ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
A French Quarter resident has asked the Australian Human Rights Commission to force a local cafe to apologise for serving him a tepid coffee, claiming it’s discriminatory against the elderly.
The complaint centres on the barista at the Pisse Dans Ma Poche Cafe on Rue de Branlette acknowledging that Raymond Baker, an 83-year-old retiree, ordered a ‘piping hot’ skim milk cappuccino but was served up one he described as ‘lukewarm’.
Mr Baker, who downsized from his Betoota Grove mansion to a gorgeously renovated French Quarter terrace house in 2020, reportedly told the waitress to take the coffee back and make it again like he ordered. He then observed the waitress put the coffee into the microwave and set the timer for 2 minutes.
The coffee was returned to Mr Baker at close to the boiling point of water. The waitress explained to The Advocate today that if the coffee was any hotter, it would be in gas form.
But at the core of the complaint, Mr Barker feels that he should’ve been offered an apology and a freshly made coffee, rather than simply having one that was microwaved to the point where it rivalled the surface of the sun in temperature.
“I should’ve been watching the boy make it but I was glued to my phone, reading the news,” Mr Barker told our reporter.
“But I shouldn’t have to. I should be able to order what I want and receive what I ordered. When the coffee was put in the microwave, I felt offended and discriminated against. The fact that the entitled barista and waitress thought that just because I’m elderly, I wouldn’t notice them do it, I felt that came into heavy contact with my human rights. When I brought it up, they both apologised and made me a fresh one to my order but I could tell they didn’t really mean it,”
“It is the last time that I am going to Pisse mon Pantalon or whatever it’s bloody called. I don’t speak Betootanese creole. But I don’t want anyone else to have their human rights stepped on when they don’t get what they ordered from a local cafe.”
The Advocate reached out to the Australian Human Rights Commission for comment but were told the entire media liaison team was either currently building flex leave by pretending to work their lunch break or they’re at the department’s end-of-financial-year lunch at The Squire’s Landing in Circular Quay.
More to come.
