A video recently made the rounds online from a coffee stand in the USA. It shows an altercation – audio and all – of an unhappy customer and a barista/business owner.
The short story is that he was mad about the prices, and got out of his car to air his frustration. It escalated, to the point where he spat at her, tried to open her window, and threatened her life. She then threatened to throw his drinks on him if he didn’t get back into his car and leave, and instead gave him back the drinks when he asked for them. He then threw them on her, and as he got back into his car, she reached out and smashed his windshield with a hammer.
Now, for some context.
Should she just have called the police? She did. But they take time to arrive, of course.
Was anyone trying to help? Yep. The car behind, but they got back into their vehicle when it escalated.
How did he not know the price? He certainly should have – they’re marked on the sign where you order.
Who was this guy? A regular customer. This was not his first time to the coffee shop, nor his first exposure to the aforementioned prices.
How much were the coffees? Irrelevant.
Wait a minute… isn’t that the “bikini barrista”? It is. Also irrelevant.
Our question is: how much is too much when it comes to defending yourself when you feel threatened? As much as we want to pretend all things are equal, in this case – as in so many cases – the woman was much smaller than the man. The woman initially threatened to throw the drinks, he threatened her life. The woman damaged his property (for which she’ll likely be taken to small claims court), while he threatened and attempted to assault her physically.
Here, you’re not only seeing the male/female dynamic, you’re seeing a customer versus a service person. Recent studies funded by the BBC define it as “people who aren’t in service positions [feeling] superior to people who are, and it’s much easier to punch down.”. They are finding evidence that the volume of abuse toward people in service jobs has been increasing in recent years, and was likely exacerbated by COVID and its lingering frustration and feelings of lost control.
Some other findings from a Retail Guild shared:
87% of their service role workers have experienced verbal abuse from a customer
13% have experienced physical violence from a customer
9% have been spat on
17% have experienced sexual assault and/or harassment
52% of incidents were by repeat offenders
And, of course, all of those incidents are over-represented by women.
Power dynamics are dangerous. Whether that’s in your home, your job, or out in the world. When people don’t feel safe, they understandably react. Fight, flight, freeze or fawn. You don’t necessarily know how you’ll react when you’re threatened, and you can’t necessarily control it either.
But, how much is too much? How do you know which method is best for the person by whom you feel threatened? Could your reaction make it worse? Could no reaction make it worse? How much of the outcome could be affected by the power dynamic?
We can’t know if this particular woman’s reaction was the best course, because we saw no other course play out. We weren’t there, we don’t know these people, and we don’t know every factor that was distilled down to the 30 seconds of video shared all over the internet.
Let’s face it though, should the question really be what she should have done differently? That’s what the internet seems to think. The question should always be: why on earth was this man behaving this way in the first place?
Think about it like when one sibling is poking and poking and poking the other one, until the latter shoves them back. If the poking never happened, the reaction wouldn’t have either.
How do we, as a society, deal with people’s coping skills? You’re frustrated, that’s fine. Understandable even. But how do we support people – and teach our kids and the next generation – so they aren’t taking that frustration out on the people around them? How do we normalize those mechanisms versus analyzing to find ways to excuse or rationalize the behaviour? How do we break down the perception of social hierarchy based on something as simple as your profession?
In the meantime, what are these people on the receiving end meant to do? An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, but should they really be expected to hold the high ground no matter what?
If people are okay with abusing service staff in broad daylight, in public, and in front of security cameras… you can only imagine what happens behind closed doors.
Disrespect, abuse and violence is a complicated problem. We need to keep talking about it.