Viral TikTok footage shows a heated argument between a Starbucks manager and an angry customer, dubbed a “Karen.”
Another Starbucks employee, a TikToker known as Carystas (@carystas), shared the footage, captioning it, “oh no, a wild Karen who thinks this is Pre-K. good on the manager for her spine!”
The video begins mid-argument, with the Karen standing on the customer side of the Starbucks checkout and the manager standing across from her behind the register. The two can be heard shouting unintelligibly at first, but it sounded like the Karen threatened to throw something.
Apparently, the confrontation began over the wrong flavor being added to the Karen’s original order. It’s unclear what specific flavor prompted the outburst.
“You throw it at someone, and I will get you for assault because I got you on video, lady,” Carystas yelled to the Karen.
Then the Karen shouted that she would call the police on the Starbucks employees. The manager told her to leave, but the Karen demanded a cup of coffee.
The manager said she wouldn’t give the Karen the coffee if she kept acting “like this” and told her to leave. The Karen shouted to stop asking her to leave.
“I’m not asking, I’m telling. You need to leave,” the manager said loudly. “I am the manager of this establishment. You need to get out.”
In response, the Karen called her a “fucking pig” and stormed toward the door. Before leaving, she turned to call the manager a pig again and yelled at her to “shut up.”
“You brat. You fucking spoiled shit,” the Karen shouted. At that point, the manager shouted back, “Get the fuck out.”
The Karen finally did leave, but not before telling the manager to “go to hell.” The manager said “you too” then told the Karen to have a nice day.
The footage received about 1.3 million views and more than 5,300 comments as of Tuesday, and viewers had a lot to say about the Karen’s sense of entitlement.
“But it’s millennials and gen z that are entitled, right?” one viewer commented on the video.
“I’ll never understand why the 90’s babies are labeled as entitled. 98% of my awful customers were ages 40-75,” another viewer wrote.
Other viewers said customer service employees shouldn’t have to put up with people like the Karen.
“We need to normalize employees not taking abuse like this from customers because it’s not right no one deserves to go work for that behavior,” one TikToker commented.
Another said, “can we please start normalizing other people in the store stepping up to help these poor service industry workers I’m getting so tired of this.”
In a second TikTok video, Carystas explained that the incident happened while the Karen was ordering her coffee. According to the TikToker, the Karen ordered a coffee without specifying what flavor she wanted, and when she got the coffee, she complained that the flavor was wrong.
After about two or three times of remaking the coffee without a specific flavor request, the Karen got mad, Carystas said. Another barista tried to help, but the Karen was annoyed that they kept asking her so many questions and wanted them to just get her coffee.
Then the manager intervened because one of the high schooler employees didn’t want to take the Karen’s order again.
“I’m scared — they’re yelling at kids. They’re yelling at people who don’t get paid enough for this,” Carystas said in the video.
TikTok user @carystas did not respond to the Daily Dot’s request for comment via TikTok comment. The Daily Dot also reached out to Starbucks.
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