A Customer Attacked a Barista for Asking Her to Wear a Mask. Bad Move: $32,000 in Tips Rolled In.

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Like clockwork, a customer walked into a Starbucks without a mask and loudly refused the barista’s request that she wear one (on order of county officials). A more authoritarian overreach, the customer had never seen, so this principled, in-the-right customer—who was denied service—took a photo of the barista, posted it on Facebook, and wrote, with exquisite moral clarity: “Meet lenen from Starbucks who refused to serve me cause I’m not wearing a mask. Next time I will wait for cops…”

Also like clockwork, Facebook users realized that the customer is not always right, masks can save lives, and this barista was unfairly maligned. The customer’s post backfired. Tens of thousands of people defended the worker, and a virtual tip jar was started on GoFundMe. More than $32,000 in tips rolled in.

Clocks are these mechanisms with springs and toothed gearwheels, and sometimes a dial. A working one measures time. It can be a synchronizing device, producing pulses at regular intervals. It can also tell you precisely when a maskless customer will call a barista “lenen.”

More tip stories please: recharge@motherjones.com.

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In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

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