It's embarrassing enough to watch a kid have a tantrum. When it's an adult who's having the complete meltdown, it's exponentially worse. These Redditors shared stories of the most cringeworthy adult temper tantrums they witnessed. After reading them, all we have is two words: Grow. Up.
1. Spicing It Up
In 2010 I worked my first job at my local fast-food pizza chain. A man placed an order for a pizza online. I am not sure what he ordered but I know one thing—he didn’t want green peppers. The way he let me know this was by carrying a whole large pizza in his bare hands and throwing it across the counter as he proceeded to scream, "I didn’t want any green peppers" and stormed out. We all just stood there with our mouths open not knowing what to think.
2. Tabling It
I’m a hostess at a fancy Italian restaurant. We’re a new restaurant, and we were experiencing our first winter season. We were extremely busy during this time due to people craving a nice warm Italian meal when it’s cold out. There was a wait for a table, because every single table was being used at the time. When a table opened up, I sat a party of four—two couples.
As I was showing them the way, one lady murmured to her friend, “Oh, jeez, I hope we don’t sit at that table.” Well, that so happened to be the table I was seating them at, the only table available in the restaurant. Once we got to the table, the same lady repeatedly stomped her feet, like a three-year-old, screaming, “No, no, no! I don’t want this table!”
After I explained to her that it was the only table available in the restaurant, she lost her marbles. Her husband tried calming her down as she started to cry. I told her that the only other option was to sit outside in the freezing cold in the middle of December. Or give up this inside table for someone else and wait for another table.
She then yelled at me for being a “terrible hostess.” Well, sorry that it’s a busy Saturday night and that we’re a brand-new restaurant, and that people want to be here. I gave her options, just saying.
3. Getting Saucy
At Chik-fil-A one day I saw this dude who must have been at least 40 slamming a tray on the counter repeatedly and yelling at the staff behind the counter because they didn't have his favorite sauce. He started stomping from end to end screaming that he knew they had more in the back and he wasn't leaving till he got his sauce.
The best part came when the manager got involved. She came out and asked him to leave, and this man-child legitimately sat on the floor and crossed his arms saying he wasn't moving. I got my food and left ASAP.
4. It’s Like Flying
I was at airport and saw a very inebriated woman throw a massive temper tantrum trying to board a flight. She was slurring her words, only partially coherent, and couldn't even walk straight. The poor gate agent tried to break it to her gently, offered to get her some water while they waited for a medic and security, assured her she could rebook her flight.
This spoiled brat was not having it at all. She started yelling that she absolutely had to get on this plane and nothing could stop her. She tried multiple times to board the plane, and eventually had to be physically restrained. She started getting belligerent and threatening the employees that she would get them all fired, even threatening a turbaned guy with deportation.
She demanded every employee's first and last name—their full names were on their name tags but she apparently didn't notice this—and even after they had given her their full names she kept demanding it insisting she was going to call corporate and get them all fired. The guy in the turban was so chill, he actually said, "Do you need me to spell my name for you?"
“I guarantee it's going to be a waste of your time and the company's time and nothing will come of it." When it became clear that she wasn't going to get what she wanted, she called her father on her cell phone and started screaming very loudly that she was being manhandled and asking for her Daddy.
She was claiming that he was the Attorney General of New Jersey and she wanted to sue the airline and get all the employees fired. Security finally dragged her away at that point. The funny thing is that I looked up the Attorney General of New Jersey at the time and he didn't have any daughters.
5. Carded
Working on a local theatre project, the lead actress’s birthday was in the middle of the final week of rehearsals. We’re all packed into the theatre for hours on hour per day, but there’s still time to celebrate. We pass a card around and the director decides she’ll bake a cake. When we take a break, someone brings the lead actress out on stage so we can cut the cake.
We will also sing “Happy Birthday” and give her the card. Everything is going well. Then suddenly, there comes a great screeching. The director is displeased. Apparently, no one had asked her to sign the card. To be clear, she’d seen it being passed around, but no one had actively asked her, and she took that as an insult. She slams the cake to the floor right in front of the poor lead actress, screams at us all for being so inconsiderate and stormed off. Happy birthday.
6. Puppy Love
My wife's friend. Her husband bought her a puppy, and spent probably $600 on the actual dog, training, food, toys, etc. He is the one who takes it outside to pee, feeds it, takes it on walks, etc. He pretty much did everything to take care of it. Yet, she keeps complaining that the puppy likes him more. That was unbearable behavior enough, but then she took things to the next level.
Not only did she stop wearing her wedding ring and change all her profile pictures to not include her husband, but she also threatened to get rid of the dog for good and even tried to harm it behind his back a couple of times. Luckily, her husband left her and he and the dog now live together in a different place. What a spoiled witch.
7. Irresponsible Faculty Meeting
I'm a teacher and one day after classes end, I walk into the school's office to check my mailbox. A parent of one of my students sees me and says very loudly, almost screaming, "Oh, FINALLY!!!! LOOK, EVERYONE, I FOUND A TEACHER!!! Do you realize that I left work EARLY to come here after school to talk to my son's teachers about his report card, and you are LITERALLY the ONLY teacher I have found?!!! I went from classroom to classroom and everyone is GONE!!! Do you know what time it is?!! It's 3:45 pm! School ended FIFTEEN MINUTES AGO!!! FIFTEEN MINUTES!!!! And you're the ONLY teacher STILL HERE!!!! CAN YOU EXPLAIN TO ME WHY EVERYONE IS GONE?! CAN YOU EXPLAIN TO ME WHY EVERY TEACHER HAS LEFT THE BUILDING WHEN SCHOOL JUST GOT OUT?!!!!"
I paused, waiting to see if there was more. When I realized he had finished, I said, "All the teachers are in the library. We're having a faculty meeting."
The look on his face was priceless. He knew he was in the wrong, but by that point, he had committed so fiercely to his anger and righteousness that he couldn't just apologize. So he said, "Well that's just irresponsible." And he walked out of the office.
8. Early Bird Boozers
I was working at a popular Italian "fine dining" chain. We opened at 11 AM, but I was scheduled for 10:30 AM to do opening duties. Two middle-aged women were at the doors at 10:45 AM. I prepared myself for two crazy Karens—but they were so much worse than I feared. We let them in because it wasn’t a big deal. However, they both ordered drinks, and our bartender didn't get there until 11 AM. I let them know, and they seemed ok with it.
I dropped off a couple of waters while they waited for their drinks. The one woman said, "That's great, honey, but that's NOT what I wanted! HAHA!" They smiled, and it was clear she was just trying to make a bad joke. I told them again that it was only 10:55 AM, and the bartender was not in yet. They told me to make the drinks.
I couldn’t because of corporate rules, so I asked my manager to make the drinks. While he did that, I took their food orders. By 11:05 AM, they had their appetizers and beverages and said, "UGH was that so HARD? FINALLY!" Other guests, including young families, began to arrive and sit in my section. They ate half the calamari appetizer and decided it was undercooked.
I asked the kitchen to drop new calamari in and cook it a minute longer than typical. That ruined the calamari. They hated it and said, "I'm not eating this garbage!" and I asked the manager to take it off their check. They were taking up a lot of my time and asking for many little things. I went to take care of some other tables. But I wasn't the only one who hated them.
The customers at the other tables asked if I was ok and requested that the women stop swearing so much in front of their children. When I reminded the women that they were in a family restaurant, they replied, "Blah blah blah free country. Oh, I want another DRINK!” I put the order in. Their meals were up right at that moment, so I returned within a minute to drop their food off.
They yelled, "WHERE IS MY SECOND DRINK?!?! HELLO!?!" Now they were banging their half-empty glasses on the table. They continued to yell at me to the point where I started to cry while still trying to take care of my other tables, which posed no problems. I asked my manager to take over the rude folks and to let them know they were cut off.
He tore them a new one in the way only managers are allowed to. They got upset they couldn't order more drinks and asked for the check and left. They barely left enough cash to cover the bill, but one came back and asked if she left enough of a tip. I said, "No. You left me a 2% tip." She gave me five more dollars and, luckily, I never saw them again.
9. More Than A Casual Run-in
About four years ago, at a gas station, I watched two cars slowly back into each other while backing out of their spaces in opposite curves. No biggie, just exchange cards and be on your way, right? Nope. One of the two drivers decided this would be an appropriate time to go inside the store, buy a two-liter (0.44 gallon) bottle of Diet Coke and a pack of Mentos, hose down the other car with foam in his anger, then drive off. After I was finished laughing myself blue, I stayed to help the other lady talk to the authorities.
10. As Cheesy As It Gets
I worked at Panera a long time ago. It was a busy morning and I was ringing in customers as a cashier. A guy ordered one bagel toasted to go and one eight oz (227 gms) cream cheese. Since the bagel was toasted, the kitchen was the one who fulfilled the order so I let him know where to wait and moved on to the next customer.
While I was in the middle of ringing up another customer the guy came over and started yelling really loudly at me, calling me names and asking why the cream cheese wasn’t on his bagel. Panera just doesn’t do this and he never asked for it to be done. It was so bad that the random lady whose order I was taking apologized to me for him once he stormed out of the store.
11. More Than They Bargained For
There was a kid in my fraternity whose parents were literally billionaires. We actually had a couple of them, but this kid was just dumb rich. For making the Dean’s List one semester, his parents let him get any car he wanted under $100,000. I am not making this up. Well, the kid’s response to this was incredibly disturbing.
He got enraged because the customized package he wanted on his Jaguar F Type made it over $100,000 and his parents wouldn’t let him have it. At first. After enough protest from this brat, his parents said “fine.” At least I got to drive it sometimes though; it was a sick car. For what it’s worth, the Dean’s List is NOT easy to get on at my school. Still, this kid still doesn’t realize how lucky he is.
12. The Customer Isn’t Always Right
Watched an entitled angry man persecute and belittle his server to the point of tears. Then he hitched up his belt and looked pleased with himself as he swaggered off the restaurant deck, tripped on the stairs, and face planted in the sand on the beach (This was a vacation in Florida). My wife looked mortified as I laughed right out loud at the guy.
He got up, saw everyone staring and at least one person openly laughing, and quickstepped off down the beach.
13. Mother And Daughter Tag Team
I worked at a restaurant with my mom. I got the job when I was 18, and my mom had been working there for 25 years. She worked her way up from waiting tables to bartending and had been bartending for years by then. The first summer I worked there as a server, it was a typical, busy summer night. My mom and I had been there all day.
