at which point the worker began shouting at her.
Chen asked if there was a manager she could speak with and the employee said, “You’re talking to the manager.”
The worker was a shift supervisor, not a manager, according to a spokeswoman for Starbucks.
When other customers in the store began to speak in Chen’s defense, the supervisor began yelling at them, NBC 4 New York reports.
A spokeswoman for Starbucks told NBC 4 New York the employee was fired as soon as they learned of the incident.
“This customer’s experience is not reflective of the service our partners provide to customers every day,” the spokeswoman said in a statement. “Our leadership team is reaching out to the customer to apologize and make this right.”
Chen told NBC 4 New York that Starbucks reached out to her in a follow up comment on her Facebook video and said the district manager apologized and promised “the leadership team would do everything to prevent terrible customer service of this kind from happening ever again.”
Chen said she was offered a $100 gift card and assured that the company was taking her complaint seriously.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xz2JL5VQcms