[BradyLS]

It is never appropriate for an employee to use violence against a customer in a non life threating or injury situation...that's what the police are for.

These days, you can keep your cool, do all the right things, call the cops—and still lose your job because the offended party creates a national Twit(ter)storm over it.

[Enterprise]

That seems true at times. The worker at Starbucks who called the police ended up leaving the company. Maybe big girl could have called the police, but still lost her job because of an unhappy customer. As it is, big girl and the other worker are both going to lose their jobs, if they haven’t already.