A Cleveland coffee shop sparked a heated debate with when an employee told a customer they were not allowed to buy a coffee for a homeless person.
The Copper Moon allegedly has a policy that bans customers from giving purchased goods to the homeless people loitering around the shop, according to an employee who was recorded in a TikTok.
In the August TikTok posted by @superheroeveryday2, a barista explains he is not able to sell her a coffee if she plans on giving it to a homeless person.
He claimed: ‘I will lose my job.
‘The policy is that that causes trouble for our employees because it has people harassing customers out front.’
In the caption, @superheroeveryday2 wrote: ‘He witnessed me speaking to a homeless man and the first thing he said is if the coffee is for him I cannot serve you.’
She went on to tell the barista that she did not feel threatened or harassed.
While filming, she kept the camera focused on the counter and did not show the barista’s face.
The employee allegedly asked the customer why the homeless man doesn’t get a job ‘like the rest of us’, according to her caption.
The Copper Moon did not respond to DailyMail.com’s requests for comment.
For @superheroeveryday2, this policy came as a massive shock – she could not believe that she was told what to do with her purchase.
But the issue was not as one-sided in the post’s comment section, where over 8,600 users shared their opinions on the matter.
Some users quickly came to the barista’s defense. One user said, ‘If you work in fast service food you understand.’
Another user chimed in with their personal experiences: ‘I had to tell customers to stop buying a guy stuff because he would hang out in the front the whole time and when people told him no, he would follow them around calling them names.’
People explained that a lot of the times, employees are given pressure from their managers to enforce these kinds of policies.
There were comments expressing understanding of both sides of the argument.
Someone added that ‘as someone in the food industry I understand’ but ‘as a human I don’t.’
Others said that she has the right to do whatever she likes with her money, so if that means buying something for a homeless man, that does not concern the business.
According to another comment @superheroeveryday2 left, she ended up buying the coffee and just giving it to the homeless man anyway.
She posted a follow-up video including a Google Review comment that The Copper Moon responded to.
The comment reads: ‘Don’t understand why your employees are stating that as customers we can’t buy homeless people items from this place.’
The Copper Moon wrote back that a homeless person steals tips and ‘defecates on the sidewalk.’
‘You don’t understand what led to this point.’