Usually when you hear about a woman being shamed for breastfeeding in public, it’s a customer at a restaurant or a passenger on plane. This story comes with a twist. This time, it was the customer that was angry at an employee who was feeding her child after returning to work from maternity leave.
Most of the time, the customer is always right, right? Not this time! The customer was served a cold shoulder by the owner of cafe and it was glorious.
The incident happened at the The Veg Box Café in Canterbury, England. The complaining customer observed the waitress breast-pumping milk and immediately left, presumably disgusted.
She returned the next day though.
The customer returned, likely sure that her complaint that her “lunch was ruined” would be registered by the owner and the offending waitress would be disciplined. Instead, the owner threw shade on the customer and banned her forever.
In her Facebook post, which has been since deleted, the owner wrote, “Sadly one of our lovely members of staff was shamed by a rude customer for very discreetly pumping the other day. This is not OK, and we continue to reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.”
As you might expect on social media, the responses were all over the place some agreed:
“Thank you for upholding the law and protecting your employee from discrimination.”
“It’s such a shame a customer has behaved in such a disrespectful way to a parent just feeding their baby.”
“There is nothing more natural than a mother feeding their baby — just like adults need to eat, so do babies.”
“OK, is it OK if I take a piss anywhere too? Hey, it’s only natural! Nope, there are toilets for that kind of ‘natural behavior’ and that’s the respectful way to live in a society.”
“Bodily fluids don’t belong where other people are eating. Wasn’t discreet enough if a costumer [sic] was able to see them/notice. Do you not have a staff room?”
What do you think, was the cafe right in banning the customer or was the customer right that the waitress should have do the pumping elsewhere? Let us know in the comments!