We had both been working double shifts, and it was coming close to 6 PM. The restaurant was set up with a bar side and a dining room side. I was in the dining room with two other servers; one was an older lady. I remember hearing a horrible scream. The older lady ended up slipping and falling right in front of the kitchen to the door. She shattered her elbow and her knee.
She couldn’t move, so at that point, we were all waiting for the ambulance to arrive. Dishes were stacking up, and no food was going out of the kitchen because none of us could get in. My manager that night had to take over all the tables from the server who fell had. Just before the server fell, I had a new table seated.
Apparently, the host informed me she saw the couple practically fist fighting in the parking lot before they came in. I greeted the table, and they seemed okay. They both ordered drinks, and I brought them promptly. They ordered their food and ended up getting FOUR entrees for the both of them. They were all expensive seafood dishes, and at that point, their check was over $100.
A couple of minutes after I put the food order in is when the other server slipped and fell. Therefore, the food for my table was taking a little longer. The food finally came, and my mom just happened to help me run it over. We put it down, and the woman goes, “FINALLY.” We explained that an older server fell in the kitchen and had significant injuries. There's no WAY they didn't hear it.
Then the man then said, “WELL, THAT'S JUST GREAT.” The woman started manhandling the lobster roll she got, complaining it was cold. I told her we could get her another one right away and asked if they needed anything else. The lady said, “Well, now I NEED another drink!” My mom was bartending and I had about five other tables going.
So, my mom made the drinks and brought them to the table. The woman at the table said to her, “Oh, well, you’re really good at your job.” My mom told her she had been there for 25 years, to which the woman responded, “Oh, so you have to pick up the slack for all the others?” My mom said, “No, we are a team and all help each other. Plus, your server is my daughter.”
The woman was looking to get a reaction, so she said the meanest thing possible: “Oh well, I’m really sorry about that.” Being a calm and collected person, my mom just said, “Well, I’m not. My daughter is pretty great.” The woman lost her mind and began screaming and cursing at my mother at the top of her lungs in the middle of the dining room.
The man at the table got up in the middle of the interaction and just went outside. My manager ended up having to comp all of their food. Other tables that weren’t even mine were coming over to me and apologizing because they had seen what happened. They even overtipped me because they felt bad about what went down.
14. Tantrum Competition
In Asia, in a popular mall, a grown woman rolled on the ground kicking and screaming when the grown man she was with refused to buy her regional jewelry. She slammed her hand on the glass counter, and then it turned into a shouting match. Then the guy started telling her off about how she needs to be a "traditional Chinese woman."
He then proceeded to, childishly, tease her about how childish she's behaving, by making full-on fake crying sounds. She cried. Then stopped. Like cold hard stop on the crying. This was the glorious moment when she dropped to the ground and rolled around kicking and screaming.
15. Too Hot To Handle
When I worked at Starbucks, a woman screamed at me when I told her I couldn’t make a 200-degree latte. I tried telling her that it was unsafe and would just burn the milk. She didn’t listen, so I made it as hot as I could without the milk exploding. After getting it, she screamed at me, saying it burnt her tongue because it was way too hot and tasted terrible.
16. What Are Friends For?
Let me tell you about a fellow I've known for almost 30 years, who has yet to grow up. We'll call him "Brad.” Brad is from a very wealthy family, courtesy of his dad's government work. For some reason, his parents fell in love with the small town I'm from and moved the family from the big city to our flyspeck, nowhere town.
When they first moved, they had Brad and his brother in a private school, but they eventually moved them to a public school. A mutual friend introduced me to him and he ended up in a lot of my classes. We bonded together over comic books and RPGs. Brad’s parents were incredibly free with their money toward their sons.
There were literally entire rooms of their house devoted to everything the kids bought. In high school, I worked out that Brad was getting around $500 a month to buy comics and video games with. After high school, his parents paid for the entirety of his college education. During his four years of college, he had a job for one day, which his father got him.
After college, he moved back to the area, his boyfriend in tow. His family supported both of them in an apartment for several months before he finally landed a job. I don't know whether his father helped him get the job, but the fact that he bragged about sleeping at his desk regularly makes me suspect he helped him find employment. Then things changed for the worse.
His brother, who was always the favored son, got spoiled even further. They gave him a house, among other things, and the gravy train Brad once had begun to dry up. As a result, Brad turned very bad. You see, in Brad’s mind, since his parents are no longer subsidizing his life, it's up to the rest of the world to bend over backward for him.
You're out to eat with him and you have leftovers? You should give them all to him. You've got a new computer game or e-format book he wants? You should make him a copy. You're playing an RPG? You should memorize exactly how his character works and tell him what he can do each round so he can beat the game without really trying.
You have a family emergency and can't make it to an event he's at? You should ignore your flesh and blood and come out with him anyway. For more years than I can remember, anytime anyone refused one of his self-serving demands, he would get enraged, sometimes to the point of throwing things or leaving in a huff.
Without fail, he would shout "SCREW YOU!” at the top of his lungs, at a decibel level you would never expect from a man his size. Eventually, we all got tired of his behavior, and one night, as he began a tantrum, everyone present shouted: "SCREW YOU!" at him in perfect unison, even mimicking the gestures he made.
He mellowed after that. I cut him out of my life for several years, for reasons related to his boyfriend. He's been reappearing in my circle of friends for the last year, though he frequently ghosts them. I understand he's out with his parents whenever he does this, and I suspect he's hoping to become the favorite son again.
17. Better You Than Me
My cousin parked her car on the street near my house. My neighbor came out and screamed about how that was her spot. My cousin simply moved her car rather than argue. A few hours later, one of the children who live on our street ran into my neighbor’s car in that exact spot.
18. She Got All Fired Up
When I was bartending one night, I had two people come in who seemed a little loose but not so much that I shouldn’t serve them. I gave them a round or two, and they were having fun and interacting well with customers—until they weren’t. They started crossing the line, so the time came to cut them off. I apologized and had to let them know that I couldn’t serve them anymore because they were being disruptive and were obviously very loaded.
At that point, one of the two started yelling at me for refusing to serve her. It got so bad that the customers around her began to defend my choice. She then started throwing a tantrum at them, as well as my manager after that. And, somehow, she wasn't even the worst one! Her friend had meanwhile retreated to the bathroom and set fire to one of the wicker baskets that we used as a trash can.
19. A Tall Tale
My neighbor yelled at us about putting in a new fence that was two meters (six ft) tall. The old one was rotting and only one meter (four feet) tall. She would stand there and stare at us over it the entire time that we were in the garden, so it needed to be done. She yelled at us for a good ten minutes about it on the driveway.
Then she stormed across a stone shingle driveway barefooted to complain to another neighbor about it. The neighbor wasn't even home at the time. She banged loudly on the door right in front of us, waited for about a minute or so before she had to temper tantrum past us again across the rough stones to her house on the other side.
It was the funniest thing I've ever seen a 40-year-old woman do. I wish I had my phone to film it. She was so clearly in pain, but she wanted to keep up her toddler tantrum to show us how angry she was.
20. Feeling Jilted
My roommate in junior year literally got on the floor kicking and screaming because her ex wasn't talking to her. Literal, actual temper tantrum. And her ex had very good reasons not to talk to her. My other roommate came out very confused and asked if she could have her fit somewhere else because she had an exam the next day and needed to study.
Temper tantrum girl then proceeds to get up and storm out because we didn't give her the attention that she sought. She was one of my closest friends but that friendship declined rapidly after that.
21. This Girl Needs A Therapist
I had a client a few years ago who was a single woman in her early 40s. She didn't work. Her father was in his 70s and still working as a psychiatrist; affluent, but not what I would consider rich. He paid her $3k rent every month, her health care expenses, and even gave her around $30k per year...yet, she was super rude to him.
For instance, she screamed at him on the phone once, saying, "Send me your tax return RIGHT NOW.” During that time, her father's best friend had killed a patient. She was just mad that he told her about it because it was her birthday and the story brought down her mood.
22. Last Call
The bride got so drunk at this wedding that the bar stopped serving drinks before midnight in an effort to cut her off. The groom was also drunk. People started leaving at midnight, and the bride got mad and yelled about how they were all "ruining" her wedding because she wanted to dance and drink more, but they all wanted to leave.
I was their designated driver to get them to their hotel. The entire drive there, they fought. She berated him; he cried. That was a long 20-minute drive. I could have scrubbed vomit out with cleaners, but the awkwardness has stained that car forever.
23. She Took Matters Into Her Own Hands
I worked at a popular restaurant. During dinner service, we usually had 30-40 minute long wait times. People were told about this by the hosts. There was this lady who got fed up with the wait after 10 minutes. She stormed into the restaurant, stood next to a table of four people, and literally asked them, "Are you guys done? We've been waiting for a long time now and would like to have the table if you guys are just chatting."
24. Phoning It In
When I worked in retail at an office supplies place that sold phone accessories, this lady came in asking for a case for her iPhone 6, which had been just released at the time. Because it was released maybe a week prior, we did not have any in stock and I told her so. Her reaction blew me away. This grown woman stomped her foot, pouted, and cried, "But I want one!"
I said, "I'm sorry? Maybe we'll get some in stock soon. Let me ask a manager." She pouted, stomped her foot again, and said, "But I need it now!" I just walked away. First world problems, honey. First world problems.
25. Caught By The Ear
Back in my teens I used to work at a sort of guided tour in my city. The tour took place in a sort of small car designed to look like a train and people would sit in wagons behind it while it drove around and explained stuff about our city. We also provide a shuttle service at set times from and to a parking place for a theme park nearby.
Outside of these times we would not ride because we weren't paid at all. We drove the whole morning until 12 pm and then we drove from 4 pm to 8 pm. I experienced many tantrums as one does in tourism. I forgot about most of them over the years. But one hissy fit was so insane, I still remember it as clear as day. There was a family of six people, who approached us while we were off duty when the "trains" were all parked.
The father of the family approaches me and says that they would like to go back to their car. I explain that we do not drive at these hours and that we did specify that during the ride over here. He calls me a liar. My boss was in the train reading a magazine and this guy walked towards him puffing. So, my boss opens the windows and asks if he can help him.
The guy asks the same question, boss gives the same answer. This guy just flipped. He started yelling and screaming like he was seven, jumping on the train and off, punching the windows, all the while turning red, tears running over his face. His wife in the meantime chose to walk away with the children looking embarrassed.
An old man who was with them calmly walked towards the man having a tantrum and said, "Get down," The guy keeps screaming at me at my boss, at the old man, and anyone else who comes near him. This old man walks closer, suddenly jumps up, grabs the guy’s ear, and drags him from the train. The guy is now screaming, "Sorry, Dad, sorry.” His behavior still stumps to this day that some people are like that.
