Dear Urban Diplomat: my barista’s first name offends me—what can I do about her?

105 thoughts on “Dear Urban Diplomat: my barista’s first name offends me—what can I do about her?”

1. I can’t believe this is a serious question. Complaining about someone’s name to their manager. I appreciate your grief but given this person isn’t even white from the sounds of things, it has nothing to do with Germany. Not surprising this is from Yorkville….

2. solution:

   go to a different coffee place.

   Solved.

3. Some years ago I met a young lady name “Swastika” – a Hindu name I believe. Now, if the two were working together, I just might be a little suspicious of the manager.

4. What happens if she believes that she still is reminded of the suffering of her parents because she has to take a detour for her $6 coffee every morning?

5. Although I am a bit surprised she chooses to have her name on her name tag. (Whenever I’ve had the option of a name tag, I choose a variation on my name that cannot be as easily mispronounced as a curse word. Saves me a bunch of numbnuts making crude comments.) It’s certainly her right to go by her proper name.
   I can appreciate it being upsetting to someone, but not that someone failing to realize that there is something they need to handle within themself, and maybe work on contextualizing appropriately in their mind, not something that is her fault.
   Good on UB for doing a few seconds of research to find out a root for that name.

6. What are the chances that someone whose parents died around 70 years ago visits Starbucks every morning? This question must have been fabricated by TL!

   I also highly doubt someone over 70 is overpaying for a latte everyday.

7. I doubt the plural of Starbucks is “Starbuckses.”

8. You’re right, it’s “venti”.

9. If this customer’s parents died in the Holocaust, it means the customer is old and just perpetuating the streotype that old people are nasty complainers. (He) probably leaves a shitty tip, too.

10. This poor girl has to work at Starbucks and serve mediocre coffee to pretentious assholes all day. Cut her some slack and go easy on her name.

11. Why does he have to leave a tip anyways?

12. How, why, did Toronto LIfe take this question seriously? Really? Really?! I’m sure from the pile of mail you received, you could have selected from hundreds of other questions. Toronto Life, you should be ashamed for publishing such vitriol.

13. Go be with your parents!

14. TL did not receive this question in the mail (or via e-mail). It was likely fabricated by an unpaid intern, in their offices!

15. You’re assuming that the person in question was a child during the Holocaust (not a valid assumption). Also not a valid assumption that there aren’t well-off coffee lovers who are over 70 (my 72 year old father would certainly have a quibble with you about that).

16. Lowbrow.

17. Well, if they weren’t a child during the Holocaust, that means they were an adult and would be older than 80, so my assumption is valid.

    I’m not saying there are not any well-off coffee lovers over 70 – just that it is highly unlikely they visit TarBucks EVERY morning.

18. “Stupid question! No double sugar latte for you, six months!”

19. I’m trying to figure out if this is a joke, white privilege or just a symptom of getting old and not able to take certain memories anymore.

20. Please provide supporting evidence for your claim. (Your incredulity is not sufficient.)

21. Or not.
    Heck, Toronto is multicultural now. There are 5 million of us in the GTA, many from a lot of different places. I was served by a girl named Rabbit the other day – after that, I’ve basically come to accept that anything and everything exists here. For all we know, some white people name like “Susan” or “Frank” might mean horrific things phonetically in other languages…

22. Fabricated by some stupid intern at this web site.

23. I am increasingly disappointed by this column and it is insipid and fabricated woes. Perhaps it is time to take it out of circulation.

24. so if I hear the person correctly she wants the barista to be sensitive to the customer’s culture yet won’t do the same for the barister’s culture? jeez talk about entitlement. Do you really think her parents named her that just so that one day you’d find it offensive? mind your own business

25. Dear friend, Nazi is a Persian name and it means cute, it has nothing to do with Germany. Enjoy your coffee and let the bad memories go away :)

26. Thir girl simply have enough problems vith this name, please don’t make it worse.

27. As other writers have indicated, this post sounds like a hoax. “…parents died in the holocaust”? No doubt long before he/she was born…

28. “Not surprising this is from Yorkville…” Interesting how the stupidity of the under-33 crowd tends to Antisemitism…

29. Please explain?

30. Yes, just as I said above.

31. Do these “chosen people” every stop complaining? I’m surprised she didn’t complain that coffee was too hot? Amirite?

32. Nobody over 30 is dumb enough to buy Starbucks.

33. Not just Jews died in the Holocaust. No, you are not right. And you don’t write well, either.

34. The obvious question to me that I didn’t see mentioned is why did she chose to spell her name that way. If I’m not mistaken her native Farsi script is not Latin so she had options to choose different spellings for the same pronunciation, a feature of English language that’s otherwise widely complained about. For example why not spell it Nauzy, Nausi, Nasi, etc.

