Bizarre: United Airlines Flight Attendant Shames Business Class Passenger Over “White Coffee” Order

A United Airlines flight attendant purportedly shamed a business class passenger on a transpacific flight for ordering coffee incorrectly. What would motivate a flight attendant to act so unprofessionally?

United Airlines 1K Scolded By Flight Attendant For Ordering Coffee Incorrectly In Transpascifc Business Class

A Premier 1K (United’s top elite tier in MileagePlus) was traveling from Taipei (TPE) to San Francisco (SFO) in Polaris Business Class. He ordered coffee…here is how he describes the encounter:

I was on my way to Taipei from SFO sitting in 4L. The whole first meal service felt a bit off as my FA had no smile at all. And absolutely no greeting of any sorts. After the meal, I asked for a cup of coffee with cream no sugar, just like how I asked for coffee on over a thousand+ flights I took over the years. She stared at me for a second and didn’t speak a word and left. When she brought the coffee over, she used the tone like a teacher shaming her pupil:”This is not coffee with cream. We don’t say it this way. It’s white coffee. White Coffee!! Do you not know?”

WTH????? I was shocked and didn’t know how to respond. I am Asian American but I am an American. Never been to Taiwan my life! She should be able to tell by my accent. I have never heard of white coffee. And a US airline FA is expecting an American to know how to speak Taiwanese??

For 20 years I’ve said that the only thing consistent on United is that service is consistently inconsistent.

I’ve had many good flights this year, some I have written about like San Francisco – Tahiti or Seoul – San Franscisco and several more that I have not written about yet.

But recently I had a very bad flight on United…I’ll share details about that soon. It seems like you either have a really great crew or a bad one…and I know that can be true with any carrier, but the coffee story is really pathetic and something that should never happen.

Here, it appears that a flight attendant made several assumptions about an Asian-American passenger. So pointless…all so unnecessary. If a man asks for coffee with cream, you bring him coffee with cream. There’s nothing professional or cheeky about correcting him for using the “wrong” terminology.

Yes, the term “white coffee” is rather prevalent in much of the world. But not in the United States. We don’t use that word and to assume that because a person looks Asian he must know that term and use that term is offensive, even if coming from another Asian American.

Sure, United still has a long way to go when it comes to its in-flight menus, but food is always a matter of taste…but sloppy and unprofessional service is not a matter of taste. There simply is no excuse for it.

Of course, there are going to be bad apples in a company with over 25,000 flight attendants. I maintain that most are decent people who try their best and offer good service. But there are still far too many who do not…and this whole “milk coffee” incident is a perfect example that United still has a ways to go in offering consistently good service.

I hope the passenger receives an apology, but more importantly, I hope the flight attendant is identified and retrained.

This post was originally published on here