'What a Jerk!' Woman Slammed for Trying To Make Purchase at Starbucks After It Closed A TikTok is going viral after a woman entered a Starbucks in San Francisco that was reportedly closed.
By Emily Rella Edited by Jessica Thomas
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
There's nothing more frustrating than pulling up to a store or restaurant only to find out that it's closed.
But with widespread staff shortages affecting service times and store hours, once cut-and-dry opening hours have become less reliable as stores attempt to adjust to pandemic-related disruptions.
One Starbucks shopper was not a happy camper when she discovered this upon entering a local Starbucks to purchase a confetti coffee mug.
TikTok user Rayah (@4rayah.sunshine), an avid Starbucks cup collector, uploaded a video of her attempting to purchase a rare mug in a San Francisco Starbucks only to be told by employees that she couldn't make the purchase because the store was closed, despite the door being unlocked.
"He's saying I can't buy it. Can you believe it? They're sitting right here and he's not letting me buy it," she says.
The employee can be heard saying "because we're closed" in the background.
"I didn't know they were closed until he said that," she explained in the text overlay, claiming that the doors to the store said that the location was open until 8 p.m.
@4rayah.sunshine ohh the disappointment #starbucks #starbuckscollector #almosthadit ♬ That's Not My Name - The Ting Tings
The camera then flips around to the woman in the parking lot.
"Oh, the disappointment was so high," she says to the camera after she leaves the store. "I went back in to chat with the manager, and because their hours are wrong, she said she put a cup on hold for me to come pick up tomorrow. Then I'd have to drive back. I also told her I wanted some of those white-studded [cups] and the employee hid them. Can you believe that? What a jerk!"
Unsurprisingly, most people in the comments did not agree with the shopper, telling her to "calm down" and leave the workers alone.
"Girl they're closed. They probably dropped the tills and did the audits/deposits," one commenter wrote. "A manager isn't gonna pull a new fill for you."
"If they're closed why go back and talk to the manager, leave the people alone," said another. "He's not letting you buy it because they're closed."
The video has received more than 40,400 likes and 321,000 views.
Last month, Starbucks announced that locations would be "scaling back" operations due to the pandemic.
"As we have since the beginning of the pandemic, local leaders can, and do scale operations based on partner availability and local COVID-19 factors," Starbucks explained in a statement. "These decisions are made on a store-by-store and market-by-market basis."
The chain was down around 11% as of Friday afternoon.