26. A Glass Half Empty Kind Of Girl
My ex-girlfriend. She grew up in a really fancy town in Illinois called Evansville. One day, we went to a really great sushi place, and she complained that the rice was too chewy. She accused them, the Japanese owners who had lived in Okinawa for 30 years, of not knowing what authentic sushi tasted like. The audacity...
When I bought a new car, she constantly complained that the seats weren't soft enough. Witch, those seats were like giant pillows! Another time, we attended a friend's small party on a sports yacht in Miami. She complained of the fish smell. We were on a freaking yacht. On the ocean. It was going to smell like fish. I had to end things after that.
27. Matter of Manners
I was in court for a directions hearing. The judge was already in a bad mood and asked why we were here for such a pointless litigation. The barrister starts to make our case when I hear, "EXCUSE ME, WHY WERE YOU SO RUUUUUUDE TO ME?" We had told our client NOT to come and yet here she was in court. Evidently, she'd heard how stupid the judge thought her case was and she was not happy.
She berated the judge for about 3 minutes while my co-counsel and I desperately tried to shut her up. The case did not go very well to my client's surprise and fury.
28. Pennies From Haters
When I worked in Domino's, I had a guy throw a handful of pennies at me while laughing. The 30 odd cents was apparently my tip. He got mad when I turned around and walked away without picking any of them up. But throwing the pennies wasn't even the bad part. What he said next made me facepalm. "Oh, my money is not good enough for you? Fine, I'll never order Domino's again!"
29. Sole Reason
My ex-girlfriend was basically a giant tantrum waiting for an excuse. We broke up. Then she called me wanting to go to an event, and I idiotically thought, "Why not?" Biggest mistake I've made in my life. So, we are at a vendor and they don't have any more of this small five-buck item she wants to buy. And, she was off. She started out with a catch in her voice saying, "What do you mean you don't have the item?"
"It was the only reason I came to this stupid event!" Then she did a quivering chin that led to a high keening wail. She also started stomping her feet and hitting displays as she screamed. The poor person behind the counter had just those wide eyes. A huge crowd of people that were at the event were staring at her and it dawned on me that I didn’t have deal with this anymore.
I did not even have to be friends with her unless I wanted. And I didn’t want to. So, I walked away. And then she started screaming, "How dare you walk away from me!" I answered with; "How dare you cause a public scene about a five-buck piece of junk? Go away.” Then I left.
30. Tipping Point
Everyone in our high school chemistry class sat at work areas that had built-in sinks with those high-arching faucets. We were going to do some experiments one day and had some balance scales on our work areas. We also had some kids who sat in the back and goofed around a lot. While the teacher is talking about the experiments we were going to do, Dumb, Dumber, Dumberer, and Dumberest started goofing.
One of them, Dumberer, was sort of wiggling the faucet, and it broke off in his hands. The teacher didn't see this, so he quickly put the broken piece out of sight. The Teacher turned around, noticed something wrong, and couldn't put his finger on it for a second. Then he realized what had happened and his face clouded over. No other reaction yet though.
The teacher went back to explaining things, and you could hear something in his voice, an edge. But the Dummy Brothers are oblivious. They start messing around with the scales, and weighing stuff on their desk. Then Dumberest interrupts the teacher in mid-sentence, saying, “Hey, Teacher, did you know my pencil weighs 35 grams?”
The teacher stopped cold. His face darkened, his lips curled back and he lost it, saying, “Did you touch the scale? Did you touch it?” He stormed to the back, grabbed the scale off of the desk, went back to the front, and just started raging—going off on students about disrespect, damaging stuff, disrupting the class, etc.
The students all just sat there, slack-jawed. At one point, he grabbed the weighing pan from the scale and flung it across the room. After a while, he tried to compose himself. He grabbed a stack of papers for the experiment and started handing them out. His hands were shaking so bad he could barely do it. Then he finally just left the classroom. We sat there for a while, then someone from the administration came down and dismissed the class.
31. I Get Hangry
This girl I used to be friends with got mad at me and my other friend for not getting her "steak or a salad” when we asked if she was hungry one day. Like, she EXPECTED us to get it for her after that. At first, we thought she was just talking about how she was craving it, but her follow-up response revealed the chilling truth: "If you guys are too lazy to get me the steak, just go get me a salad from McDonald’s.”
We informed her that we weren’t getting her any food because we were NOT her servants. She retaliated by throwing a tantrum. The funny part is, she expected us to pay for EVERYTHING when we used to hang out and if we didn’t, apparently we were just "stingy jerks who use her for her gas.” Thank goodness I don't talk to her anymore.
32. Simple Solutions
Co-worker got her car, which she only had for six months, repossessed. She almost tore the bumper off and just beat the thing up like crazy. She thought she could just make partial car payments. She didn't want to pay 100% of all of her bills because she'd have very little money left to do fun things like get really drunk. She has to come up $1,100 in ten days to get it back and provide proof of insurance.
Well, not only does she not have $1,100, she also does not have insurance. In order to get insurance, she needs a valid driver's license, which she also does not have. She thinks she can just let the car go without any consequences and the dealer will just sell it and recoup their losses. And this week she has bed bugs!
She thinks she can just move downstairs because the bugs are upstairs.
33. Her Daily Ritual Was A Grind
I used to work at a Starbucks right next to a Walmart. One of the Walmart employees would come in for lunch every day. She was in her 60s and was very strange and very demanding. She always ordered a spinach feta wrap on a plate with cutlery and a tall hot coffee with room for cream. When I would see her, I would say hi and then say her order, and she would reply, “Yes, that's right.”
Then while I would type it in, she would repeat it very sternly. Then, while I would put it in the oven and get the plate ready, she would tell me again very sternly. She would repeat her order a few times despite me displaying that I knew what it was. She was always angry and scoffing during the process. The next part of her ritual was somehow even MORE annoying. She would go find a table and rearrange the furniture VERY loudly.
She would drag the metal bottom of a table across the polished concrete floor. Then drag the wood chairs across it as well. Even some customers would offer to help her move them, but she always insisted that she could do it. So for a solid five minutes every day, everyone in the store just had to listen to thunderous sounds.
Next, she would go get her coffee ready at the little bar and make a HUGE mess. She always pulled out a bunch of sugar packets and spilled them everywhere. Then she would take a load of napkins and come back to the counter without cleaning her mess. She would squeeze in front of whoever was currently being helped and say that we were out of napkins.
Then, she would go have her food and drink, leave the plate and cup there, go into the bathroom and throw all of the napkins on the floor, along with some paper towels as well. We always had to have someone go clean up after her. She would go back to work and return later. When she returned, she would always complain that she had left her stuff on a table and that it was now gone.
We explained that we had cleaned it up and that she could not reserve a table for herself. She would be furious and demand a free coffee, which she automatically got anyway with her first order. So, I would give her a free refill and she would drag the tables and make a huge mess for us to clean up all over again.
34. A Slam D(r)unk
I was working at a busy bar in a major city. There was one guy who wouldn't stop pounding his empty glass on the bar, rolling his eyes, and yelling, "I'M EMPTY OVER HERE." It was 11 PM on a Saturday night, and the bar was packed, with a line around the block. I told him I would get to him as quickly as I could. About 20 seconds later, I heard him slam his glass on the bar, AGAIN.
I leaned over to tell him if he couldn’t stop mistreating my glassware, I was going to give him a plastic cup. The man proceeded to spit in my face. I was honestly shocked. But don't worry, he got what he deserved. One of my regulars grabbed him by the back of his head and slammed his face into the bar. A melee broke out, and at least 20 of my glasses ended up broken.
35. Getting What You Paid For
I worked at a local butcher shop. We are one of the few places in my town that gets fresh turkeys in yearly for Thanksgiving. Given how small we were and how busy we were I was working 8-7 that entire week while still being a student. It was already going to be rough, but one customer turned it into a disaster. How our system worked was you had to call in to reserve a bird and then we would organize our orders by weight.
When the birds came in, we would match them to our orders as close as we could but, of course, there would be a couple orders that were a tad off in weight. I figured this was common sense. You can't order a 6 kgs (13 lbs) bird and expect that exact weight when you come get it. We had a middle-aged gentleman come pick up his bird and he told me his name so I went to retrieve the order.
He had ordered something like a five or six kg (11 or 12 lb) turkey. When I got it, I noticed this bird was actually a kilo (two lbs) heavier than he wanted, but he got charged for the smaller weight that he had requested. I explained this, handed him his bag, and wished him a happy holiday so he could go pay and be on his way.
He looked at the tag and asked if I was serious. I asked if there was a problem. He said, “Uh, yeah. I don’t know if you can read or not but this isn't the weight I ordered." I responded, "Sir, we can't match every single order to the exact weight requested, we do our best and charge you for the weight you asked for if you get a larger bird."
He scoffed and started raising his voice saying that he had been a loyal customer for three years and he wanted to speak to the manager. He started yelling about my incompetence and that I couldn’t “even match two numbers." I was in shock that he was railing at me for getting a larger bird for cheaper than what he asked for.
Luckily the owner actually loves to put guys in their place when they're behaving like children and told him to either leave and never come back or thank me for helping him. He stormed out and we ended up with an extra turkey for sale. The funny thing is that he came back right before close and apologized. It had been another 12+ hours day for me
I wasn't in the mood and didn't even acknowledge him until he said that he was ready to pay for the bird. I gave him the biggest grin that I could muster and informed him that I sold it to someone. He walked out shaking his head and muttering under his breath and never came back.
36. Keyed Up
When I was in high school, I worked at a local fast-food place. As a cashier, it was pretty common for people to momentarily forget their wallet, phone, or keys at the front after ordering their food. If I noticed something was left behind, I would place it under my cash drawer and wait for the owner to come look for it after they ate.
One day, a very grumpy middle-aged man comes in, he orders, I serve him, and he sits down to eat. After eating he comes up to me and asks if I happened to see any keys. I said that I hadn’t but I was able to help him look and ask around if any coworkers found anything. After ten minutes of looking, we couldn’t find them anywhere.
At this point it becomes busy and I have to keep working helping new customers. It turned out he didn’t believe me, and thought I filched the keys to his ancient, beat-up Lincoln. His response was unhinged. He ended up calling the authorities, saying that I’m a rotten little liar who jacked his keys and refused to ‘fess up. Meanwhile I was about 17, and probably the most trustworthy out of all the shady people who did work there.
My bosses were on my side and didn’t believe him for a second. When the authorities came, they looked over the tapes and did not find anything that would possibly incriminate me. But that was not enough. The man still thought I took them. The authorities finally asked him if he may have thrown them away in the garbage.
