Barista Fired Over Blog After Posting About Customers, Boss

Seattle, WA – A barista was recently fired over posts made on his blog.

Matt Watson is the author of Bitter Barista, a blog that chronicles his adventures working inside a local coffee shop. According to The Associated Press, comments about customers and his employer ultimately ended with his termination.

Although Watson said he intended for the blog to be satirical, apparently nobody was happy with recent posts he made about his job at All City Coffee. In addition to admitting that he purposely served customers wrong food, Watson wrote that his vocabulary was too complex for his boss to completely understand.

The barista was eventually fired over his blog after another pair of coffee-oriented writers figured out his real identity. The Seattle Times reports that Zachary Carlsen and Jordan Michelman of Sprudge.com eventually put two and two together and outed Watson for being so mean.

Watson attempted to calm the waters by sending his boss the following email:

“Hey man, I’m guessing you’re not too excited about the Internet happenings today. The very few customers who have seen the website, are huge fans. And since the article was posted this afternoon, the ‘likes’ on my site have gone up 15%. This isn’t bad press, it’s actually really good press especially given your customer base and the type of neighborhood that Georgetown has become. I’m just saying, it could turn out to be a fun something that gives the place a little spike in publicity.”

Although Watson seemed to think the Bitter Barista would be good for business, his boss Seth Levy didn’t see things the same way. Since Levy didn’t want customers to think All City Coffee was supporting what Watson put on his blog, he decided to let him go.

Do you think the barista should have been fired from his job for blogging nasty things about his boss and the cafe’s customers?

[Image by Wikimedia Commons]