35. I am a barista and I serve lattes and cappuccinos to plenty of our elders who know and love the new coffee scene. Stop being an idiot.

36. Nazy is short for Farnaz. It is a term of endearment and nickname. I live in LA amongst an enormous Jewish Persian community and many friends if mine and members of our synagogue Conservative, Sinai Temple have the name Nazy

37. I don’t think Juniormistmaker meant that the customer was Jewish/from Yorkville. I think they meant the customer was a jerk/from Yorkville.

38. She probably didn’t choose the spelling of her name based on whether it would offend others, or even based on what would be easiest for English speakers to pronounce. It’s entirely possible that the spelling of her name was chosen by the person who typed out her birth certificate or visa or whatever.

39. No. Solution – realize your experiences don’t grant you power over people.

40. Also for many people who learn English in a different country, such intricacies of the English language may not be obvious. Speaking from what I know of my fellow Iranians, I think we tend spell our name in the new language based on the letters of the old language: In Farsi, it is spelled N-A-Z-I and we use the same letters thinking it will sound the same way not realizing English speakers will not elongate the A as much or put emphasis on the Z. We have learned that U sounds has an “oo” sound and so it would not occur to us to include a U in there. Having lived in Canada for 17 years now, I think, given a choice, I would have spelled both my first and last names differently for better pronounciation and less confusion. But that only came to me after many years of seeing how people butcher my name here. I would not have known this prior.

41. Only if you stop serving burnt coffee, moron.

42. Yep – you would know…

43. No Emi Nemi’s point is that this person’s parents could have been young during the holocaust and had children AFTER the war. Many holocaust survivors had children after the war.

    On another point, there is actually a Persian kosher catering company in London called Nazis. It’s just a Persian name. It’s possible the barista is also Jewish.

44. No, the letters says the parents DIED in the Holocaust. So the complainer has to be at least 70.

45. Because it’s funny and acts as clickbait.

46. Who the hell tips at Starbucks?

47. Do Jewish people have white privilege now? I thought it was just white Christians and Atheists, damn, the goalposts keep moving, so unusual for a hipster buzzword beloved by the tumblrtards.

48. God damnit, don’t discourage her!! Seriously, TRY complaining. No need to ask Toronto Life. Just see what happens. Sometimes you have to learn things the practical way.. ESPECIALLY when it comes down to something like this.

    We get it, your parents died in the Holocaust. Do you honestly believe you’re the ONLY one who had to suffer due to it?

    YOU GET TO DRINK STARBUCKS DAILY AND CONSIDER IT AN EXPENSE. OH YOU ARE GREATLY SUFFERING!

    You don’t think her parents may have been affected by the World War as well? Don’t use that kind of non nonsensical garbage argument in Toronto this day in age. This city is way too multicultural for anyone to care about your personal problems.

    There are people who have moved to this city and have lived in Mogadishu their entire lives. Try go complaining to them.

    What would your SOLUTION be anyway? Never get upset about something unless you have a mutual and reasonable solution to offer.

    Seriously? Get over it.

49. Not only that, but even skin-color doesn’t matter. In my experience, anyone who doesn’t believe in the notion of ‘white privilege’ is today considered guilty of ‘white privilege’…

50. It’s obviously a hoax, for reasons not easily demonstrable to the under-33 crowd. Seeing as it has provoked such hostility (to Jews, to the elderly and to “the rich”), one has to pose the questions of malicious intent both on the part of the writer and on the part of “Toronto Life.” Personally, I think there is malicious intent, but of a passive variety — the paper needed copy, neither the writer nor his editor really knew any better — so they decided, why not? Obviously if the story had been about a “minority”-person complaining, they would have vetted it. So the malice is deduced from the fact that — faced with the risk of provoking an unjust ire at those who are white, Jewish, elderly and/or financially comfortable — the writer and “Toronto Life” were only pleased enough to take it…

51. I hope it’s a hoax and there is not actually a person out there so controlling that they expect a person to change their name for his/her comfort’s sake instead of dealing with their own emotional scars through therapy or other means or just going to other coffee shops. Just out of curiosity though, what epiphany happens at 33 that would make us so much more insightful? I’m 32 and would like to know what I have to look forward to :)