I will never forget the look on his face when he dug through the trash and found his keys at the very bottom. He didn’t even apologize to me, the authorities rolled their eyes and escorted him out.
37. A True Man Child
I had an old friend call me in the middle of the night, begging for me to go pick him up. I thought he had gotten mugged or something along those lines. The actual reason was jaw-droppingly ridiculous. Turns out, he got into an argument with his parents because they bought him a storage space for him to put his childhood items into.
He was so upset that his parents decided to sell their home and move elsewhere to retire and that he would be forced to decide which of his items to keep and sell. I deleted his number right after that night and have avoided him at all costs since then. He is 29 years old and a total man-baby. Like seriously dude, work on your drama.
38. Choo Ch-Oops
I know someone who bought a condo without realizing that it was very near train tracks. Entitled person was so outraged, they called a major rail freight company and asked them to stop running trains at night. Just for them. Spoiler: It didn't work. Seriously the most eye-rolly thing I've ever heard about in my life.
39. Get in Line
I had a lady yell at me a few times that I was standing in the line for business passengers only and that I needed to get into the correct line because I obviously couldn't afford business class with Emirates. People are so prejudicial and rude it blows my mind.
40. Bullet Dodging 101
I brought a girlfriend at the time to my parents for Christmas. We had been dating for roughly 7-8 months and my parents went and dropped some cash on gifts for her. She opened them and said: “It’s like you don’t even know me. I would never wear any of this. You can take them back and return them.” RIGHT in front of my parents.
I asked her to leave. She asked if I could give her a ride home since it was Christmas...I said no and to call a cab.
Shutterstock
41. An Authentic Pain In The Pasta
I worked at a local Italian restaurant, and one night, I had a couple that came in, seated themselves, then demanded their menus. I was leery. When I came over, the man told me how he was from Italy, and he had already noticed that the carbonara wasn’t made like REAL carbonara. Apparently, authentic carbonara has four types of cheeses on it. Cue my eye roll—but he was just getting started.
He made me check with the kitchen to see if they could make it the real way, which they couldn’t. However, he still decided to get it, knowing he wouldn’t like it. At that point, I knew that I was going to get a lousy tip because he ordered something he wasn’t going to like. I got them their complimentary bread, and he complained that it wasn’t hot enough, so I had the chef pop it in the pizza oven.
The dude still wasn’t happy with it, so I had to wait for the kitchen to prepare fresh bread, and, in the end, he barely ate any of it. Without any surprise, he hated the carbonara, and he, of course, chewed me out over it. He told me how disappointing he thought our restaurant was and how he would have to drive back home to Miami unhappy. I comped his bill, apologized, and told him I hoped the rest of his night went well. His wife sheepishly smiled at me, and they left no tip.
42. Entitled Over Espresso
We were cleaning up after a wedding reception at our facility, and I had begun the cleaning process on our espresso machine. The party had been over for almost a half-hour. The cleaning process takes 12 minutes. People were still milling about as the party slowly let out, and the bride's father asked me for an espresso.
Since we had a strict policy of always trying to satisfy a guest's needs, I told him I could get it to him, but the machine was cleaning, and it would be done in about 10 minutes. He began ranting about how much he paid for the wedding and stormed to our banquet managers. He told them I refused to make it for him. The manager started tearing into me. I showed both of them that the machine was just finishing the cleaning process, and it was impossible to make it beforehand. I got suspended for two weeks.
43. What A Clucker!
I worked at a local chicken joint. To help drum up business, my boss made an “all you can eat” deal. The only stipulation was you couldn’t order one all-you-can-eat for multiple people. It was reasonable enough, and often it wasn’t an issue. However, one evening as we were near closing, a couple of guys wandered in, and one of them ordered this all-you-can-eat deal. He started sharing it with his friend, and we told him that he couldn’t do that.
Since we were getting ready to close anyway, my manager told him that we wouldn’t cook anymore for him because of it, but rather than throw out what we had already cooked, he could just have that. The guy had a tantrum and threw the food across the entirety of the restaurant once we turned our backs. There were french fries and ketchup everywhere. However, he kept the chicken though. Not only that, but the next morning we found that the restaurant's windows had been vandalized.
44. Excelling At Excel
My ex-boss thought he was alone in the office one night, and Excel chose that time to mess with him. It wouldn't calculate a formula correctly, so he absolutely launched into a rant at maximum volume. I froze in my cubicle, afraid to touch my keyboard and inadvertently announce to him he in fact wasn't alone. I just listened as it got worse and worse.
He kept trying to redo the cell, and every time it failed he would get more and more belligerent. His voice started rising higher and higher while I remained frozen. Eventually, he started crying. He blubbered about the program and I was now panicking. I couldn't walk out because the door was right next to his office. I couldn't make a noise. I was stuck.
He decided to get up and take a walk, and that's when his rant stopped in its tracks. My eyes shot to my desk lamp. It was on. Then I heard footsteps approaching. I scanned my desk. I had to think fast. Suddenly, an idea flashed into my head. My hands shot out, grabbed my headphones, and threw them onto my head in one quick movement. I started bobbing my head when he walked around the corner and said, "Well, that was a bit embarrassing!"
I ignored him, facing my screen, pretending the music was blaring. He tapped me on the shoulder and I acted all shocked. I took off my headphones and faced him. He was sweating. He said again, "Well, that was a bit embarrassing. Did you hear my rant?" I told him that I did not. My music was just too loud, you see. We talked a bit, and end of the story.
I've never heard in my life a scary hissy fit like that, and I hope I never do again.
45. Play Time
This old boss I used to have as a part-time graphic designer stuck me with making a training CD presentation for a client. I basically had to learn to code HTML to do the thing. I figured out how to get it to autorun, how to organize the pages, organize and build all the graphics for it as well as edit this small amount of video they wanted embedded in the presentation.
The only thing I could not figure out how to do was make the video autorun when the page loaded, so I just had to have a "Click to start video" button on it. My boss flipped out. He started panicking, "The client is coming to see this later today! And this it for them. If this video doesn’t automatically play, that’s it, it’s over! They’ll cancel the whole project!"
He started crying in front of me. This is a grown, mid-50s man and I was a 19-year-old college student at his first job. He finally turned to his business partner, sobbing "Bill! What are we going to do, Bill?" And Bill just looked at him like and said, "We tell them to push the button, Steve. Get a grip!" In the end, the client didn't even notice the video didn't autoplay. They just clicked the button to play it and they never thought twice about it.
46. Special Treatment
I used to work for a college association in Washington, DC. Each year we held conferences for all the different positions at the schools: presidents, VPs, CFOs, marketing folks, etc. We always had the president's conference in DC because it was more prestigious and allowed them to visit with congressional members. It was also always held at very classy hotel/conference centers.
At one of these events, I'm walking around making sure all the signage is correct when I see a president from a tiny college berating the hotel staff at the front desk. He was complaining that he should be getting a room discount—even though he registered really late—and asking them how they could dare and if they knew who he was.
Kudos to the man at the front desk, just straight up stoic in his expression and saying so matter-of-factly, "No, I do not know who you are, sir" and "I have never heard of that college" and ending it with "Sir, we do not act like that here."
47. All In The Family
Long story short, my parents are fairly well-off. Like, really well-off. For example, my parents would often find out people in need, like a struggling family or whatever, and anonymously drop a new car or van off at their home, as a gift in their name. Or, they would pay off people's mortgages if they were in a bind. They did it anonymously because, according to my father, "People will always feel like they owe you, or have an obligation to you, even if you insist otherwise." Plus, they were sticklers about the whole religious principle of not doing charity to get seen by others, but for the right reasons.
Anyway, I know this is going to go a different direction than some of you expected—you probably assumed I was going to talk about some other rich spoiled kids I knew, which there were plenty...but I have to say, the most spoiled person I have ever known is my father's brother, my uncle. Quick back story, my parents do not come from old money, and I did not either.
In fact, I remember being quite poor in my early childhood, guarding my father's bucket of flowers on the street corners of Boston as he roller-skated and sold them to people at rush hour. Well, he eventually saved up enough money and opened his own flower shop, then that grew into a chain of flower shops, and so on. Things took off rather quickly and we went from being broke to rich.
This is when my father's brother comes into the picture. My father did so much to help him and his family. He gave him a million dollars to start a business, which my uncle somehow blew in six months with nothing to show for it. He also paid for their home when times were tough...literally, he has always been there to bail them out.
I have never once heard my uncle say “thank you” for anything, nor his wife. My father has declined to talk about it and if I ever brought it up, he'd always say, "We got lucky. He's just trying to help his family and he's my brother, so stop complaining." Here is something that REALLY bugged me, though.
When I was still in my early teens, I was still adapting to this concept of massive wealth in our family. My uncle and his family had this van—an old Dodge Caravan that was breaking down, in and out of the shop. We decided as a family to do something nice for them, so we went to the dealership, got the most loaded family van there was, and went to their home to drop it off. His reply made my blood boil.
Not only was my uncle disappointed that we didn't buy them a Suburban, but he also showed no gratefulness at all. In fact, he even complained about it, saying that we should have just taken him to the lot with us so he could have picked what he wanted. A week later, he sold the van and bought a brand new sports car instead.
To this day, I have never seen any gratefulness from them. I don't even like being around them. It sucks because my cousins became very much like my siblings because they were with us so much. My aunt and uncle were probably vacationing out of town once a month, so they'd always leave my cousins to hang out with us.
48. Family First
I coached gymnastics at a very highly competitive gym. One of my duties was to select and train the youngest talent for compulsory team training. Parents caught on to what I was doing when I pulled kids from classes and got all nail biting excited, but never confronted me if I didn't pursue a kid for higher training. Until the worst woman I've ever met had a huge meltdown.
She was a high-powered executive mom. Yelled at me in the lobby that I was blind, couldn't see Suzy's talent, her somersault (!) is better than all the other five-year-olds in class, we should be training her for free because did we know her soccer coach thinks she's a STAR? A STAR. I gave her a response that made her face turn white.
I told her competitive gymnastics is a family commitment, and while Suzy is great, her family is what didn't make the cut.
49. Subway Spinach Spat
I was working at Subway. One night we were running out of spinach. A guy dressed as a cowboy came in and ordered a foot-long. We got to the spinach, and the cowboy said, “I want a lot of spinach.” We were only supposed to put pinches on anyways, but this guy was used to me giving extra when my manager wasn’t around because I roll that way, but not today.
