Baristas come up with genius prank to deal with angry customers — they 'fire' each other for fun

Customers leaving a restaurant with hostile feedback can seriously damage its reputation, with staff often coming under fire from the manager or owner for perceived poor service. To tackle such situations, a high school student, also a part-time employee at a coffee shop, came up with a quirky solution. The part-time worker—who goes by u/throwRA-fhfsveyary on Reddit—shared how she pranked rude customers into believing she had been fired due to their unkind remarks. However, the reality was quite different, as she had conspired with her co-workers to handle the constantly nagging diners.

In the post, the then-school-going student shared how she pretended to get fired whenever customers showed anger toward her. She worked weekends at a coffee shop, alongside her co-workers-turned-friends, James and Danielle. James, the owner’s son, also attended the same school and was assigned to manage the shift. “He’s a shift manager, but it’s not a real formal thing; he’s a friendly guy,” the woman wrote in her 2019 post. Her second colleague, Danielle, was a college student who occasionally worked weekends as well.

Many times, the three of them encountered really angry customers, often agitated over silly things. The high schooler found them "blowing up literally about nothing." "I don’t know if they’re already in a bad mood and looking for someone to take it out on or what, but it’s a lot,” she explained. “Like, how sad do you have to be to be a grown-a** man taking your anger out on high school and college kids?” the part-time worker added while recalling an incident. Notably, the high schooler and James often joked about having a little fun with angry customers to defuse tense situations.

"(We were) hopefully getting them off our backs," she wrote. One day, the duo encountered a particularly temperamental customer. The woman shared how she was at work when a man got angry because his freshly made coffee wasn’t hot enough. "I couldn’t do a thing about it," she remarked, indicating the helpless situation, and further emphasized, “I gave it to him right out of the machine.” James intervened to calm the heated customer by politely asking, “Sir, is there a problem here?” But the man was in no mood to cool down and started ranting at him.

James quickly came up with a response and told his friend to leave immediately. “This is unacceptable; you’re fired,” he said. The high schooler, playing along, gave a “real sad” expression and started pleading. “No, please don’t fire me. My family needs the money. I need this job, please,” she said while James continued the act. He told her to take off her apron and leave the eatery immediately. At this point, the angry customer started to backtrack, realizing his actions might cost her the job. "It isn’t that big of a problem; you don’t need to fire her over it. I didn’t mean it," he said. However, James remained firm and countered, "No, we pride ourselves on the best customer service."

After all the drama, the high schooler revealed she still had her job, as it was all an act. “We’ve done it a couple of times whenever a customer loses their temper at Danielle or me,” she explained. “James will storm in and ‘fire’ us, and almost every time, the person who came in angry will apologize and say they didn’t mean it. It’s kind of satisfying, making people realize their actions might actually have consequences,” she concluded. The post received widespread attention and sparked a variety of reactions. Among them, u/bellePunk commented, “That’s a perfect way of dealing with hostile customers.” “When hostile customers try to backtrack on what they say, it makes it worth it. OP’s tactic hopefully teaches them to stop complaining to service workers about things out of their control,” u/commadusarelius added.