Barista stands up for herself after customer starts insulting her in middle of the shift

Dealing with a rude customer can be difficult for people in the service industry. Sometimes, people have to choose between professionalism and protecting themselves. A barista found herself in a similarly difficult situation when she decided to stand up for herself in the most powerful manner. Emma Lee, the owner and only worker at her coffee drive-thru Taste of Heaven Espresso in South Seattle, had a customer who started insulting her because he thought his coffee price was too high, per King 5 Seattle.

The man threatened Lee which led to her breaking his car's windshield. The barista shared with the outlet how she gets into her coffee shop every morning, turns on all the open signs and does all the work around there. "Women are allowed to respond when there is danger in ways other than crying," she expressed. The man argued with the barista for over 15 minutes over the price of coffee at the shop even though he was someone who had visited the stand before and was well aware of the prices.

It started with insults but the man eventually stepped out of his car. "For a customer to get out of a vehicle in any sense but especially to threaten, to argue, to do any of those things is so wildly inappropriate," the woman pointed out. The man took the drink and tried to splash the drink on Lee who closed the window just on time and was saved from the attack. "Nobody is going to miss you," people can hear the man saying in a clip featured on the channel. At this point, the woman knew that she had to take a strong action so she proceeded to take a hammer and crack the car's windshield.

The woman shared that she keeps multiple hammers in her shop. "I was scared and also I had confidence that he was not going to take it further than what he had already done," the barista pointed out. However, she added, "What am I going to wait to happen to have this to be what, an even more terrible story?" Lee told WTHR, "You have no problem harming me, you are making that clear."

“It’s one thing to yell, it’s one thing to get mad, it’s one thing to even be outside of your car and try to threaten me. But to have the action behind it, it changed things for me where I was like, ‘Oh no,'” the woman explained further. "If you were going to throw drinks at me and ruin my day, you're going to pay for a new windshield and that's going to ruin your day." The barista shared that the man refused to leave even after she broke his windshield. She finally had to call the cops on the man.

However, people even went as far as to say that Lee deserved whatever happened to her because of her profession. "The conversation needs to change from, 'What did she do to deserve that,' to 'Why did he think that was at all appropriate and what response was he expecting,'" Lee remarked. The cops have made it very clear to the barista that she is the victim in the situation and are thinking of ways to keep the man away. The woman even said, "The majority of men that pull up are kind, respectful and normal people that aren't looking at this as an opportunity to get my bad day out."