A Seattle coffee shop
employee was fired after being named as the snarky, sour blogger behind the
Twitter famous handle ‘The Bitter Barista’. His satirical tweets caught the
attention of a community online, who shared and appreciated his rough style of
delivering the truth of what it is really like to stand behind the café
counter.
 |
| Matt Watson Aka. The Bitter Barista |
Matt
Watson, 30, had become quite the online sensation while keeping his identity
and the coffee shop that he worked at anonymous. Providing a real world bitter
narrative of the difficulties of working in customer service.
After
2 weeks of being live he gained the attention of Facebook and Twitter, though
not all of it was positive. Some believed it wasn’t appropriate to bring
attention to the dim-witted things that come out of people’s mouths. It is my
opinion that these people who protested had never worked in customer service,
or had recognized some of the tweets as things they have said. Rude people are
everywhere unfortunately, and if venting about the said rude people on social
media is what helps him get through the day then I see no problem with it. Not
to mention he brings joy to others with similar experiences.
"No, swearing at me
will not get you better service," he tweeted. "It will get you
decaf."
Unfortunatley
Watson did not remain anonomys for long, after Sprudge.com, a gossip and news
site did some digging and outed him as the face behind The Bitter Barista
calling his tweets an ‘all-out assult on whomever walks through the door of
[the] café’ Sprudge.com writer Llewellyn Sinclair added “Blog work like this
probably shouldn’t be encouraged, which is why blogs like Bitter Barista need
to be shown the cold light of day.”
Watson
maintains that his blog was entirely satire, and though some posts about his
manager and customers were not-so-nice, it was based on a small percentage of
his time spent working at All City Coffee.
He told the Seattle Times that his blog was about "the 5 percent
who I guess make our job more difficult and don’t treat us as human beings’ but
that he had “a good personal relationship with 95 percent of customers."
Despite
this, Sprudge.Com’s interference and public ‘outing’ of Watson was deemed a
good enough reason for his boss Seth Levy to fire him.
"He
was writing about his boss during business hours," Levy said. "I
represent the business, the customers and the staff. I can’t endorse what he
was saying, whether humorous or not. It puts me in a difficult position, where
if I don’t respond that means I endorse what he’s saying.”
Luckily
for Watson it seems like he won’t be out of a job for long. He’s received
offers from multiple other coffee houses who have a sense of humor about his
blog. There are even plans of turning The Bitter Barista into a coffee table
book.
After
all the drama, the Bitter Barista is back online, just now with an added
disclaimer:
Interested in ‘getting
bitter’? Click the link.
I find this story slightly
frustrating; though I am glad that Matt was able to come out ahead my annoyance
comes from those who were involved in revealing his identity. The fact that
Matt was outed and put on blast by a third party company with no involvment in
the situation is un-fair to me. I feel if All City Café has a bone to pick with
anyone it should be Sprudge.com for publicly revealing Watsons identity and in
turn the café that is referred to in the blog.
Watson made no mention of
the café in his posts, so it wasn’t a story until Sprudge.com made it one.
There are hundreds of personalities on Twitter and Facebook who poke fun at the
world and bring light to annoyances to get a laugh, is it really nesscary to
bring all these people to ‘the cold light of day’ and prosecute them in the
workplace due to it?
Here is Sprudge.com’s
opinion on the matter:
Sprudge.com makes mention
of “rape jokes, references to violence
and animal abuse, as well as endangering customers with food allergies and
dietary restrictions” Though I have not seen any posts by The Bitter Barista
that mentions rape, violence or animal abuse and not sure if that is just an
attempt to make Mr.Watson look bad. I feel like it is worth mentioning that it
is a bit of a stretch to say that he was ‘endangering’ customers due to their
dietary restrictions. And I feel like it is a serious accusation, considering
no past customers have come forward to claim they had received product that
made them sick. Sprudge.com clearly needs to learn to not take everything they
see on the internet literally.
As for the manager’s
decision to fire Watson I understand why that decision was made. After
Sprudge.com had turned this into a story there was really no other choice then
to let Watson go. For the sake of the customers who regularly visit All City
Café as well as the manager that had posts directed at them. I can see why Seth
Levy felt this decision was necessary in order to maintain the integrity of the
café.
On the other hand if
Sprudge.com had not featured the story and Seth Levy had found out about the
blog through co-workers or in any other non-public way I would expect that Mr.
Watson should still have his job. The blog was an expression of Mr. Watsons’
personality and thoughts, and without mention of the All City Café there would
be no grounds for his dismissal.
I still feel like it should
have never gotten to this point, but do to the circumstances I understand why
Mr. Watson was fired.
By: Lindsey Clark
Read more: http://www.upi.com/blog/2013/02/13/Bitter-Barista-fired-over-snarky-blog/7621360772065/#ixzz2Q4S3a4yq
No comments:
Post a Comment