Like seemingly everything else, coffee is getting more expensive. That price gets even higher if you’re fined for improperly spilling your drink.
That’s what Burcu Yesilyurt found out when, as the BBC reports, she was fined nearly $200 for pouring a bit of her coffee down a drain on the street.
As Yesilyurt tells it, she was holding her coffee in her reusable cup when her bus to work arrived. Thinking she might risk spilling the beverage on the bus, she ditched “just a tiny little bit” down the drain.
“As soon as I turned around, I noticed three men, enforcement officers, chasing me, and they stopped me immediately,” Yesilyurt says, adding that she did not realize she’d done anything illegal. She was then given a fine under a provision of the 1990 Environmental Protection Act.
“It feels quite unfair,” Yesilyurt says. “I think the fine is extreme. It’s not proportionate.”
It appears that others felt the same, and a local council rescinded the fine.
“Please accept my apologies for any upset or inconvenience this has caused you,” the council’s ruling read.