52. Finally, even if the letter is not a hoax — even if “Toronto Life” received a letter from an 85 year-old of feeble intelligence, or a 70 year-old who uses the expression “my parents died in the Holocaust” to refer to some very different kind of events (e.g., of her parents dying in the USSR 5 or 10 years after the war) — its un-disclaimered publication is still irresponsible and probably malicious. If an out-patient writes a letter to my newspaper stating he doesn’t like “black people,” I’m not going to publish it — even if this means depriving those who don’t know any better of the public service of demonstrating how all “white” people are racist…

53. I don’t serve burnt coffee as I don’t work at a Starbucks, idiot. There are plenty of other coffee shops besides them.

54. Well moron, if you understood what I wrote, you would have realized I meant it is unlikely someone over 70 is buying their latte every morning specifically at Starbucks.

55. PlantinMoretus, I’m glad someone around here can read and comprehend!

56. Wow! Right on Mitch. You got to play your “Antisemite” card immediately! Good one. Good play. Maybe Juniormistmaker was painting Yorkvillians as douches? Did you feel attacked because you are a douche or because you are Jewish? Not every single non Jew is an antisemite Mitch. That really is a card that gets played wayyyyyyyyyyyy to often. Buck up fella.

57. I shouldn’t really pick on millennials — people’s ignorance of history and its relevance to today’s world cuts across all ages. And when you get to the age of today’s classic war-baby/boomers (e.g., 55-75), you get not just ignorance but also a hidebound (liberal) prejudice…

58. The story is a total hoax and if you examine it even the least bit carefully, all sorts of unpleasant things suggest themselves. Perhaps I over-reacted and the writer/Toronto Life editors are just historical airheads. Meanwhile, if you look at my remarks, I think you will find there was still much nuance and not much of a rush to play the “anti-Semite” card. But I’ll play the douche-card in your case without hesitation…

59. No need to play that card sir, I already had you pegged as a douche….hold on to your card for your next attempt at wit.

60. I think name tags should be eliminated. There is no reason for anyone to know the name of a stranger. There is also a safety issue. If a predatory type takes an interest in someone and learns their name from a name tag, it can have dangerous repercussions. I have sympathy for anyone called Nazi in this country, and would recommend they change the spelling.

61. Yes, Biff, I’m sure you wanted to have me “pegged.” But I gave up the moron-type years ago…

62. I feel sorry for whoever interacts with this wimpy, wussy whiner… particularly Nazi from Starbucks. May she find peace and happiness in a better job with fewer retards to deal with… This can’t be a legitimate query…. I could come up with a dozen much better, less stupid social dilemmas for this column, starting with my unstable boss with an untreated personality disorder… May I find a better job with fewer retards…

63. How would I know, Mitch? This should be good.

64. My mistake – I thought you were “Juniormistmaker” replying to me on his own thread. You’re probabably right about “Juniormistmaker” being only historically unimaginative, and bigoted towards the elderly, white and well-off — rather than anti-Semitic One thing that strikes me about many of these exchanges is how little it seems to matter — even to people who don’t dismiss the idea — whether the original letter was genuine or not. What seems to matter are their fine attitudes — even if they reference a situation that is purely imaginary.

65. Blardy blardy blar blar…look at me everybody…but not too long or you will be branded an antisemite…blar blar. Keep ’em coming Mitchie I haven’t had sport like this in a while.

66. And it’s “Mietzsche”…

67. I can tell…

68. That person seriously needs to get a life.. OR an education…

69. Very true. Their shining bright opinions must be flashed in our eyes like a laser pointer.

70. Why would you equate Yorkville with Jews? I work here and it’s definitely not Bathurst and Glencairn.

71. Go ahead and complain to the woman (loudly and obnoxiously)–you have my blessing.

72. Is Larry David writing for Toronto Life? A rejected Curb Your Enthusiasm script, surely, if I ever saw one.

73. You’re right — I don’t even live in Toronto. (I’d always heard Yorkville was ‘upscale’ – so I just generalized…) However, I still think Juniormistmakers comment is bigoted — though against that so-acceptable object of bigotry, the white and “well-off”…

74. It is interesting that you automatically equate Jews with “upscale”. A visit to the predominately Jewish areas of north Toronto would quickly change your thinking–it’s quite grey and dowdy.

