THE NEWS CHICK BLOG

Woman kicked out of Starbucks

Aug 17, 2010, 2:59 AM | Updated: Mar 28, 2011, 3:46 pm

If you’ve ever felt intimidated while ordering something from Starbucks – wait, is a venti the small or large drink – you might appreciate Lynne Rosenthal who got into a shouting match with a barista at a New York Starbucks. She apparently refused to order the correct way.

It started when Rosenthal asked for a toasted multigrain bagel. The server at Starbucks asked her if she wanted butter or cheese with that, according to the New York Post.

StarbucksBagelThat seems like a reasonable question to me. She could have said “butter” or “cheese” or “neither, thank you.” She didn’t. Rosenthal refused to answer.

She told the Post, “Linguistically, it’s stupid, and I’m a stickler for correct English.” Rosenthal contends you shouldn’t have to list the items you don’t want, and the employee should have assumed she wanted it plain.

Rosenthal yelled, “I want my multigrain bagel!”

The employee reportedly said, “You’re not going to get anything unless you say butter or cheese!”

At that point, Rosenthal wasn’t going to back down, the two started shouting, and someone called NYPD’s finest to the Starbucks shop. Rosenthal was asked to leave, and she did. But she tells the newspaper she was “humiliated.”

“If you don’t use their language, they refuse to serve you. They don’t understand what a plain multigrain bagel is.”

Starbucks might have lost a customer with Rosenthal, but they are keeping a lot of others happy. They have the best coffee in America according to a new Zagat survey. For the second year in a row, Zagat gave Starbucks a double-shot of praise for having the best fast-food chain coffee. Dunkin’ Donuts was second, followed by McDonald’s.

(Multigrain bagel photo courtesy Pinoycravings.com. Incidentally, it has 320 calories and 4 grams of fat without the butter and cheese.)

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