Good Me put staff in paper handcuffs for a viral video — the internet revolted

In September 2024, Good Me, a leading Chinese tea shop chain, released a social media video meant to amuse internet users: uniformed staff with heads lowered, 'handcuffed' with cardboard tea cup holders, cardboard signs hanging from their necks listing offences such as 'the crime of forgetting to put a straw in the cup', 'the crime of overturning tea buckets' and 'the crime of not sticking on an expiration date label'. One worker wore a larger sign reading 'I am guilty of not putting in a straw, not putting a lid on, and not adding nuts.'

The caption Good Me added to the footage made the framing explicit: 'This is a warning. Next time…there will be no next time.' Instead of landing as comedy, the clip attracted widespread criticism for being disrespectful to the company's own employees, as reported by the Southern Metropolis News and picked up by the South China Morning Post on September 24, 2024.

The format borrowed the imagery of criminal punishment — lowered heads, handcuffs, named 'crimes', a public warning — and pointed all of it at front-line baristas for ordinary service mistakes. What the brand appears to have calculated as relatable office humour instead read to audiences as public humiliation of the lowest-paid people in the company, in a labour market already sensitive to how service workers are treated.

Widespread accusations of disrespecting employees as the clip spread — exactly the wrong kind of virality for a consumer brand.

The video staged employees as offenders, complete with handcuffs, 'crimes' and a public 'warning' caption.

The offences being punished were trivial service slips — a missing straw, an unlabelled expiry date.

The joke's targets were the chain's own front-line staff, who could not opt out of the framing.

Chinese social media audiences increasingly police how brands depict their workers, and the clip handed them a ready-made case.

Humour that humiliates your own staff reads as culture, not comedy — an internal 'joke' becomes external evidence the moment you publish it.

As of the September 24, 2024 SCMP report, the backlash was still spreading; the reporting records no retraction, apology or removal of the video by the company.