A young male Starbucks employee's reaction to a woman breastfeeding her child in public is not only refreshing, but might as well convince us that it's not such a doomed world after all.
Julie Wykes had just popped into a multi-national coffee shop in Ottawa, Canada on June 25 when her five-month old son started crying uncontrollably. Finding herself already at the counter, Wykes decided to breastfeed him right there, UK MailOnline reported.
Since the temperature was 102 Fahrenheit, she never considered covering her young son while feeding him. "I am not going to suffocate my child to save you from the potential glimpse of side-boob," she said. A middle-aged woman, however, took immediate notice and asked the young employee behind the counter to "deal with" the situation.
"The barista smiled at her and said he would handle it. I was gearing up for a fight, but he came over with a free drink for me and said loudly 'and here's a voucher for a free drink next time you're in here, I am so sorry that you had to deal with such unpleasantness today.' Coming from an at most 19- year-old guy!" she recalled.
The heartwarming story has gone viral since it was shared by Wykes with a local parenting group, PhD in Parenting group, on Facebook. Wykes, who has worked as a midwife and "helped hundreds of mothers breastfeed" around the world, wrote, "If you're ever at Starbucks in Trainyards (Ottawa), give them a good tip! This morning I was nursing my son in Starbucks and a woman very loudly complained (so she knew I could hear) to the baristas that they should get me to stop doing that in public as it was disgusting."
She later wrote about her experiences on Huffington Post: "I went to Starbucks with my 5-month-old to grab a coffee. He started to fuss, I sat down to nurse him to calm him, and a middle-aged woman asked a teenage barista to get me to stop breastfeeding, loudly calling it 'disgusting.'"
Although Wykes said she has been pleasantly surprised by the level of interest her story has attracted, she also expressed disappointment at some of the abusive comments she has received. "What shocked me most in all of this is how many of these negative voices came from women. From the original complaining customer to those posting their comments online, I am truly afraid of what it means for our society that adult women find it acceptable to insult and belittle other women for breastfeeding in public -- basically for having breasts and using them as nature intended.
