This is just pathetic. A cop says that a Starbucks worker wrote “pig” on his cup when he ordered coffee. And the dude was working on Thanksgiving too. [UPDATE BELOW]
From USA Today:
An Oklahoma police chief says an on-duty officer who picked up an order at a local Starbucks found the word “pig” on the drinks’ labels instead of the officer’s name.
Johnny O’Mara, the police chief in Kiefer, Oklahoma, shared an image of the cup in a Facebook post Thursday, explaining the officer had bought coffee for the town’s 911 dispatchers “as a thank you for all they do.”
“This is what he gets for being nice,” O’Mara wrote in the post.
“It’s another tiny pinprick into the heart of men and women who are asking themselves more often: ‘Why am I doing this?'” he continued.
He added the coffee shop offered to replace the coffee with a proper label, an offer he denied.
A Starbucks representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment from USA TODAY, but Jory Mendes, a Starbucks spokesman, confirmed to KOKH-TV in Oklahoma City and KTUL-TV in Tulsa that Starbucks has apologized and suspended a barista pending an investigation.
“What irks me is the absolute and total disrespect for a police officer who, instead of being home with family and enjoying a meal and a football game, is patrolling his little town,” O’Mara wrote.
Yeah no. That loser needs to be fired. The only good thing about these idiotic incidents against police is that the morons who perpetrate them end up unemployed. It’s like dumbass self-selection.
UPDATE: Starbucks reached out to us with a joint statement from the police about the incident:
Starbucks and the Kiefer Police Department are committed to using this regrettable incident as an opportunity to leverage our shared platforms to promote greater civility. In the coming days, Starbucks will be meeting with the Kiefer Police Department to begin discussing ways to work together, including a jointly hosted Coffee with a Cop event at Starbucks where local law enforcement can meet with baristas and members of the community to discuss the critical role dispatchers and police offers play in keeping our communities safe. Together with law enforcement agencies, Starbucks will jointly look for educational opportunities for our partners across the United States to promote better understanding and respect.
They also released a statement on their own, making sure that people knew this was completely against company policy.
This is absolutely unacceptable, and we are deeply sorry to the law enforcement officer who experienced this. We have also apologized directly to him and connected with the Chief of the Kiefer Police Department as well to express our remorse. The Starbucks partner who wrote this offensive word on a cup used poor judgement and is no longer a partner after this violation of company policy. This language is offensive to all law enforcement and is not representative of the deep appreciation we have for police officers who work tirelessly to keep our communities safe.”
I’m impressed that Starbucks reached out to us about this issue, it’s clear that they don’t want anything to do with idiots who disrespect law enforcement. Kudos to them on this one.