'F***ers': café receipt stirs controversy

The offending receipt

A university student went to a café and found an unpleasant surprise on her receipt, which referred to the customers as "f***ers".

Naomi Bloomer, a 22-year-old student at University College London, was at Grind Coffee Bar at Westfield Stratford when the offending text caught her eye.

The customer receipt, which was left on a table, listed a brownie, latte and mocha, and the words "f***ers all come at once."

Ms Bloomer approached the cashier to complain; instead of the expected apology, he told her, "Yeah, we've been rammed."

"This receipt was just sitting there on the bar, clearly visible to customers. I just thought it was really inappropriate and so I complained," Ms Bloomer was quoted as saying in the Evening Standard.

She followed up the initial complaint by contacting customer services at Westfield three times.

"I just wanted an apology, just a simple acknowledgement that this was wrong. The part that really gets to me is that they clearly don't care about customer service at all."

"We strive for super-friendly antipodean customer service," said Dave Dickinson, who owns the coffee bar. "So we apologise to the one person that didn't experience this."

Reactions on Twitter were mixed, with some critical of the company's response and others pledging support.

@ShowbizSimonW I think decency is beyond @GrindCoffeeBar, just contempt. It's not that their business will fail, it already has.

— Stuart Wood (@stuiewood) August 13, 2013

Next time I'm in Stratford, I'm actively seeking out @GrindCoffeeBar for a coffee. Kids these days. #receiptgate http://t.co/a8YT6iAmDN

— Jody Louie (@jodylouie) August 13, 2013