Have you wrote any incident reports?? You can also have someone else take his order (:

So there's something I do with people like this that might help you out. I imagine I'm bigger than them. As in standing about a foot taller than them. I imagine that I'm infinitely more physically powerful than them, and that I need to be careful not to hurt them. And I picture the whole store as my territory, where I'm surrounded by my friends and where I know the rules. He's the outsider.

This does a couple of things. First, it makes his actions seen almost funny. As if he's just this blustery little thing that struts in here all self-confident and slimy, thinking he's king of the world, when in reality he's just... sad. And tiny, and fragile. He's like a Chihuahua trying to intimidate and greaseball a 400-lb ex-linebacker veterinarian. It's inherently silly.

I am NOT saying sexual harassment is silly. Absolutely not. Harassment is awful, demeaning, and destructive. But what I'm saying is that if you can find a way to convince yourself that he's truly pathetic, then the harassment might lose its power. It does for me.

The second thing this does is, it takes me out of the defensive, responsive mindset of "that guy's victim" and puts me in the position of "gracious host." As the gracious host, I'm willing to entertain him while he respects the rules. But I'm not a self-sacrificing host. If he disrespects the rules, I let him know that he won't behave that way here.

In practice, this goes along with the third thing this mindset does for me: it changes me physically. I stand up straighter, move more confidently, present my shoulders in a flat plane toward him - generally move as though I am powerful. I also don't smile as much when I speak, and my tone lowers and becomes calmer, with shorter and more direct sentences. I feel like I own the room, and if this small, irritating weasel needs a lesson in proper behavior here, then I should deliver that message as clearly and briefly as possible, with a minimum of fuss.

What this means in practice is that when people like this come through the door, they're no longer meeting Cheerful You, the corporate barista. They're meeting Powerful You, a skilled, competent barista who allows them to stand near your handoff plane as long as they have business here.

If they speak to you disrespectfully, channel Powerful You - how surprising and stupid that is, to address their host that way. Cheerful You would feel shame. Powerful You tells them simply, "You may not speak to me like that," and if they keep at it, stop making their drink. Stop everything on the floor if you have to, and get your shift involved. Not as a way to pass off the problem to someone more powerful, but as a way to demonstrate to this slimy fleck that he's only slowing down his own drink by acting against the rules, it has no impact on you.

All this said, people like this need to fall off the face of the earth. It's easy to say "just don't let it affect you," but it DOES affect you, it affects us all. We're taught to demonstrate compassion and empathy for all of our customers ("connect!"), and it can feel like risking our jobs to stand up for ourselves, to the point that we internalize a sense of being less than the customers and vulnerable to their assaults.

But it's 100% okay to see people like this guy as "Other." He's not one of your good regulars. He's not contributing anything positive. He's going out of his way to harm you, repeatedly. It's completely normal to feel disgust and shame and outrage and helplessness. And it's vitally important to flip the script (even just in your thoughts, fake it til you make it). Not so that he knows he can't get away with it - so that YOU know.

Hang in there my brother/sister. You've got this. I believe in Powerful You.