A New York City Starbucks employee has been fired after cellphone video showing her ranting at customers in a Queens store went viral shortly after being posted online.
Customer Ruby Chen, the main target of the employee's tirade, complained about the interaction on Starbucks' Facebook page and posted the video, provided to her by another customer in the store who filmed the entire incident on Tuesday.
She said she'd placed an order for a Frappuccino at the store on Broadway in Elmhurst, Queens, and was pulling up the Starbucks app on her phone to pay. The Starbucks employee asked her name for her order -- but Chen said she didn't hear her.
That's when the worker began shouting at her, Chen said.
The worker yanked away the app scanner when Chen tried to pay, and then "told me to leave and never go back" to the store, Chen said.
The worker then accused her of trying to steal the cookie straw she was holding. She asked a co-worker to call the police.
"You're talking to the manager," the worker told Chen when asked who the manager was. "Get out. You're not going to be served here. Period. Bye. Bye. Bye."
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The worker was a shift supervisor, not a manager, according to a spokeswoman for Starbucks.
The supervisor is heard telling Chen: "Give me the straw and leave. Or you can leave with the straw and not be allowed back in. Which one do you want to do? Because when I told you the price, you wanted to keep on arguing. So which one do you want to do? You're not going to be served here."
When other customers in the store began to speak in Chen's defense, the supervisor began yelling at them.
"Excuse me, nobody's talking to you. Get out of here. Bye," the supervisor said.
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 confirmed that Starbucks reached out to her in a follow up comment on her Facebook video, saying that 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.