75. Looks like you were the one stereotyping here.

    There was not one hint of antisemitism in Juniormistmaker’s comment, and yet you couldn’t resist the opportunity to play victim. Grow up.

76. So is my sister…

77. As I said (about five times), Einstein (or should I say “Tesla”), I did make a mistake in inferring anti-Semitism in Juniormistmaker’s comment. I still find his/her comment bigoted towards the “white,” the elderly and the “well off.” For many reasons stated here and about, I still believe the “original” letter to Toronto Life was invented by someone on staff there, and that in the last analysis, among other forms of bigotry, it also displays a kind of lazy anti-Semitism.
    But thanks, John, to your finely attuned anti-anti-Semitism radar! What happens to it when it is scoped it towards the remarks of some others on this thread, such as “Jason G” who wonders, “Don’t these ‘chosen people’ ever stop complaining?”?

78. Emphasis on ‘rejected…’

79. So does that mean that you think no one other than “white” folk frequent Yorkville? In your opinion, can people of other ethnicities not afford to shop or dine there?

    For someone who was so quick to cry foul and play the anti-Semite card, you seem to be awfully prejudiced and bigoted yourself.

80. You seem to have an easy time insulting people there Mitch. You really should be nicer to people. You don’t look like you are in the best of shape. You do work at the YM-YWHA right?

81. Dear TorontoLife. A douche on your site has an offensive name. He calls himself Hyman and I lost mine in the back of a Corolla a long time ago. Is it reasonable to complain to the censors to block his further postings?

82. try your math one more time and see if it works better

83. hahaha …. coffee Nazi … nice!

84. Dorkmeistere — it’s “Juniormistmaker” himself who first observes “given this person isn’t even white from the sound of things…” Stay away from power tools…

85. Watch it, Biff — we Jews control finance, the press, government. What I could tell you about my links to the Liberal Party of Canada — not to mention my cousins and in-laws the NSA, the CIA and the CJA…

86. What are you, gynephobic?

87. Oh oh….

88. You said it…

89. Sorry I didn’t finish that last one ….I meant to say “Oh Oh….we have a delusional Napoleon complexed angry little man here….”

90. none of these questions are real. this isnt even a real person. go to starbucks and see urself.

91. I people who up-vote themselves. It’s like a less messy form of ma$terbation for the 22nd century

    SAD

92. I’m not so little — I’m 5′ 10″ …

93. wow mitch … right to the anit-gyne card. Way to go!

94. ‘I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.’ — Mark Twain

95. Must have lost your sense of humor in that Corolla too…

96. is there such a thing as an anti-gyne card? Do you actually have one?

97. There is no hostility towards Jews in any of the comments. You just couldn’t resist playing victim again, eh?

98. Didn’t do anything “again” — as you can see, the comment above is from “6 days ago” — why TL is featuring it anew atop this thread is anybody’s guess. But if you’ve been reading from the beginning (“Load More Comments”), you’ll hear “Jason G” (7 days ago) ask, “Do these ‘chosen people’ ever stop complaining?” and “acekrn” tell a Holocaust survivor to “Get over it.” (6 days ago). But as I said, the hostility is also directed towards other groups.
    Perhaps if you’d read the page a little more carefully you could have resisted playing the “anti-Mitch card” so expeditiously…

99. Do you think the little plexiglass box is there for you to pay the balance of your bill?

100. He doesn’t have to. It’s customary.

101. Hmmm.. I replied to this yesterday, but TL didn’t seem to want to post it. If you look at my comment above, you’ll see that it’s from “7 days ago” — don’t know why TL freshly top-threaded it — so I didn’t do anything “again” (except answer you here.) As I said yesterday, in my comment from 7 days ago I was pointing out ALL types of hostility in some of the replies; but there are also some fairly distinct notes anti-Semitism audible — as when “Jason G” (8 days ago) asks, “Do these ‘chosen people’ ever stop complain?” or perhaps when “acekrn” (7 days ago) tells the Holocaust-survivor to just “Get over it.”
     I still think the letter was a hoax, and for that reason alone evidence of some kind of passive malice. (Choose your victim group at leisure.)
     I can’t be responsible for TL’s re-posting of my comments — so you might want to look at their dates more carefully before playing the “anti-Mitch” card as expeditiously…

102. Of all the first-world problems I have laughed out loud at, this one beats them all.

103. Like attracts like?

104. Hm. I think people take things too personally and anything can be offensive. Even if this person did complain, what can you expect to come out of it?

105. ikr like a $6 coffee isn’t spending enough there

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