I (19 female), have been working at a cafe in Washington for about two years now. We've had our fair share of crazy people coming in, a lot of times we've dealt with homeless people camping in our bathrooms or people stealing stuff. But this most recent guy, I really hate and want to know my options.
It started a while ago when another coworker told me about a man who used to harass her at her old job (very close to our cafe), and how she saw him enter the cafe earlier. I got a good look at the guy and tried to remember his face in case he came in again.
Well, he did. I work in the bar area, which is close to the registers, on Saturday we had a new employee (18, female) helping customers. I then saw she was helping the guy I had seen earlier, he was asking about her name and ethnicity (she is Korean) and in general saying weird things. She came up to me after and expressed concern, and I told her not to engage next time. Later that day, he came up to her after eating his food and yelled, "I love you" in Korean.
Sunday he came in again around 1:30 PM, this time when he saw my coworker who was again on register, he pulled his phone out and began playing Gangnam Style on his phone, shoving his phone in her face to show her the music video. Saying things like "you'd look so cute doing this dance, you'd go viral! Doing this dance down the street, you'd look so cute."
I stepped in and told her to go to the back (she was scared of the guy) and finished his transaction. After we informed our GM and shift lead about the guy, they didn't do anything about it.
He sat at one of our tables, charging his phone, playing the song at full volume until he went to the bathroom for a while. When he came back, he approached my pregnant coworker who was in the bar with me and began asking more questions (name, age, ethnicity etc). After this, he called her cute and also told her that he loved her in her first language.
We have a lot of families with kids come through my work, and during my shift I saw him directly approach multiple kids with single mothers/teenagers who were alone, calling the kids cute/beautiful and other creepy shit. In one case, he approached a single mother with a daughter who looked to be about 5 or 6, they stormed out afterwards. I informed my manager on all of this, and she said that she called the non-emergency hotline only for them not to pick up? As far as I know, she hasn't taken any other measures other than staring at the guy.
It was then that I spoke with another coworker who had apparently worked with this guy before. He said that this guy was a line cook at his old job, and allegedly got arrested for groping underage coworkers. He also told me that he had been harassed by this guy as well.
On Sunday, he stayed until we closed, and then my manager had to essentially kick him out since he refused to leave.
I didn't work Monday, but I heard from others that he came in again and stayed for most of the day. One of the workers from the back approached him and asked him to chill out and that he was making the employees uncomfortable. The guy got mad and said that we were all just racist.
I'm worried he's trying to learn our schedules or something. So far, he hasn't touched anyone or approached anyone outside of work, but I'm worried this will escalate. I work at a smaller cafe, and I'm good friends with a lot of my coworkers, so I don't want to see them getting harassed like this, I feel especially bad for my newer coworker since he seems to approach her the most.
So far he hasn't bothered me aside from coming up to me and insisting that I make him a sandwich (I work in the bar making coffee).
I'd love to call the cops and get him kicked out or something, but my manager is insisting not to, and I'm unsure if this is an emergency I can call about. Any advice is welcome, hopefully he stops coming in by the time I work this weekend, but so far he's come in every day since Saturday.