He demanded, “You’re gonna give me more than that.” I replied, “We’re running out of spinach today,” knowing a boomer tantrum was brewing. “Give me more,” he said, so I gave him pinches, but he wanted handfuls. The cowboy demanded, “I NEED MORE SPINACH THAN THAT, BOY.” I told him again, “Sir, we’re running out of spinach.”
He said, “DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I COME HERE AND THEY GIVE ME ALL THE SPINACH I WANT.” I told him, “Yeah, but other customers are gonna want spinach tonight, though.” He went on saying, “I've been coming here for years even though your prices keep going up. Why do the prices keep going up?” I told him I was just the cashier and didn’t know.
He told me I talked him out of a sale and asked for my manager’s number. I gave him mine. He left a message, and I just texted him back, “Yeehaw.”
Wikimedia Commons, Corey Coyle
50. He Paid The Price For Some Nuggets
I worked as a manager at a McDonald's. I was pretty easygoing when it came to mess-ups and credits. If you said we messed up, I would replace it. Nearing the end of my shift one day, this dude came walking in, yelling and cursing at me. He clapped at me and told me he wanted his darn kids meal. I finally had enough and said I would give him his money back for the nuggets and half the food he had just spewed out all over me and the counter.
He yelled at me that he wanted his nuggets. I gave them to him and told him to have a nice day, and he threatened to beat me up. A regular in the restaurant called the authorities, and they took the guy in for public intoxication and endangering the welfare of a minor. The guy ruined his life over some nuggets, which I would have given him for free if he wasn’t being so difficult and rude.
51. Underappreciated
My older sister was 35 years old at the time. The family was prepping breakfast one day while on vacation in Hawaii. I was catching up on emails on my phone. My sister came up to show me a picture on her phone. I did a quick take and said something along the lines of "That's nice." Apparently, I didn't look long enough to appreciate it like she wanted.
So, she literally tattled to Mom and then went to cry in a corner of the bedroom. Breakfast was on the table and she wouldn't come eat or sit down. Dad went to comfort her to try and coax her out about five minutes later. Of course, I was the villain in her tale of "woe is me" and I was asked to apologize. I peaced out immediately as I didn’t have time for that nonsense. I was in Hawaii; had snorkeling to do and loco mocos to eat.
52. A Flawless Celebration
I was a cake decorator at a local grocery market for a couple of years. A woman ordered a small toy kit for the top of her cake several months ahead of time. She refused to prepay or keep the kit for her cake to add on top when she arrived. Long story short we had to keep this Minnie Mouse toy around for months with the lady’s name on it.
I personally decorated it to save others the hassle of her scrutiny. When she arrived, she said that there was a small imperfection in the toy and we have to give her another one. Unfortunately, we no longer had them in stock because they had been discontinued by our supplier. That's when she lost it. She called the store manager, regional manager, and corporate.
I'm sure she would have called God that day if she had his number. One sweet lady tried to reason with her so she started throwing pre-decorated cakes at us and smashing them onto the floor. Her husband arrived, learned of the events, and instead of reasoning with her, he came behind the counter to shove things and scream in my face.
I ended up getting reprimanded for allowing a customer into the employee-only area, and had to drive two hours to get one of the remaining few toys left at another location. I hope their two-year-old’s party was worth it.
53. Flipping The Deal
Our Airbnb host told us breakfast was 15 euros per person, per day when it clearly said on her page that it was just five euros and she never told us anything different until several days later. When calmly reminding her of that fact she would go into long tirades of how for that price, we should make her breakfast and how expensive everything was in her house.
She also added how early she had to get up and how wrinkly her skin was and how her husband once broke his foot picking lemons several years before and all kinds of irrelevant facts which we always countered by saying that no one was forcing her to make us breakfast and offer it at that price. At the end, she totally lost it.
She ripped pieces of paper, accused us of taking advantage of her, and threw our family out of her house with two small children in a foreign country. We had a bad feeling about her the whole time but ignored it because she is an Airbnb "super host" with a great rating. Even before the breakfast incident, she would act in a cuckoo manner, always coming into our rooms, sniffing on our beds, moving furniture around, and so on.
54. You Can’t Choose Family
My sister-in-law hasn’t been spoiled with material things, but she does dominate all family decisions and events. She will throw a fit at perceived slights, so everyone walks on eggshells to keep her happy at all times. If the family holiday dinner falls on a time when she can't make it—even though everyone else can—we better change it.
If she wants to use my father-in-law's pool on Labor Day Weekend to host a birthday party for her son, even though he just had another birthday party the weekend before that we all had to go to—we'd better make sure we all attend. There are so many more examples of her paranoia that people are being mean to her, but it's exhausting to even think about.
I wish someone in her family would tell her that the world doesn't revolve around her.
55. Don’t Mess With the Coupons
Working at a pizza shop, a troublesome customer tries to stack coupons that clearly state "One coupon per purchase." After being refused by everyone in the restaurant, including the owner, he goes on a rant saying that the District Attorney is his cousin, and was threatening a lawsuit. As he was heading for the door, he said, "You can't afford to mess with me!"
I shouted after him, "You can't afford a large pizza!"
56. Chicken Box Blunder
It was the middle of summer. A lady from the real estate agency next door ordered a chicken box, then proceeded to drive an hour to her next showing. The order probably stayed right in front of her AC unit in the passenger seat during the drive, so it obviously got cold. Upon her shocking discovery that food doesn't stay warm, she called us screaming that we tried to kill her.
My boss agreed to give her a new free meal when she came back. She came to get her free food. Things somehow got even worse. One of our chefs came to collect her cold food. While still in front of the window, he opened the box and fished out the uneaten biscuit. He threw the rest away but walked away with the bread. I presume he meant to eat it.
The woman then started screaming about how we were "recycling" food, that she was good friends with the health inspector, and that she was going to see us in court. The histrionics brought my boss out of his office, and after chewing out the idiot chef, he tried to smooth things over. She wouldn't move forward in line, and the line was piling up.
My boss was starting to get annoyed. Her hot, fresh meal came up, and he went to hand-deliver it and tell her to get out of the line. Suddenly, our food runner let out a gasp and looked up to see a box of steaming hot chicken come sailing through the window and scatter across the front of the place. My boss barely stepped back in time. We could only stare as the crazy lady roared out of the parking lot.
57. This Dude Got Dialed Up
I was bartending at a restaurant. There was a private party, and one of the guests asked me to plug in his iPhone to listen to a song—no big deal. I did, and he tipped me $20. He left his phone behind the bar and got trashed. When he was leaving, I said, "Sir, don't forget about your phone!" He proceeded to throw a drink at me and told me to leave him alone and get a real job.
58. Read My Mind
A girl I used to work with had a freaking MELTDOWN one day because someone in our group had gone to McDonald's and gotten breakfast for themselves. She was asked if she wanted something—she said no I'm good. The whole group heard it. When the employee came back with food, meltdown girl couldn't handle the fact that no one thought to get her a McGriddle.
Meltdown ensued. Lots of screaming and yelling happened. Meltdown girl eventually took 12 weeks off work to deal with her issues and was fired within two days of returning.
59. Home Free
Once, at a parking garage, my ex-husband and I were very close to getting out for free, but there was a car in front of us taking its time. We get up to the booth and the elderly lady working at it tells us it'll be a dollar. A dollar. My ex starts arguing with her, saying if she hadn't been so slow with the other customer, it would be free.
The woman looked terrified. I tried calming him down but he started screaming at the old woman, calling her names and saying that she needed to be better at her job. We started fighting because it was ridiculous. I paid the dollar and he sped off. We fought about it for the rest of the day. Very few people saw this side of him.
This was because he was good at pretending to be a good person. I lost friends who couldn't believe I'd leave such a good man. I'm sorry, if you're going to scream and berate an elderly woman to save a dollar, you are not a good man.
60. Making Space
I was at the airport behind a few people in the check-in line. There was also a lady with her husband and two children. I was minding my own Facebook feed when the mom begins to unravel. You apparently can't travel with young children without having appropriate documentation. I guess the family didn't know this or forgot to bring the documents with them.
Whatever the case may be, they weren't allowed to check-in without them. Lady starts getting loud, proclaiming her grandmother is dying of brain cancer and demanding they let her family through. She starts berating the workers, calling them all sorts of unique names. I turn my attention to her male counterpart as he's detaching the smallest child from the stroller.
The man must have been psychic because ten seconds later the mom grabs the stroller and starts aggressively ramming it into some innocent bystander at the neighboring check-in booth. A single “World Star” emerges from the otherwise silent crowd. Security comes charging out and this middle-aged mother of two bursts into a full sprint, a foot chase ensues, her family is left behind, and I never see her again.
61. Stage Five Clinger
I decided to get some waffles to take a break from helping out at my grandfather's funeral and happened to see my friend at the restaurant. I thought she was going to console me, but when she walked up to me, I could already see it in her face—she was about to blow. It turned out that she had been messaging me throughout the day and was annoyed I didn’t reply. All the while, I was really just busy entertaining my grandfather's guests. She wailed loudly, accusing me of not needing her in my life.
This all happened in full view of the crowded cafe and my other friends. So much for taking a break from all the ongoing drama at the funeral...
62. Brand New Bag
I worked at a grocery store in uppity Gold Coast Chicago when I was a teen. We sold soup for lunch and when bagging them, we put it in a paper bag followed by a plastic bag to make sure it was secure. This one lady buys soup and I proceed to bag it. She then says, “No, I’ll just put it in my bag.” I asked if she was sure. Mind you, she has a Louis Vuitton bag that looks brand spanking new.
She took it on its own anyway. 15 minutes later, she comes in raging that she has minestrone all over her Louis Vuitton and demands to speak to a manager.
63. Queen of the Cinemas
I work at a movie theatre, and my company has a paid loyalty program that allows special benefits at box office and concessions, like being able to skip the line using a special gold line. Because of the special "perks," some people like to think they're royalty when it comes to buying items. On busy days we normally take two loyalty guests for every regular guest.
They were usually OK—but I'll never forget that one, horrible woman. One day, I happened to be taking a guest and a woman in the loyalty line came up to the box office glass and started just slamming her hands against it. She felt as if the service was taking too long and she wanted to be served right then and there.
Mind you, I'm still taking a guest so I'm trying to focus on the people in front of me, while this idiot is literally trying to break the glass next to my face. Every other sentence out of her mouth is, "I pay for this, I shouldn't be treated like this." It's $15 a year lady, calm yourself. I seriously cannot believe some people in this world.
