A barista was called “mean” by her friends after she told them about the prank she was playing on customers at her job in a coffee shop.
In a post on the subReddit “r/AmITeA–hole” (AITA), she described how the prank came about.
In her post, the high schooler describes how often she encounters rude, angry customers who all seem to be in a bad mood.
She says she’s tired of grown adults taking their anger out on her, so she retaliates by pranking them.
The barista gets revenge on disgruntled customers by pretending to fire her colleagues.
The high schooler says it’s a regular occurrence for people to walk into the coffee shop “frustrating about little things like that. Like they’re literally blowing up over nothing.”
“How sad,” she writes, “does one have to be to be a grown man taking out his anger on high school and college kids.”
So she and her colleague James, a shift supervisor, decided to have a little fun with the next angry customer who walked into the cafe.
In fact, she soon had a customer “who was upset that we didn’t get the coffee hot enough” — a problem she can’t even solve since the coffee comes straight out of a machine.
Instead, she and James started their trick.
After asking what the problem was and listening to the customer rant, James looked at the high school student and said, “This is unacceptable, you’re fired.”
The high schooler then replied, “No please don’t fire me my family needs the money I need this job please,” to which James responded by telling her to take off her apron and get out.
She writes that the angry customer immediately backed down and James said: “It’s not that big of a problem, you don’t have to fire her over it. I did not mean that.”
But James persisted and after it worked so well the first time, the barista says they’ve tried it on several disgruntled customers since.
And she says that “almost every time the person who came up angry apologizes and says they didn’t mean it.”
“It’s kind of satisfying,” she continued, “to make people realize that their actions might actually have consequences.”
That satisfaction is probably attributable to anyone who has ever worked in customer service.
But the barista’s friends thought the prank was mean to make people think they just ruined someone’s livelihood.
Most commenters agreed that the barista’s prank was not only funny, but also a good way to teach unfriendly customers a lesson.
“This is a perfect way to deal with hostile customers,” wrote one user. “Yeah that’s hilarious and hopefully teaches you a lesson,” commented another person.
“And when the hostile customers try to undo what they say, it’s worth it,” added one Redditor.
Others pointed out that the prank has an unintended side effect. “Most likely these customers will be embarrassed and avoid coming back to the store. It’s a win-win situation!”
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Though some hoped customers would actually come back just because it would up the ante on the comedic ploy.
One user wrote: “I think it would be even funnier if they were happy with that [the firing] and then they came back just to see [the barista] still work there.”
“The possible explanations of ‘Oh that was my twin brother, but now it’s my job to support my dying mother and six siblings’ would be hilarious.”
Who says work can’t be fun?
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer covering pop culture, social justice and issues of human interest.