CINCINNATI, OH— Local mom Corinne Olson was banned from a popular Cincinnati cafe this morning after complaining that the kid’s temperature hot chocolate she ordered for her nine-year-old son Tyler was too cool.
Olson, who frequents the cafe while working on her Etsy store, often brings her son along on his days off from school. She assumed that this would be a morning much like any other, but things did not go as planned. Today, Olson ended her cafe session with a lifetime ban.
We talked to Olson and the baristas who served her to find out what had happened.
“I ordered a soya cappuccino for myself and a kid’s temperature hot chocolate for Tyler, just like usual,” Olson, who originally hails from Melbourne, told us, her face still pallid with shock.
Witnesses told us that rather than simply ordering the kid’s temperature hot chocolate, Olson prompted Tyler to tell the baristas what temperature he wanted the hot chocolate. Despite visible discomfort on the part of the nine-year-old and a quiet plea to just get a regular one, Tyler complied, politely asking for the drink at “110 degrees, please.”
It was when the duo got their drinks and sat down that trouble started.
“I noticed that my son’s drink was rather tepid,” said Olson. “So I brought it back. Then the barista got quite annoyed with me.”
We spoke with the shift lead who fielded the situation, Lionel Jones.
“Her kid straight up did not give a shit. She was just forcing him to get a kid’s temp even though he’s like, nine or ten,” said Jones. “She comes in here almost every day and harangues us, and that’s fine—that’s her right. But when she brings her kid in and forces him to get a kid’s temperature hot chocolate which he doesn’t even want, then complains that it’s tepid? I just don’t want her money anymore. I don’t want her to come in.”
“He told me to leave and to please not come back,” said Olson. “He told Tyler he was welcome alone anytime. I was absolutely gobsmacked.”
Witnesses say that Olson immediately asked to see that manager, at which point Jones said he was the manager and again asked her to please leave.
“I left. I had no choice. I tried to come back the next day, and a different barista told me I was banned. I couldn’t believe it,” said Olson. “I still can’t.”
We asked Olson why she cared that the hot chocolate was too cool.
“It’s just supposed to be a little hotter than that,” she insisted. “Maybe it doesn’t matter but I just thought they should do it right.”
Olson plans to go to another coffee shop down the street. She also plans to be a little bit less demanding toward the staff.
“I don’t want anything like that to happen again,” she told us, chastened.
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