64. What A Wing Nut!
I had a man and his wife come in during a hectic lunch rush. He was rude off the bat, interrupting me, and not wanting to listen to me speak. He was very adamant that he wanted both chips and salsa and a plate of roasted wings as appetizers. He kept emphasizing that he wanted them together before they ordered their lunch. Even though chips and salsa only take a minute and wings take about 12, I rang them in together because of how he ordered them.
Three minutes later, the man was waving at my coworker across the restaurant, yelling at her about how they had been there for thirty minutes, his appetizer was taking too long, and he wanted it before his wings. I was at a party table, so she ran back and grabbed the chips and the wings, which were somehow up as well, and brought them out.
He took one bite of a wing—and his reaction was beyond horrible. He tossed the plate like a frisbee across the table at her and started complaining about them being cold. I rushed over to see what was going on, and he started yelling at me, saying his food was awful and this was the worst service he had ever gotten in his life. I don’t do well with grown men yelling at me, so I went to the kitchen and got my manager.
He came out and, thankfully, had my back as much as he could and made the guy pay for the wings and the chips, then leave. After he left, I started to clean the table where I found the single penny he tipped me with, which my coworker promptly threw in the trash. I then got a call from my general manager asking why a man had called me “professionally challenged” on Yelp.
65. Righting A Wrong
My supermarket has a policy that if the price is wrong on the tag, you get the item free. One day an elderly lady notices that the price is wrong on an item. I have a bagger go and check. Sure enough, it is wrong. I tell the bagger to take the tag down, and start voiding the item to give it to her for free. I explain that since it's the wrong price she is going to get it for free.
She starts yelling that the price was lower on the tag, and it isn't right. I again tell her that yes, the price is wrong and that I am going to give her the item for free. She again starts lecturing me about the price being wrong. I am like, "Ma'am! The price on the tag was wrong. You are getting the item for free!" I just don't think she was listening. She wanted to throw a fit, and wasn't going to stop.
66. Not On The Wishlist
Way back a long time ago, my stepmother's birthday was coming up. Her birthday happens to fall after Mother's Day. Me, my sister, and brother thought it would be nice to get her a ring with our birthstones—a topaz flanked by two sapphires for Mother's Day. My dad chips in and we buy her a very nice custom-made ring. We were so excited, but it went so, so wrong.
Mother's Day rolls around and we three kids give my stepmother her ring and she completely flips out. She starts yelling and throwing stuff, breaks down and starts crying, then calls me names. My dad is usually pretty quiet, but upon seeing and hearing all this, he totally loses his temper and starts yelling at her in turn.
She stormed out of the house and didn't come back for three days. So, why did she get upset? Because she wanted a new dishwasher. Which my dad had already bought for her birthday, but he immediately canceled the delivery. Not that it should have made any difference to her, I was responsible for washing all the dishes by hand anyway. So, basically, I got to see my parents get into a huge screaming match and still had to wash the dishes.
67. Sporting Spirit
On Christmas Eve a couple years ago, I suggested my family play a board game. First, we tried Scrabble. I turned the word “praying” into “sprayings” and got something like 50 points. My brother got extremely upset and claimed that wasn't a valid word. I googled it and it was indeed a word. He got annoyed and pulled up the official Scrabble dictionary.
Lo and behold, "sprayings" wasn't in it. I told him to just calm down since it was just a game, and he flipped the board over and got the letters all over the place. He then stormed off. It was crazy—but he wasn't finished. That same night, we tried to make up by playing Monopoly. My brother considered himself a Monopoly expert, whereas everyone else hadn't ever played it.
My sister was super unenthusiastic about the game and refused to ever trade properties with him just to be petty. My brother was progressively getting more and more angry. My mom was completely siding with my sister which got him so upset he eventually flipped the board over again and got little plastic houses and other things everywhere.
He started screaming at my mom and telling her that she had failed parenting my sister because she "intervened too much when they were kids." The argument ended with my dad bursting into tears—the first and only time I had ever seen him cry—and all of us just sitting in the living room in silence. My brother was 28 at the time.
68. Colorful Business
My friend, his wife, and I were going to a Christmas party at a mutual friend’s house the next day, but I went over to his place to bake the cake I was bringing and hang out and play games. Her sister was there too. So, I get there, his wife is in their living room, with her sister. The wife is sitting on the couch folding clothes.
The sister is in an armchair holding her baby. He picked up a present of hers—the new model of Keurig she wanted—but hasn't had time to wrap it yet. It's sitting in the living room, under a blanket, near the Christmas tree. Their daughter, about two at the time, pulls the blanket off the Keurig. That's when my buddy's wife loses it.
She, who, is a director-level employee for a ward at the hospital, throws the entire basket of folded clothes into the floor, dumps the rest of the clothes in her lap in the floor, and slides off the couch into the floor, in tears, because he bought the wrong color of Keurig. She's crying, yelling at him about how obviously he doesn't care about her.
All because he didn't get the right color. She also says that should just divorce him because he can't ever get anything right. Over the color of a coffee maker.
69. Clocked on the Dock
I was waiting to put in at a boat ramp in Florida one day. It was a single ramp, the guy trying to take his boat out of the water was having a tough time backing his trailer down. His wife (I assume) and two kids were waiting on the dock. Some jerk waiting to get out of the water starts screaming at him and heckling him. The first guy finally gets his trailer down the ramp, meanwhile, raging jerk had docked his boat and started up the dock towards the poor boating newbie family guy screaming and yelling.
Then the raging jerk finally just loses it. He punches family guy and knocks him off the dock into the water. Two burly dudes who nobody was really paying attention to walk up, literally grab raging jerk as family guy was falling in the water, throw him on the dock and handcuff him, then flashed their FL DNR badges. They were undercover watching the boat ramp. There was applause and cheering from the folks waiting to put in and take out.
Family guy just wants to get out there and go home, so he declines to press charges. The DNR guys apparently thought "aw heck no," proceed to tear the guy's boat and car apart and ended charging him with a BUI and every single nitpicky thing they could find wrong his boat. It was a good day.
70. The Lingering Ladies
It was my first week of waitressing when two old ladies came in two hours before the end of my night shift. They ordered the turkey specials, which came with soup and dessert. They seemed nice. If only I'd known what I was in for. I got their food and checked on them. Everything was fine, but they were still eating. I came back 15 minutes later to check on them again. One woman was finished, so I took her plate, but the other wasn’t, so I left her to it.
I came by again 10 minutes later and asked, “Still eating?” The centerpieces in the middle of the table were positioned in such a way that I didn’t notice the fork in her hand. She responded very rudely, “Obviously, I am. What does it look like?” I was new at this, so I was taken back. I apologized and laughed it off nervously. At that point, however, the kitchen was 10 minutes to closing.
I needed to put in their dessert order so the staff would know what items to not clean up and put away. So, I asked the women if I could take their dessert orders, and the same woman looked at me angrily and said, “Do not rush us! We come here every week and never have experienced such poor service. There is no need for you to be hovering like this.” I suppose I was hovering, but they were taking forever.
I apologized and explained the kitchen was closing soon, but she wouldn’t have it and sent me on my way. The other lady was just sitting there awkwardly, not saying a thing. I went back to the kitchen and noticed my boss walking to their table. A half-hour passed, and the kitchen closed, and the restaurant was about to close too. However, they were still chatting. When they were finally done, I went and asked if I could take their dessert order.
They ordered something that needed to be prepared by the kitchen, as well as coffee for the table. The coffee machine had already been cleaned, which was a whole process, and the kitchen staff was gone. I told them the situation, and the one rude woman insisted I ask my boss to reopen the kitchen because he knew them and they were regulars.
He reluctantly did it. We made a whole new batch of coffee, and he whipped up their order in the kitchen. I had to stay an hour and a half late while my ride waited in the parking lot so that I could re-clean the kitchen by myself. Then I got yelled at by my boss for not taking their dessert order earlier. He gave me no chance to explain myself. To top it all off, when they left, I got a measly $8 tip on a $75 bill. It was the worst day ever.
71. Putting Price On It
I was on a family vacation and a cousin lost a pair of sunglasses on the water. He was about 35 at the time has a well-paying job. Nevertheless, his mom, my aunt offered to buy him a new pair. They went out to the store and the pair of glasses he wanted was 400 bucks. He nearly threw a fit in the store to get the glasses. He said, “If you didn’t want to get me a pair then why offer to buy me one?”
He also said, “You know I like expensive things.” I was just blown away. And the saddest part? After he got them he was as happy as a two-year-old with an ice cream cone.
72. What A View
I worked in a box office at a large Broadway touring theatre and saw people do crazy things to get into the theatre by curtain time, or even after it started. Let's just say, the glass at the box office is there for a reason. Once I was working the Sunday matinee of a short run of the 12th time RENT came through town.
It was not even close to a sell-out and it was a half house out of 2,800 seats. So, it should have been an easy shift. I was on will-call M-Z but my window was closest to the first door so I got all of the problems. I'm chilling, just waiting for the 30 or so people I have tickets for to show up. t was right after we opened so it was slow.
One hour to curtain, the house manager has the theater open for seating. My very first customer was totally nuts. Maybe ten minutes in a woman shows up in front of my window, shoves her tickets through the slot, and starts repeatedly screaming, "This is thievery!" She had her teenage daughter with her and they were dressed in their best theatre clothes, so I could tell that they were probably from some small town.
This was clearly a big deal for them, coming to the big city to see a real Broadway touring show. It took maybe five minutes to get her to calm down, working with the microphone-glass combo thing, with her yelling "Thievery!" to every passerby. I looked at her tickets, center floor 12 rows back on the aisle, best in the house.
She explained that they are obstructed. I was very confused by this because never once have these seats been obstructed for any show that came through. She said, "There's a huge guitar in the way! We can't see the stage!" At this point, after pointing to the location of these seats on the chart and her confirming that these were the seats she sat in, I was so confused that I decided to walk her in.
She was screaming while her poor daughter was crying. I walked her and her daughter to the seats, told her that these were the seats she paid for and congratulated her on the purchase. They were not, in fact, obstructed. The mom sat down and refused to say a word to me when I asked if there was anything else I can them help with.
The daughter then told me that the first time they had sat on the far house-right side. Again, I was confused and asked the usher in that section about it and he told me she barreled past him when he asked to see her tickets and then started screaming, "Thievery!" I think it was her word choice that struck me.
73. Faking It
The woman who caused an accident was screaming that the driver of the other car was "faking it for the insurance pay-out" when we were loading him onto the stretcher. When the cop told her they were in a bad way, she threw herself on the ground and said, "Well, if he can do it, then I have neck pain too."
