London's Brick Lane and F*ckoffee Coffee Shop Come Under Fire for Sexism

Image Credit: Google Maps

Fuckoffee is a London coffee shop that’s about as brash as a man openly readjusting his genitalia through his trousers on the tube, and judging from their latest flirtations with sexism and controversy, about as astoundingly obvious, too.

If you couldn’t tell from its amalgamation of the words “Fuck” and “Coffee,” Fuckoffee’s unique selling point is its quest to brazenly offend both its patrons and passers by. In many respects it’s kinda like the US’ popular Dick’s Last Resort chain of restaurants where the waitresses are hired to be openly rude to staff, except they do so in an acerbically witty manner, whereas Fuckoffee’s brand of humour is reminiscent of a drunk, sad uncle.

The “jokes” Fuckoffee posts on its Twitter page are the sort you’d expect a particularly simple member of your family to share on Facebook. For example, they posted the below image on Halloween:

#HappyHalloween pic.twitter.com/zc0oiiXAv8

— Fuckoffee (@fuck0ffee) October 31, 2015

Their previous Twitter avatar was an image of three pastries placed in the shape of a dick with whipped cream coming out of the “tip.” Their entire feed is a variety show of middle fingers, fart, piss, shit, and cock jokes, with the occasional immature stab at women for good measure. It’s the kind of low-brand humour that causes you not to take offence, but to instead question what must be going on behind Fuckoffee’s doors – photos of the shop reveal that at least one young woman works there, so what does she think of this mess? If Fuckoffee’s public social media posts read like the ramblings of a 45-year-old UKIP voter who has unironically bellowed the sentence “it’s political correctness gone mad” more than once in his lifetime, then how on Earth does the company present itself to the individuals who it isn’t trying to sell coffee too?

The company has now come under fire for comments made via its official Twitter account, after online commenters criticised a sign left on a chalkboard by its sister shop Brick Lane Coffee. The sign read “Sorry, no Uggs (Slag Wellies)” and led to commenters pointing out how it was a pretty sexist message for a company to display to passers by.

Image Credit: Twitter.com/MissPotkin

But rather than releasing an insincere public apology, complete with claims that they were launching an “internal investigation” before firing a sole employee as has routinely become the case in these sorts of situations, Brick Lane Coffee was instead supported by the Twitter account of Fuckoffee, which had a bit of an anti-PC meltdown.

The two coffee houses, both managed by Adrian Jones, united in order to create some sort of sexist coffee Megazord, rallying some supporters to their cause of being offended by other people who are offended when they do offensive things such as refer to a brand of women’s footwear as “slag wellies.” This led to an embarrassing back-and-forth between Fuckoffee’s Twitter account and the shop’s critics, leading to this tweet posted by the account which just about sums it up:

.@fuck0ffee Lost your tweet? WORRY NOT, I have you making lewd reference to my body saved for posterity. pic.twitter.com/QHwkIFMIsw

— Lily Potkin (@MissPotkin) November 11, 2015

Now I know that people are quick to point at our “outrage culture” being to blame in circumstances such as this, but consider this: referring to a woman as “sugar tits” almost certainly justifies her accusations that you’re sexist.

Fuckoffee is now using its Twitter account to stage some sort of war against political correctness, bragging that this spat has generated publicity for the coffee house that it wouldn’t have received had its sister shop not have emblazoned the term “slag wellies” on its chalkboard, and whoever manages its Twitter account had not referred to a woman as “sugar tits”. While this is probably the case, the point still remains that yeah, Fuckoffee, you’ve probably got the human equivalent of a YouTube comments section swarming your coffee shop right now, downing an espresso before screaming obscenities about feminists in the corner, but your actions are still sexist no matter how much you want to lay the onus of blame upon the “perma-offended.”

Y’know who else described a woman as “sugar tits”? Mel Gibson. And then he made a film where he talked to a beaver hand-puppet. If you’re going to run a coffee shop that sells itself using humour, it would perhaps be wise to ensure that the individual placed in control of your marketing is someone who allowed their sense of humour to develop after they left secondary school.