Seattle Coffee Shop Fires Bitter Barista Over Anonymous Blog Ridiculing Customers

Seattle barista Matt Watson has lost his job upon the revelation that he was the blogger behind the satiric Bitter Barista, which took aim at everyone from customers to his boss. KIRO TV reports that Watson was fired from All City Coffee after coffee news site Sprudge outed him as the Bitter Barista, a blog that had become notorious in just two weeks' time for comments about punching children, kicking hippies and equating anyone who orders a steamed milk americano with Hitler. Oh and rape jokes such as, "Every time someone orders an extra-hot-no-foam latte, an angel rapes a puppy."

Watson — also an aspiring hip hop artist who goes by "Spekulation" — tells the Seattle Times that the blog was just meant as satire and that he does get along with most of his customers. Watson apparently emailed his boss, Seth Levy, upon the Sprudge outing to convince him that the incident was "actually really good press." But Watson lost his job anyway, perhaps not a huge surprise considering some of his blog posts referred to his boss, such as, "I like to use a lot of big words when I tweet, that way if my boss ever finds my twitter account, he won't understand any of it." Levy tells the paper, "I can't endorse what he was saying, whether humorous or not. It puts me in a difficult position, where if I don't respond that means I endorse what he's saying."

And the fallout doesn't end there. Sprudge updated its post to reflect that has been receiving death threats, which Watson has condemned, asking his fans to "simmer down." Watson is also working on a Bitter Barista coffeetable book and jokes that his "next project is gonna be called Bittersweet Barista. It'll be the same as before, but with a plethora of kitten pictures." And, yes, Bitter Barista will carry on. In one of the more recent entries, Watson writes, "My ex-boss thinks the website is gonna stop because I don't work there anymore. Man, I didn't even work there when I worked there!" Here's the full KIRO TV report:

Video: Barista Fired Over Online Posts

· Barista Fired Over Online Posts [KIRO TV]
· Bitter Barista loses job over snarky blog about customers, boss [Seattle Times]
· Snark's Labor Lost: The Bitter Barista, Unmasked [Sprudge]
· All Scandals Coverage on Eater [-E-]