Kathleen L.
Yelp
This review is based on my experience on September 28th, along with my two coworkers - Racism experience with another customer.
We all went to Philz Coffee during our break, a place I had always associated with inclusivity and a strong anti-racism stance. Sadly, my recent experience left me feeling disappointed and disheartened. We all ordered and sat on the bench in front of the barista, while we wait for our drinks. As we were waiting for our drinks, we noticed this older woman who purposely dropped a large cup of ice on the floor and then she stepped on the pile of ice, trying to fall. My coworker called her out on that and made a comment saying that the woman purposely dropped the ice and is pretending to slip. None of the workers stepped in or seemed to acknowledge what my coworker said, when she was trying to stand up for the workers because of her behavior. The older woman was upset that my coworker called her out. She then walked away to a table, but kept staring at us. We then became her target. My coworker asked the woman why she kept staring at us. My coworker asked, "Why do you keep staring at us?!" The older woman then made a comment ending in, "Mexican ass." The older woman came back to the area where we were sitting, looked at us and stepped on the pile of ice again and said, "This is a message to you Mexicans. Like the ice, you Mexicans belong on the floor." Mind you, my coworker already called her out for being racist and even told the workers that the shop should not be serving anyone who is purposefully throwing ice on the floor and being racist, but nothing happened. Someone came over to clean up the ice, apologized and asked if we were ok. We later found out he was the manager, Nico.
We got our drinks and my coworker noticed that the older woman was taking photos. My coworker asked her why she was taking photos, but the older woman mumbled something and we left the shop. After we left, we were so disappointed that nothing happened to the woman. We called the shop and asked to speak to the manager. The manager was speaking and told us that after we left, they spoke to the older woman, told us that she was not allowed in the shop anymore and they wrote an incident report. If the workers spoke to the older woman and wrote an incident report, what really happened? When we called, no questions were asked for our side of the story. He then offered our next drinks on the house. I understand that it was a lot to take in at the moment, but for a coffee shop that does not tolerate racism, we were just disappointed with the outcome and no immediate action was taken when we told the shop she was being racist.