Amber Lynn Gilles, Woman Who Berated A Starbucks Employee, Wants Half Of The Donation Funds Raised For Him
Last month a woman named Amber Lynn Gilles of San Diego, California, publicly berated a young Starbucks employee named Lenin Gutierrez. Strangers all across the country donated to a GoFundMe page to raise money in an effort to share their support for Gutierrez. Now Gilles says she wants half of the donations raised, according to The New York Post.
The incident began when Gilles entered this particular Starbucks location without protective equipment on. Gutierrez refused to serve the customer because she didn’t have a face mask, as was required there. As a result, Gilles filmed the employee and posted the clip online, where she got significant backlash.
“Meet lenen [sic] from Starbucks who refused to serve me cause I’m not wearing a mask. Next time I will wait for cops and bring a medical exemption,” she wrote in the post, which has since been deleted from Facebook.
Many people did not think it was fair that Gutierrez was treated like this simply because he was trying to do his job. Hundreds of people donated to the GoFundMe page started on his behalf, ultimately raising a total of $105,445.
Gilles intends to fight for half of this money, claiming she was the one who was treated unjustly.
“It was discrimination and everybody is OK with it and enabling and rewarding that behavior,” she said, referencing the way people showed their support for Gutierrez and criticized her.
She also claimed that she has medical issues that make her exempt from needing to wear a mask, as is required by law in some countries across the United States. Gilles expressed her opinion that facial coverings do not adequately protect someone from getting or spreading COVID-19, despite what health officials claim.
“I get shortness of breath, dizziness and it messes with the heartbeat. And I do have asthma as well, and I do get mask-acne. So there’s several things going on and not only that but it doesn’t even work,” she said.
She also provided medical documents, one of which claimed that at one point, she had an ovarian cyst. It is not clear, however, how this would impact her ability to wear a face covering.
As The Inquisitr previously reported, this is only one of many controversial stories of individuals complaining about having to wear face masks during the pandemic. One particular viral video featured a woman who refused to put on a facial covering at a Trader Joe’s as required. In addition to yelling at customers and employees, she threw her shopping basket down before exiting the store.