Meanwhile, we're preemptively shaving this guy's chest for the AED pads because he's decompensating so quickly. Her purse was laying in the road, so we ran it over, quite accidentally, when we did a U-turn to leave for the hospital. Also, thankfully, the guy ended up being okay, but was probably in for a long recovery. Don't text and drive, it's always other people who have to pay the price for it.
74. Playing To No Audience
It was back in the late summer of 1994 and I was invited to a Carrot Top show. About 20 minutes into the show, he started to freak out. It seemed as though the monitors weren't working or something like that because he kept complaining about how funny his act was and how well his prop gags had gone over in other venues.
To be clear, he was being amusing and the crowd was laughing along as one might expect. But he wasn't getting any of that feedback for some reason and he started to spiral into losing it entirely. He yanked one prop after another out of his trunk, faster and faster, and louder and louder. Eventually he had a complete breakdown. It got so awkward, so fast.
He started sobbing, dropped everything, covered his face and ran off stage. The crowd was confused because no one really knew what to expect from the guy. But he never did come back on stage and after another couple minutes the lights came on and we all left—20 minutes into the show.
75. Egg On Face
We had a customer years ago come in and want to return a carton of eggs. He said the eggs he got out of our fridge were expired, and had a month-old carton to show it. His receipt for eggs was from a week when we had eggs on sale. I had, at the time, three faces of eggs in my cooler and I would have to restock them four-six times a day.
This was because we easily went through six dozen cartons of eggs a night. There's no way, on that week, that he bought expired eggs. Beyond that, corporate policy was not to accept returns on refrigerated items or foodstuffs, or any incomplete products. Our manager wouldn't give the guy the refund on the 99-cent thing of eggs, per company policy.
The customer threw a hissy fit and it was escalated to our district office, where our district manager called the guy to our store, personally gave him a $200 gift card, walked around and talked with the guy, shopped with him, then when the guy said he was interested in getting a shingles shot made our pharmacy comp him the ~$270 vaccine on our store's dime.
So, this guy who tried to scam us out of 99 cents got almost $500 worth of things from us because corporate didn't have the spine to back up one of our managers who was only following policy.
76. High Fashion
My ex-girlfriend was going through her clothes, looking for something. Then she started screaming and throwing clothes out of her closet because her family's maid had placed them out of order and she couldn't find a specific shirt. This was in Mexico City and I'm from Canada, so I was a bit shocked. I simply laughed out loud and told her that she was being ridiculous.
77. No Surprise
When I was about ten, I misspoke and accidentally told my mom what I had gotten her for Christmas, on Christmas Eve. She screamed at me so much that she had no voice the next day, and she unwrapped all of my presents and threw them at me. Then she turned out all the lights and went to her room, leaving me sitting on the floor in the dark, covered in wrapping paper and presents. I still don't exactly know what that was all about.
78. Me First
Last month, at a Disney store, there were two middle-aged women, on their own, fighting about who got to the store first when there wasn't even a line. They just went there to resell collectors’ items. Anyway, they were butting heads before children and some kids didn't even get toys because of them. All this, despite them having a card statement like everyone does so that they have a number in line.
79. VIP Access
I used to work at a large stadium that housed several of the state's sports teams. It was New Year's Eve and I had been assigned to the private suites—the hoity-toity, overpriced rooms used to schmooze clients. We had been explicitly clear that the suites would not be open until midnight. Guests could go down to one of the large event rooms.
There was food, booze, games, etc. there but the suites were closed by 10pm. We did everything to make sure to let guests know beforehand—send emails, leave flyers in rooms and reminded remind each guest beforehand face to face to avoid any confusion. Needless to say, the staff wanted to get out of there early enough to enjoy the holiday themselves and made sure to be on top of this.
I did this with all of my suites and they nodded in agreement except for one guy, let's call him Entitled Man-Baby or EMB. When I politely reminded EMB that the suites would be closed at 10pm he instantly looked away at his friends and said, "Yeah, we'll see about that," and walked away. I tried to press the matter but he refused to look at me. I feared the worst—and got exactly that.
Eventually, his friend just nodded and shooed me away. Sure enough, 9:55pm comes rolling around and they still have their stuff everywhere, opening new drinks, and trying to order more. I politely remind him that we would be closing in five minutes and he says, "Uh, we're not going anywhere. I'm very close friends with * insert the name of the sports announcer here * and we're not leaving for a long while."
I say, "Sir, I'm sorry there seems to be a misunderstanding the suites are closing in five minutes but we'll be more than happy to show you to the New Year’s Event just a few minutes away." The EMB reiterated that they were not leaving, again turning away and refusing to acknowledge me.
He refused to leave for an hour and a freaking half. My boss, my boss’s boss, and then security came to nicely explain to him. At this point his friends couldn't contain him any longer. Exactly like the quintessential image of a spoiled child throwing a tantrum he clenched his fists, stamped his foot and held his breath until his face was completely red. If I wasn't so furious, I'd feel bad for him.
Then he let out the highest pitch and loudest sound that I have ever heard come out of a human being, saying, “I am not going anywhere. We know ‘sports announcer.’ I was promised that I could stay here and I’m not leaving.” It was almost worth it just to see the faces of his friends drop in utter disbelief. They had been enjoying the slightly silly ego trip till now.
But this was over the top. The entire room just stood silent for a solid 30 seconds before my boss's boss said, "Yeah, okay." She turned and walked out. Shortly after the infamous sports announcer guy walked in, started apologizing to EMB for the “mix up,” and said that there was a private room waiting for them. They left at 11:45pm. I spent midnight on the train headed back home.
80. Money Matters
There was this girl who was part of our friend group for a while in our early 20s; she was the definition of spoiled. Her parents were amazing—immigrants who had started a reasonably successful construction business, and her dad decided after a cancer scare that he needed to spend more time with his family/kids and make the most out of life.
They took her on all these amazing vacations, bought her a decent new car, designer handbags and sunglasses—the whole nine yards. They also put a pretty massive down payment on a house for her, probably covering about 50% of it so that her mortgage and other costs were less than her rent. She calls me one day, sobbing. When she explained why, I wanted to scream.
She is upset because her parents, who pay for everything—while she spends her money from her full-time job on clothes, makeup, and partying—are making her dip into her savings on a lawyer to close the deal for the property they bought her. She is inconsolable. I have to try to explain to her that for most people, their first home will be their entire savings.
I add that her parents have basically given her all these amazing things that other people don't get. We hung up for a bit, and I guess she accidentally pocket-dialed me when she was talking to her parents about it, and she was full-on yelling at them for daring to make her pay for a lawyer, telling them she hates them, they’re horrible and she never wants to see them again. We had already started fading her from our friend group somewhat but it was a fairly quick downhill slope from there.
81. Dealing With A No Deal
I was working retail, it was right before either Christmas or Easter, and it was one of the first major holidays I'd worked. I was outside pulling carts, and I came in to ask for my break. As I'm waiting by customer service for an opportunity to ask since they're absolutely slammed with customers, I notice that at the register directly across from customer service there is this customer screaming.
I couldn't tell what she was yelling about, but whatever it was, she was infuriated. At this point the cashier, tired of being yelled at by the customer, turned over to customer service and shouted, "Hey, this lady needs help." The girl at customer service, without missing a beat, shouted back, "Well, she can just calm down and wait!"
Unfortunately, I didn't get to see the fallout of this. I had to walk away so I didn't burst out laughing in front of the angriest person I've ever seen. I did find out later what she was screaming about, however. Because of the holiday we had a special deal on ham where if you spent $25, not including the price of the ham, you could get the ham for a certain amount off per pound.
The angry lady had bought $23.50 apart from the ham, and decided that the most rational course of action was not to just buy a candy bar or some gum, but to throw a fit of Titanic proportions. Apparently, she ended up walking out, leaving her cart full of stuff in the middle of the lane blocking the rest of the customers.
82. Staking A Claim
A good number of years ago my family, consisting of me, my mom, stepfather, my grandparents, and my aunt and uncle, all went to go see my sister perform at a theatre for her ballet recital. This theatre was pretty huge with lots of seats and ridiculously long rows. Walking down the aisle to find some good seats, I see this big family.
Since I was younger and smaller, my grandmother told me to run ahead and claim some seats. The mother of this family sees me while I'm moving in to get our seats. She practically glares at me and starts trying to push her way through the crowd to get to the seats I'm going to. My family at this time is already sitting down.
We had some really good seats. Well, this family from earlier starts settling in the row in front of us. From what I can remember, the rows each had at least 15 or 16 seats. This family took the entire row and still had about 13 family members who needed seats. But see they needed more seats, and my family was in their way.
So, the mother comes up and attempts to make everyone in our row move to accommodate her family. We pretty much all tell her that we don't want to because we got here first and because there is a couple with their baby sleeping sitting one seat down from us. She gets upset. VERY upset. She starts raising her voice, about how her family has to sit together.
She adds that she paid to get in here, and that the seat numbers on her ticket say that those are her seats. In this theatre, there's the A seats, the B seats, and so on; but, for example, if you had a ticket saying “Ticket A34” that doesn't mean you have claim over seat “A34.”It meant you can sit anywhere in the A section.
She didn't understand this, and kept on screaming which woke the baby. So, now she’s yelling at us and scaring a little baby who is now wailing while her family just awkwardly watches. The people all around in other rows are just watching her yell at us with looks of shock and disgust. Her husband, I assume, just looked down and muttered under his breathe, “She didn't take her medication, did she?”
After her screaming match, a security guard came down and told her to leave the premises for her unreasonable public disturbance.
83. A Blanket Apology
My grandmother made me and my brother outdoor themed quilts. My brother, 21 at the time, shows up from Mississippi to Alabama, where the rest of the family lives, without telling anyone, with his new girlfriend. He demanded his AND my quilt. I said no. He crushed his $400 sunglasses in his hand, shoved his blood-soaked hand full of glass in my face, yelled, “Look, what you made me do!” and ran out.
His girlfriend was so embarrassed she apologized to us, his family, for his behavior.
84. The Last Cheer
My sister-in-law is a former NFL cheerleader. We were playing a game as a family, and someone broke her pen with the NFL teams’ logo on it by accident. She stormed off downstairs crying because "she will never get a pen from cheering again" now that she had retired from cheering. Being new to the family, I legitimately asked if she was being serious. There was a long moment of silence. Apparently, she was.
85. A Picky Eater
I work at a dive bar. The vice president of the union we work for came in for lunch two to three times per week for years. He got the buffalo wrap almost every time. He hated it almost every time. He would say different things like “They call this a wrap?” and “There’s no stuff in here!” and “Why is this so big today?”
