Was an SF barista fired for tearing ‘kidnapped’ posters? Here’s what happened.

Sightglass Coffee, a local coffee chain, found itself at the center of an online controversy last week after one of its baristas was seen on video ripping Israeli “kidnapped” posters off a pole on Divisadero Street in San Francisco.

The clip itself is short and doesn’t include much context. Regardless, it drew hundreds of furious replies when Richie Greenberg, a conservative provocateur and former San Francisco mayoral candidate, posted it to his account on X — formerly Twitter — on Oct. 31. One person said: “@Sightglass you should absolutely fire this person.”

A statement from the Sightglass founders led many to believe the barista had been fired, a move that drew both praise and condemnation from people online — their reactions dependent upon their views about the ongoing war between Hamas and Israel, which began after Hamas launched a surprise attack on Oct. 7. More than 1,400 people have been killed in Israel, according to Israeli authorities, and more than 10,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

SFGATE spoke with the barista and the owners of the coffee chain, and learned that the prevailing theory about what happened isn’t entirely true.

The barista was not fired from Sightglass, and they had already signaled to managers that they were planning to leave the company before they were filmed tearing down the posters on Oct. 31. The decision to part ways with one another was accelerated, perhaps, but mutual, the two parties told SFGATE — and the barista was paid for the remaining shifts they were scheduled to work.

“Everyone agreed that it was in their best interest for them to not see through their final shifts, and we were more than happy to pay them for those shifts. We didn’t want to take away anything from the individual monetarily,” Justin Morrison, a Sightglass co-founder, told SFGATE. “The decision was made out of safety, and out of not putting them in a position where they would be targeted.”

The now-viral 16-second clip shows the barista, dressed in a jack-o’-lantern Halloween costume, ripping posters off a pole near the intersection of Divisadero and Oak streets, just up the road from one of Sightglass’ three San Francisco locations. The man filming the video says, “Why are you tearing those down? Those are innocent people,” to which the barista replies, “Because it’s propaganda, dude. It’s just not appropriate. All I have to say is free Palestine and f—k off, dude. That’s all I have to say.”

Although it’s unclear from the video, Greenberg said on X that the barista was a Sightglass employee. More than 300 people replied to Greenberg’s post, with many calling the barista’s actions antisemitic and demanding that Sightglass fire them. The barista said that, as far as they could tell, Greenberg was not the person who filmed the video. Greenberg declined to answer questions sent by SFGATE, instead linking to a blog post of his about the incident.

The “Kidnapped from Israel” posters have popped up on streets across the U.S., as well as in other countries, since Oct. 7. They resemble typical missing-persons posters, except they include information about people who are purportedly being held captive by Hamas. Incidents in which people have been filmed taking the posters down have sparked fierce debates; people have lost their jobs for doing so, and a city in Canada recently passed a law that would impose a $1,000 fine on anyone caught tearing the posters down.

“Removing the posters has quickly emerged as its own form of protest — a release valve and also a provocation by those anguished by what they say was the Israeli government’s mistreatment of Palestinians in the years before Oct. 7 and since the bombing of Gaza began,” the New York Times recently reported.

Sightglass, which was founded by Morrison and his brother Jerad, released a statement on Nov. 1 after Greenberg’s video gained traction on social media: “In light of concerns about recent events involving a former employee, we want to unequivocally condemn hate speech, discrimination, and violence in all forms, which includes Islamophobia and antisemitism.”

The statement did little to quell the controversy. In fact, it made things worse. The phrase “former employee” led many to believe the barista had been fired over the incident, which incensed those who supported their actions, or did not find them fireable. “Sightglass Coffee caves in to pressure and fires an employee for tearing down pro-genocide war propaganda in San Francisco … Definitely never going back to that place,” one person said on X.

The barista recounted what happened in an interview with SFGATE last week. In accordance with Hearst’s ethics policy, SFGATE is not publishing the name of the barista, who requested anonymity over concerns about their safety and online harassment.

The barista told SFGATE that they had just finished a shift at the coffee shop around 12:30 p.m. on Oct. 31 when they saw the posters plastered on a street pole outside the store. When they began tearing the posters off the pole, they were confronted by an unknown man.

The barista said they tried to ignore the man, and moved up the street to the second pole, which is seen in the video. From there, the rest of the conflict is captured on film.

“I didn’t really want to engage in a conversation with him,” the barista told SFGATE. “I just disagreed with the underlying message of the poster, so I took them down, because it’s a public forum and I was off the clock. So I said my piece to him on film and went on with the rest of my day.”

The barista said they heard later on that, after the encounter, the man went back into Sightglass and confronted other employees about the barista’s actions. The barista guessed that the man had been in the shop prior to the end of their shift on Oct. 31, and that’s how he knew the barista was a Sightglass employee. The barista assumed the man communicated that information to Greenberg, who posted the video on social media.

“The sense I got from the entire interaction was that he felt that, because he was a patron of the coffee shop which I was in, he was entitled to choose how I express myself off the clock, which of course is not true,” the barista told SFGATE.

But a few days prior to the incident in question, the barista had sent an email to a manager at Sightglass informing them that they intended to leave the company soon.

On Nov. 1, the barista awoke to texts from a member of the Sightglass management team, informing them that the video had been posted online and was gaining traction. Later that day, after a discussion with two administrators, the barista agreed to be paid for the shifts they were already scheduled to work, and was told they would not have to return to the shop, they told SFGATE.

Jerad and Justin Morrison told SFGATE they authorized their staff to come to that agreement with the barista because they were worried about the barista’s safety.

“We were trying to keep their safety top of mind, and avoid having to put them in a position where conflict arose,” Justin said.

The barista, however, was less charitable about Jerad and Justin’s motivations. They told SFGATE they believe the brothers wanted to distance themselves from the controversy as quickly as possible; that they authorized paying them out for their remaining shifts so the brothers could then say in their statement that the barista was no longer an employee. The barista said they felt “betrayed” by the brothers’ statement.

“I felt that they were acting selfishly in their own interests, rather than taking what I think would have been a braver stance, which is to advocate for the people who have worked very hard for them,” the barista said. “I think they felt that they had to pay me out of these shifts so that they could imply publicly that they had fired me for my actions, which is not true.”

Jerad and Justin maintained to SFGATE that their decision was made out of concern for the barista’s safety. As to the controversy caused by their initial statement, Jerad acknowledged that he and his brother could have been more precise in their wording.

“We were just trying to be as direct and straightforward so as to not be ambiguous, and now we see how we could have been more clear,” he said.