Mom Claims Starbucks Employee Threatened To Kick Her Out If She Didn’t Quiet Down Her 3-Year-Old, Per Their 'Coffeehouse Code Of Conduct'
The code of conduct ensures patrons a peaceful environment.
Tomsickova Tatyana | Shutterstock When a mom sat down with her enthusiastic toddler for breakfast at Starbucks, she did not anticipate a threat of being kicked out if she couldn’t get the little girl’s behavior under control.
The employee who issued the warning claimed that a quiet environment was part of the company’s “coffeehouse code of conduct” and that the toddler’s noise went against that code. The mom was left stunned since she had never had an experience like that before while dining at Starbucks with her kids.
A Starbucks employee threatened to kick a mom and her kids out if she failed to get her toddler's noise levels under control.
Cassadi Hernandez (@mrs.cassadi) said that in her eight years of being a mother, she has never been asked to leave an establishment due to her children’s behavior. That is, until recently, when she went to Starbucks for breakfast with her friend and her two kids. She claimed that the entire incident left her feeling humiliated.
According to Hernandez, once she sat down with her drinks and breakfast, her three-year-old daughter began demanding a cake pop. The mom said that her toddler was excited and banged her fists on the table as she chanted in a rather loud voice but not quite a shout, “I want cake pops!”
About a minute later, a Starbucks employee approached the table and informed Hernandez that if she couldn’t get her daughter to be quiet, they would have to leave the establishment.
According to the employee, the girl’s behavior was in violation of Starbucks’ new 'coffeehouse code of conduct.'
The recently introduced code of conduct aims to put an end to Starbucks’ open-door policy and to create a more peaceful environment. “Our goal is to create a welcoming environment. We expect everyone to treat one another with respect and follow our code of conduct,” according to the Starbucks website.
The expectations include no misuse or disruption of our spaces no discrimination or harassment, no violence or abusive/threatening language , no consuming outside alcohol, no smoking/vaping or drug use and no panhandling. However, it did not state that children are forbidden from chanting for cake pops.
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Even though Hernandez was stunned and unsure how to respond to the employee, her friend jumped in to inform the worker that the little girl was just an excited toddler who was unaware of her volume. The employee responded that despite the little girl’s age, she was expected to behave well and use an indoor voice to avoid disturbing other patrons.
Hernandez claimed that there were only a couple of other people in the Starbucks, and that the AC and music were running loudly, drowning out her daughter’s noise. Now, she wondered if the Starbucks employee had a valid point, and if her daughter really was breaking some sort of rule book she was unaware of.
Most people believed that the Starbucks employee was being unreasonable.
“They’re ridiculous. A huge portion of their market are TIRED MOMS WHO NEED COFFEE. Hopefully they can feel some backlash if this goes viral,” one TikTok user noted of Starbucks.
“I would report the store,” another user suggested. “Starbucks coffee isn’t good enough for them to be acting like this,” another wrote.
However, others understood the employee’s perspective.
“I get it, but a lot of these workers are underpaid. It’s their career choice (unfortunately) but sometimes people go there to study or work and need to keep a calm environment,” one user commented. “How about you just control your kids?” another user wrote.
While Starbucks is a popular study and work destination for many people, they likely go there with an awareness that it won’t be a completely quiet environment. There are baristas shouting out order numbers, espresso machines hissing, and oven timers going on and off. Occasionally, they may even run into a noisy toddler.
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Kids will be kids, and while they are bound to get loud, run around or act out as they are learning how to human, and appropriately act in public, if they shout for a prolonged period of time or are disturbing others around them, the polite thing to do is remove them from the situation until they’ve mellowed out.
If an adult had been banging their fists demanding cake pops, we can almost guarantee that they would’ve also been asked to leave, coffeehouse conduct code or not! Still, this doesn't mean they don't have the right to exist in public spaces.
Megan Quinn is a staff writer with a bachelor's degree in English and a minor in Creative Writing. She covers news and lifestyle topics that focus on justice in the workplace, personal relationships, parenting debates, and the human experience.
