Stones in the Tea: A Whistleblower Says the Bubble Tea Chain 1点点 Went After His Grandparents

The most-read story on Chinese social media on Tuesday is not about a bubble tea, exactly. It is about what a bubble tea company allegedly did after one of its workers found stones in the tea leaves. In a post liked more than 80,000 times, a former employee of the chain 1点点 (Yidiandian) says that when he reported the problem and filed for labor arbitration, the company's response was to send three men to his grandparents' farmhouse with surveillance footage of him at work and a warning that he had been reported to the police.

The poster, who writes under the name Qingleng 23, had worked at a 1点点 store in Sanming, a city in Fujian province. In his telling, the trouble began with the tea: he found stones mixed into the leaves, told his store manager, and called the company's quality-control line, where an employee told him that foreign objects could simply be picked out and the tea used anyway. Then came a second discovery — he had never signed a formal labor contract, only a third-party "flexible employment" agreement, the arrangements through which much of China's service sector is staffed without full labor protections. He raised the food-safety issue with his regional manager and filed for arbitration. On August 5, he left the job.

What followed is the part that has enraged readers. On August 13, he says, three men who described themselves as colleagues turned up at the home of his grandparents, both in their late seventies, who adopted and raised him — his only family. They brought video of him handling the tea, suggested he was attempting extortion, and told the old couple their grandson had been reported to the police. Frightened, the grandparents phoned him and urged him to give up. His girlfriend, who worked at another franchise store, was made to sign a resignation the same day. "My grandfather looked at the video and said: my grandson did that — what's wrong in it?" he wrote. "You could have talked to me. You chose the two people least able to resist."

He posted his demand for a public apology on September 14, and on Tuesday a photograph of a mediation agreement — a job application form overlaid with the words "I am a former 1点点 employee" — has circulated with it. When media called the store, staff said they were "unclear" about the events; the company's headquarters has issued no formal statement.

The case has touched a nerve because it reads as a parable of what happens to ordinary people who use the system's own channels. He reported through the company; he confirmed with quality control; he sought arbitration, the state-sanctioned route for workplace disputes. The idiom spreading through the comments is an old, bitter one: the problem was not solved, the person who raised it was. "First a food-safety problem, now this — is this a company or a mafia?" one viral repost asked. For 1点点, a chain that built its name on being the trustworthy option in China's brutal milk-tea market, the brand damage may outlast the arbitration. The topic sat on Baidu's hot search board all afternoon on Tuesday, and the store at the center of it is still selling tea.