Footage of a barista attacking a customer’s car with a hammer after he threw his drinks over her has gone viral online.
The barista, 23-year-old Emma Lee of Seattle, Washington has responded to the viral video, stating that ‘the conversation needs to change.’
In the video, that looks like it has come from a security camera at the A Taste of Heaven Espresso drive-thru, you can see the angry customer throw two entire coffees over the drive-thru hatch and Lee.
She claims that she was acting in self-defense, and that there were no legal repercussions for her reaction to the aggressive customer.
According to Lee, this happened because the customer, who is a regular, complained that he was being scammed after being charged $22 for a 24-ounce and 22-ounce iced coffee.
The footage recording shows a heated argument between the pair, with the customer getting out of his car to confront Lee.
The man can be heard telling Emma on the CCTV footage ‘nobody is going to miss you’.
The 23-year-old told Fox News the man had screamed and spat at her, while trying to pry open the window.
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As things became more heated, Emma asked the man: “If you don’t leave I’m going to throw this [the coffee] at you. Do you want me to throw this at you?”
Lee then proceeds to produce a hammer, with which she leans out of the drive-thru hatch, and smashes a hole in the customer’s windshield.
After local authorities and police got involved, Lee defended herself, stating: “Women are allowed to respond when there is danger. I think the conversation needs to change from what did they do to deserve that, to why did he think that was at all appropriate?”
In the news interview, Emma holds the hammer in her hand and says that she has spoken to three of four different police officers, and they have not mentioned the fact that she attacked the customer’s car, and that they instead have focused on how they can keep that customer from returning.
Although some people were wondering why a hammer was at hand in the coffee shop, the majority of people online are applauding the 23-year-old, stating that she is a ‘bad a**’ and that no service worker deserves to be treated that way over an iced coffee.
This isn’t the only crazy food-related incident that’s been going viral, a hotdog eating champion was banned from a competition for promoting vegan products.