‘Most difficult customer ever’ message left on deaf woman’s receipt at coffee company

WACO, Texas (KWTX/Gray News) - A coffee shop in Texas said it addressed an incident involving one of its employees and a deaf woman who complained about a message left on her receipt.

Dutch Bros Coffee released a statement to KWTX saying they had addressed the incident internally and reached out out to the customer.

“The experience the customer had was deeply disappointing, unacceptable and against everything Dutch Bros stands for,” the statement reads. “It’s our hope we can work with her and the deaf community to ensure we always provide an excellent experience and meet the exceedingly high bar we’ve set for ourselves.”

Earlier this week, Ashely Vallejo shared a TikTok video to express her frustration with the service she received at the Dutch Bros in Waco.

“It was little bit awkward,” she said while showing her receipt to her followers on the social media platform. The receipt included a note from the Dutch Bros employee stating Vallejo was the “most difficult customer ever.”

“I can talk a little bit but my voice is not perfect,” Vallejo said. “Workers should have a lot of patience for people with disabilities. We are like you. We try to order like everyone else. Don’t punish us. Please have a lot of patience with us.”

The woman told her followers and any potential food service employees watching that they “have no idea what it’s like being deaf. Have patience.”

This is not the first time Vallejo has complained about her treatment by a food service worker in Central Texas.

In October 2021, she reached out to KWTX to detail an experience with a drive-through employee at a McDonald’s in Marlin, Texas.

“I gave him a note and he rejected our drive-thru note and said we had to go all the way around,” Vallejo told KWTX at the time. “I looked at him and just tried to explain what was going on a few times and, again, he rejected service to us and told us that we had to keep going through, which wasn’t fair and wasn’t right.”