Gorilla Coffee, a Park Slope, Brooklyn, favorite, remained closed for a second day Sunday after almost the entire staff resigned. The owners say it isn’t going to reopen soon.

According to an e-mail message sent by the former staff, the baristas quit because of what they call a “perpetually malicious, hostile, and demeaning work environment” under Carol McLaughlin, one of the two owners, and demanded that she withdraw from daily operations at the coffee bar.

When both owners refused, seven baristas quit. (Another barista resigned, but the owners say that person wasn’t an employee.)

“The issues brought up with the owners of Gorilla Coffee,” the staff e-mail message said, “are issues that they have been aware of for some time.”

The owners say the confrontation was unexpected. “It’s a complete surprise,” Darleen Scherer, one of the owners, said over the phone. “They made an unreasonable request, and then they didn’t have any way to go but out.”

The owners characterize their workplace as one that is mostly happy if often busy. When one employee started expressing her dissatisfaction, “it got out of hand.”

Ms. Scherer said Ms. McClaughlin is “passionate and she pushes people.

“The training to be a barista is rigorous,” she continued, “and she’s like a drill sergeant. She trains somebody and they become good, and then they become great, and then they become excellent. I don’t understand the perceived hostility. Everybody has a different learning curve and she respects that.”

Gorilla is such a local institution it appeared on the cover of the New Yorker [viewable if you have a subscription]. As is to be expected, the blogosphere has become a sounding board for both barista partisans and the pro-owner camp, from Sprudge.com, a mock-CNN for the coffee industry (it started off as a mock-Drudge Report), to Gawker, which calls the walkout an “insurrection.”

Gorilla Coffee will continue to roast coffee beans for sale elsewhere. The roaster is in a different location, and hasn’t been affected.

Here’s the staff e-mail: