Tim Young Jokes About Starbucks Workers Getting Paid To Pour Milk In Coffee

The late Tim Young’s tweet did stir up quite a bit of heated debate. He joked about how Starbucks employees are paid decent money just to put milk in coffee. Thousands of engagements and reactions, from supporters to brutally savage critics, went viral with the tweet bearing a laughing emoji.

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Young originally tweeted: “It’s a tough life getting paid decent money to add milk to coffee…😂,” linking to a story about Starbucks workers striking over dress code policies. The public reacted almost instantly to the tweet, many coming to the defense of the baristas, or outright mocking the whole concept of fancy coffee culture.

Creative MLH chipped in:”It’s Starbucks 😂 The Baristas don’t even make the drinks anymore, they just push a button.” The comment sums up an age-old debate of automation versus human labor in the service industries. On the darker side, Timo Brown joked about building an asshole robot to take the jobs away altogether. Yikes.

Throughout the ongoing argument, complaints of slow service kept on cropping up: “Why does it take five minutes to make a cup of coffee?” asked Mrs. Right. One particular unhinged commentator went on a loon rant, though, attacking baristas personally: “Back in the day baristas used to be hot. Why so fat? Why so gay?”

A few comments looked to the economics here. PoliticalNeutra tersely put it: “Strikes only work when the employees have value. 14 year olds could do their jobs.” Meanwhile, KP in Texas was announcing a switch to Black Rifle Coffee precisely because of wanting to avoid “the entitlement attitude of Starbucks workers.”

Practically another issue that sprang from the dress code was the very one from which the strike began. Amelia’s🍎 pointed out the irony: “They’re complaining about a dress code while dressed alike. These are not serious people.” Your drunk uncle chimed in with a touch of legal context: “These immature unionists are gonna find out quick that employee dress policy is not a protected labor issue.”

Aside from the other atrocities, there were complaints about the coffee at stake. Carry announced her typical one: “I made the mistake of going inside once, and all the crap they put in the cup doesnt even resemble coffee. I never went back.” Mike out of Canada was even meaner: “Right from the start their so-called coffee tastes like 🤮🤮.”

A few voices were scattered around to try and bring some kind of balance. The most balanced take perhaps had to come from Andrew Follett: “Love yah Tim, but coffee making is one of the VERY FEW things Libs objectively do better than conservatives.”

The thread really says a whole lot about the general attitudes toward service work, union efforts, and the cultural divide over simple pleasures like a cup of coffee. What began with a joke about pouring milk soon turned into the little microcosm for much larger societal debates about the value of labor, automation, and how social groups agree-colored economic transactions.

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The Young tweet, joined by the reply storm, surely cements the fact that in 2024, something as simple as coffee preparation has been made into a warzone in the political sphere. Whether baristas are highly skilled artisans or button-pushers easily replaceable says more about an individual’s worldview than it does about the batch of coffee actually served.