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Most people learn pretty early in life that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. But unfortunately, not everyone gets the message.

This barista, like many young people, enjoys expressing herself through her physical appearance. In other words, she’s into tattoos, piercings, and brightly colored hair.

Most customers never give it a second thought. However, one older woman decided that her appearance said everything she needed to know about her character.

The next thing she knew, she was telling the lady to basically show respect or leave.

As you would guess, her boss wasn’t impressed, and now she’s wondering if she took things too far.

Read on to see what happened next.

AITA for calling out a customer who was discriminating against my appearance?

I am a 24f barista. I have a bit of an alternative look, so that means many piercings, many tattoos and currently I have bright purple hair.

This older woman came in before work and thought it was ok to immediately start talking about how my appearance was “unprofessional” and that I looked “like a delinquent.” She was adamant about speaking to my manager because the style of people serving customers is generally “normal” not some young punk. Something like that!

I’ve been on the receiving end of comments like that before, usually I just smile it off and carry on.

Then, things got even worse.

Then, what does she do? Start get really loud, calling me a delinquent and she’s saying that I’m probably doing drugs and shouldn’t be working around food.

Other customers were looking around, some seemed uncomfortable, but I was trying not to involve anyone else.

My co-worker even tried helping me because she couldn’t believe what the woman was saying, but she was relentless!

Her manager wasn’t very happy.

Finally I said, “Ma’am, regardless of my appearance, it isn’t a reflection of my ability to make your coffee. If you wish to continue to be discriminating, I will ask you to leave.”

She stormed out of the shop bad mouthing me and saying she would be leaving a few bad reviews.

My manager wasn’t impressed with my response even though he easily agreed the lady was wrong.

AITA?

Wow! What a rude thing to do to someone just doing their job.

Let’s take a look at what the folks over at Reddit think about it.

Here’s an interesting comment.

This person likes how she handled it.

This would just get her in more trouble.

Yet another reader who thinks she handled it well.

Sure, the barista probably could have handled the situation a little differently.

However, that doesn’t excuse the customer’s behavior. She walked into a coffee shop and immediately started criticizing a complete stranger over her appearance, and nobody has the right to do that.

After all, most of us learned the Golden Rule as children. If you don’t want someone making rude comments about the way you look, then don’t make rude comments about the way they look.

At some point, enough is enough. The lady kept pushing and got what she deserved.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who just let clients complain after her boss refused to approve overtime.