Pinoy OFW Lenin Gutierrez, who is working in a Starbucks branch in San Diego, California recently went viral on social media. It was after he refuses to serve the female customer, Amber Lynn Gilles because the latter wasn't wearing a face mask. Because of what Lenin did, he received a tip that is worth over $74,000 or equivalent Php3.6 million.
In Amber's rage and disappointment towards the barista, she took a photo of him and posted it on her social media account on Monday, June 22.
Amber wrote on her caption,
"Meet lenen from Starbucks who refused to serve me cause I'm not wearing a mask."
She added,
"Next time I will wait for cops and bring a medical exemption."
As of now, the residents in California are allowed to go outside from their home but they still needed to wear a face mask, especially when they are going to shops, malls, stores, and other establishments.
The post quickly went viral online and Gilles received several negative crit1cisms from the netizens, saying that what barista did is right and he was only following the policy in their country.
Upon reading the post, a certain Matt Cowan set up a page in GoFundMe (Tips for Lenin Standing Up To A San Diego Karen) to garnered money for the barista.
At first, Cowan only wanted to get over 1,000 USD or Php49,000 for Gutierrez, however, he didn't expect that a lot of people will give tips and he exceeded the said amount. On June 24, Cowan collected over 100,000 USD or more than Php499,800.
After getting the money, Cowan quickly goes to Gutierrez to give it to him personally.
Meanwhile, Gutierrez expressed his gratitude for the donation through the video clip he uploaded on his Facebook account.
Gutierrez said,
"It's so shocking to see something get so big that only happened with a few minutes."
Gutierrez then explained his side over what had happened. According to him, when Gilles told him that she didn't need to wear a face mask anymore, Gutierrez was supposed to show her a paper where it is stated that all the customers are required to wear a face mask.
But, even before Gutierrez explains the policy to Gilles, the latter suddenly swear to him and keeps on insisting that she doesn't need to wear a face mask.
After the discussion, Gilles went out to the store but came back after a few minutes to ask his name and took a photo of him.
Gutierrez said,
"I thought that was going to be the end of it.
"I didn't know it was going to come to this."
Gutierrez mentioned that he is a dance teacher of children even before the C0VID-19 pand3mic. He said that he plans to use the money so he can focus on his dance.
