Starbucks Teen Barista Rebukes a Customer By Defending a Mother's Right to Breastfeed

It’s Wednesday morning in Ottawa, Canada. Julia Wykes is out shopping with her 5-month old son. She decided to visit the Starbucks on Trainyards Drive. According to Monica Beyer at the website She Knows, “She’d planned on getting a drink to go, but her little boy became fussy so she sat down for a moment to tend to him. There weren’t very many seats available, so the one she chose was close to the cash register.” The next thing Julia heard was a complaint from a nearby customer. Julia recalled, “A woman very loudly complained (so she knew I could hear) to the baristas that they should get me to stop doing that in public as it was disgusting. The barista smiled at her and said he would handle it. I was gearing up for a fight.” The barista Alex Kim approached, setting down a free refill for Julia and stating loudly, “And here’s a voucher for a free drink next time you’re in here, I am so sorry that you had to deal with such unpleasantness today.” The week old Facebook post about the incident has gone viral, gathering nearly 30,000 likes and eliciting over 1,200 comments. It has been picked up globally by outlets such as Yahoo! the UK’s Daily Mail. Julia Wykes herself has written about it in the Huffington Post.