When a customer comes in to get a coffee at a cafe, they expect to be served, but what happens if the cafe is closed for a private party?

That is what happened at the cafe in this story, and the customer got irate and demanded service (from someone who didn’t work there anymore), and then destroyed one of the coffee machines when he was refused.

The irate customer not only got arrested, but also banned from all the cafes in the area.

I no longer work here, but enjoy your conviction.

So, during university I used to work part time as a barista at a local non-chain place that was heavily frequented.

Sounds like a great place.

The lady who owned the place was mildly famous (in the coffee world), having won awards such as best barista, best cafe etc numerous times.

After a few years working there I also managed to snag a few barista awards, which is where the problems happen.

Loyal customers are the best kind.

As anyone who drinks coffee knows, once you get a barista/cafe you like, you tend to stick to them like a raccoon sticks to an unlocked dumpster, so I had a few people who only ever came in on my shift.

It was mostly good, people tended to be polite but picky. I was at this stage debating if I wanted to make a career move into cafes/hospitality, so I didn’t mind the few annoying people we got, cost of business and all.

Gross, keep these people away.

There was however one small group of very annoying people who would come in every Friday around 1720 (closed at 1730) in their pack of 4-5, before shuffling back to the gaming shop a few doors down.

Much as I don’t mind gamers (being one, Pathfinder FTW), a couple of these guys were the stereotype never-bathe variety, and would fill the cafe with an aroma somewhere between week-old pizza and “I saw a shower once and it scared me”.

Just order a milkshake and be done with it at this point.

Did not help they tended to order the most sugary, messy and non-coffee drinks on offer (frappes, iced coffees, usually with 3-4x syrups etc).

It was a pain to clean, pain to clean and to serve and made sure every Friday we finished 15 minutes later than we should have since they didn’t want anyone but me making their ‘drinks’.

Shopping where he used to work.

Fast forward a few years, recently graduated and starting work in a new career, all is well. Celebrating at the cafe since by now I’m very good friends with the owner and other staff. Officially stopped working here several weeks ago when sitting final exams etc, good times.

The mistake was this was Friday afternoon. The owner had closed us a half hour early to throw a small party, so while all the chairs were still out, all the signage had been brought in/turned off.

I’m sure they were just used to walking right in.

Queue 1720, and our wonderful pack shuffles by. Undeterred by the lack of open signs, the locked side doors and the sign on the door that said “private party” they shamble inside and mull around the counter.

Owner informs them the place is closed, politely asks them to leave. After some discussion amongst themselves they seem to decide she’s lying and demand their ‘usual’ (see, crap).

She doesn’t need to put up with these people.

Owner is less polite this time, firmly asks them to leave, we’re closed, come back tomorrow.

Whatever passes for a leader among this group (seriously, does it work on who has stronger BO, or who can wear the same hoodie the longest or something?) does not like this, and starts yelling about discrimination and demanding service, specifically from me.

He wouldn’t help them even if he could.

I inform said alpha-hoodie I actually stopped working several weeks ago, and even if I did still work there, there was no way I’d serve him if he was acting like that.

The guy didn’t like this one bit, his voice went up several pitches and he started squeak-screaming about how we were discriminating against him, demanding I give them their drinks for free and how they were going to complain to the owner and have us all fired (I guess he figured females can’t own/operate stores, despite their name on the wall?).

Some people don’t like being told no.

Being refused again by the myself and the owner, and reminding them again that I no longer work there and, then told (much less politely) to leave, the guy turns about as red the bag of Doritos I assume they had in store for later and has a total melt down.

We’re talking toddler foot-stamping, screaming tantrum. I swear the guy was moments away from a heart attack with how red he was getting.

Wow, what a guy. This is going to cost him.

He rages about how women can’t tell him what to do, that I’m lying because I’m too stupid to work elsewhere and *insert racist slurs here* then uses his considerable bulk to push the espresso machine off the counter.

Now, these things are not only very heavy, they’re also very expensive – tens of thousands of bags of Doritos expensive.

LOL, just kicking him while he is down.

The guy is still having his tantrum when the police arrive, probably not helped by the fact once they had him sitting in the back of the car I smirked and told him I didn’t work there – setting him off again.

Guy ended up being charged for a handful of things, including destruction of the machine, he and his pack were obviously banned from our cafe, and the neighboring ones all having a friendly relationship with us also banned him.

Oh, this would hurt them the most.

Icing on the cake was the local gaming shop also banned him and his crew and attempted to distance themselves as much as possible from that sort of patron.

How can anyone get that upset over coffee? Some people are just crazy.

Let’s see what the people in the comments had to say about this.

I am wondering about this as well.

I hope she did too.

Here is a gamer who loved the story.

Yeah, does he know what that word means?

This was pretty funny.

I bet he regretted acting like a child.

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.