This Starbucks Barista Awarded $100,000 Tip After Face Mask Encounter

This Starbucks Barista Awarded $100,000 Tip After Face Mask Encounter

Published July 14th, 2020 - 01:00 GMT











Highlights





Newspapers and TV stations in San Diego and elsewhere spread the word and brought interest from donors as far as Australia.





They brought him the money in a silver metal briefcase and placed it on a picnic table at Miramar Reservoir. Up came the lid: $100,000 in paper-strapped stacks of $50 bills. All those greenbacks beside all that blue water “” no wonder Lenin Gutierrez's eyes got big.

"I (have) never seen anything like this except in the movies,“ he said.

Three weeks ago, the 24-year-old college student was working at a Starbucks in San Diego's Clairemont neighborhood when a customer came in without wearing a face mask. He pointed out the coronavirus rules, she left, and then criticized him on Facebook for refusing to serve her.

That caught the eye of Matt Cowan, an Irvine marketing and brand strategist, who thinks masks are a good idea and internet bullying a bad one. So he started a "Tips for Lenin for Standing Up to a San Diego Karen,“ using a social media label for overly entitled people who boil over in public.

He was hoping for $1,000.

The campaign reached