My favorite is the time that he mistakenly thought it had ranch instead of blue cheese in it. He yelled, “Is this ranch? I hate ranch!” and threw it down on his plate while I stood there. He’s, like, 50.
86. Juiced Up
I used to work at a grocery store that was just below a 24/7 gym. As cashiers, it was our responsibility to set up our own tills before our shift. A young schoolgirl was setting it all up during a rush and obviously couldn't serve customers while she was doing it. A huge man in full gym gear holding a tiny nudie juice demanded that she serve him.
She politely asked if he could wait five minutes for the till to be set up. He rolled his eyes, screamed at her, smashed the juice on the ground and stormed out. It was not the worst situation to happen but I just couldn't believe a grown man would scream at a young girl over a 200 ml (seven oz) bottle of juice! I quit a month later.
87. A Question Of Fluency
I have an IELTS certification in English and have always been complimented on how fluent I am, even by American tourists—thank you, video games. So, one day, over dinner, I joked with my stepmom about having a better pronunciation than my dad, who is a businessman and is often heard on the phone talking in English with American and Chinese people. He got so angry that he yelled at her, and grounded me for a month with no going out with my friends. He then got up and left without finishing his food.
88. A Matter Of Taste
I was at a party at a friend's house. I just casually mentioned having gone to a K-pop-related event, and my friend's brother—in his late 20s/early 30s and a guy who hates K-pop—just lost it and spent the rest of the party being abrasive towards me. I ruined a roughly 30-year-old's day all because I mentioned liking music he doesn't like. If you don't like it, fine, I don't care, but if you're gonna lose your calm because I do like it, that's entirely on you.
89. First Impressions
When I had been working retail for a short time, this girl comes in. While I’m getting her membership info, I was slow since I was new. The girl starts complaining saying this like “Couldn’t you go faster?” and “I swear I never have to wait like this.” I start apologizing and tell her that I am new. I finally find her in the system guess, and who’s last name she has?
My boyfriend’s. I ask if she’s related and she says, “Yes, what’s it to you.” I say, “Well, that’s my boyfriend. It’s very nice to meet you. I’ll have to tell him I met you. He’ll be so excited.” I reached out to shake her hand. She left in a panic because she realized she had messed up. That’s the closest thing I’ve seen to an adult temper tantrum I have seen till now.
90. This Dude’s Order Was Peppered With Problems
I worked delivery for a pizza/ice cream/sandwich shop in a small rural town. We had a guy who lived a solid half-hour outside of town who ordered about once a week or so. None of us knew why the owner ever agreed to deliver to this guy in the first place, being that far out, but we used to wonder if the owner was being threatened into doing it.
The level of nonsense this customer would raise if you didn't bring him cheese and peppers for his pizza was absolute madness. He was genuinely a psychopath. There was an incident where a delivery driver found the customer waiting on his porch polishing a shotgun, and the first thing the customer did was loosely point it towards the driver and say, "Did you bring my cheese and peppers?"
We fully believed the customer would have shot our driver if the answer had been no. As it was, the driver didn't have as much cheese and peppers as the customer would have liked. He called the restaurant and threw a fit. From then on, when we delivered to this guy we were told to take a giant bucket of cheese and peppers with us.
91. This Onion Didn’t Ring A Bell
I used to wait tables at a breakfast place. Mother’s Day was always the WORST day to work. This one Mother’s Day is going particularly well until towards the end of the brunch rush when I got saddled with a party of eight. Everyone was in a good mood. The mom ordered our breakfast tacos with no onions. She repeated “no onions” multiple times, so I was sure to make a note of it.
The drinks went fine, and everyone was doing well. When the food came out, I asked how everything looked. The mother pushed her plate away and loudly and aggressively said, “I said NO ONIONS.” I looked down at the tacos to see that there were, in fact, no onions. I told her, “Ma’am, I put your order in with no onions. There are no onions.” Nothing could have prepared me for what she said next.
She got a weird grin and said, “Oh YEAH? Well, what are these!!?” and pointed to the green bell peppers on the tacos. I told her, “Umm, those are green bell peppers.” She rolled her eyes and said, “SAME THING!” The table was now silent as no one in her party knew what to do, clearly blinded by her stupidity. My brain short-circuited.
I thought to myself, “No, no, they AREN’T the same thing. They’re not even the same color. You can read, you’re an adult, just say how you want something and stop making a scene.” Instead, I just put on my best customer service smile and said, “Right, sorry about that. We’ll get that fixed.” I took it back to the kitchen and told my chef. He started laughing about it. After all that, they didn’t even leave me a tip.
92. Sounds Wrong
My uncle is a deputy sheriff, and one time, he was at an airport speaking to my aunt over the phone in Spanish. Once he was done with his call, some nearby Karen who overheard him went up to him and started demanding to see his green card. Huge mistake. My uncle decided to mess with her and said he didn't know what a green card was.
He told her he had never even heard of it. She became more upset and kept demanding to see it. He messed with her more and then eventually went, "Well, I don't have a green card, but I have this," then brought out his wallet and showed her his badge. She immediately walked away while my uncle just kept laughing at her.
93. Shoe-in
I worked at the shoe store Fayva, and we took back everything, no matter what. A stupid policy, but then again, Fayva isn't in business anymore. One day, a woman walks in during Communion season, returning a pair of boys’ dress shoes she bought three days earlier. The kid must have played football in them after the ceremony—they were covered in mud, grease, and scuffmarks.
This was the ONE person I refused to refund my entire time there. She went crazy on me. Yelling, screaming, demanding a manager. So, my manager comes up behind me, and I just know he's going to give this woman her money, and I know she's going to smirk at me as she exits the store. I actually braced for it. Something even better happened.
Instead, my manager Mike walks up, takes one look at the shoes, and tells the woman “Nope.” She goes bananas on him now, telling him, "My son wore these shoes ONCE, to his communion, and they fell apart like this?" To which Mike calmly says: "Ma'am, it looks like your son wore these shoes to the Norman invasion."
94. A Bad Apple Spoils The Bunch
So I went to Aldi today on my lunch break from work. I was shopping for ingredients to make hard apple cider. I found the only apple juice Aldi sold without preservatives and loaded up my cart with a dozen half-gallon bottles and kept them in their cardboard boxes so they would be easier to transport. There were a few other items I needed to pick up so I pushed my cart through the store shopping for them.
A woman noticed the boxes of apple juice in my cart and asked where I had found them. I had nothing better to do, so I walked her over to the apple juice display where she thanked me. Another woman immediately came up to me and asked, "You used to have these candy apples in the store but I can't find them. Where are they?"
I had no idea where they were so I said, "I'm sorry, I don't know—I don't work here." Her eyes narrowed and she responded, "What do you mean you don't work here? I just saw you help that other person." Now, I am in a t-shirt and corduroy pants and don't look at all as if I would be working at this store. I could tell that this was not going to go well no matter what I said, but I attempted to be polite.
I said, "I'm sorry, ma'am. She asked me where I had found this apple juice so I showed her. I don't actually work here." Once again, she replied, "What do you mean you don't work here?!" I repeated, "I don't work here. I am a customer, like you." She said, "Just tell me where the candy apples are!" At this point, it was getting weird. "I really don't know where the candy apples are. I don't work here."
"You don't know where anything is in this store?!" I said, "I know where the apple juice is." She yells, "WHERE ARE THE CANDY APPLES?!" I repeat, "Ma'am, I'm sorry I can't help you. I really don't work here." She keeps yelling, "WHAT IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN?!" I’m really losing it but I say, "It means that I don't work at this store. I don't know where the candy apples are. I am a customer like you."
"THEN WHY ARE YOU STOCKING THE SHELVES?!" She indicated the boxes in my cart filled with apple juice. I say, "I am shopping, I am going to buy what is in my cart..." Nope. She yells, "NOBODY NEEDS THAT MUCH JUICE! YOU WORK HERE AND YOU NEED TO TELL ME WHERE THE CANDY APPLES ARE!" At this point everyone around us had stopped and were staring.
An Aldi shelf stocker came over and said, "Ma'am, the candy apples were a seasonal item and I'm afraid we are sold out." For a moment, I just stood there in fear. The woman glared at the Aldi employee, and then me and said, indicating me, "WHY DIDN'T HE TELL ME THAT?!" He says, "He doesn't work here, Ma'am." The woman then roared in exasperation, pushed her cart into an aisle display of canned food, knocking it over and screamed, "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE!!! I AM NEVER COMING BACK!"
She stormed out of the store, fuming. The employee gave me wide-eyed look, which I returned, then I proceeded to checkout. I loaded the juice into the trunk of my car and hopped in the driver seat. I checked my mirrors before backing out. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I noticed that the candy apple lady was in the SUV to my left, sitting in her driver seat, sobbing.
I rolled down my window and waved to get her attention. She noticed me, waited about 15 seconds, then rolled down her window. "Are you OK, ma'am?" I asked. Through sobs and tears she told me, "I said I would bring candy apples to my grandson's party." I asked her when the party was supposed to take place and she told me that night. I told her that I had seen kits to make candy apples over at Safeway, and that if she made them now they should be ready by the time of the party.
Her eyes lit up and she looked at me and said, "Thank you." I said, "You're welcome." Then, I went back to work.
95. Comeuppance Bought And Paid For
My mom and I saw a great Bridezilla freak out while shopping for my wedding dress a few years back. We were in a small, local shop when another mother-daughter duo came in. The attendant who had been helping us went up to greet them. The mother said they were here to pick up her daughter's dress, so the attendant looks her name up in the computer, frowns, and says, "Ma'am, you never bought the dress."
"What are you talking about?" The attendant shows the lady the notes on her computer screen. "You said you wanted to think about it, and asked if we could hold the dress. We held it for two weeks, but when we didn't hear back from you, we assumed you didn't want it." "Well, we want it now." "It's been over eight months", the attendant explained, "We sold the dress a long time ago. But I can order you another one, and have it expedited here in a few weeks."
And like a Mt. St. Helens of entitlement, the eruption began. "This is unacceptable!" The mother shrieked. "We have her alterations scheduled in two hours! The wedding is a week away! I can't believe you sold her dress!" The bride, meanwhile, is slumped against the desk and sobbing like someone kicked her dog. My mom and I are just open-mouthed staring at this point.
The attendant was trying to be diplomatic, but is clearly as baffled as we are. "Ma'am, we had no way to know you wanted it. You never called. You never put down a deposit. The dress isn't yours until you pay for it." After some more screaming from the mother and wailing from the bride, they left. The shop attendant came back over to us and I asked her, "Does that kind of thing happen a lot?"
The poor lady just deflated. "All the time." It baffles me to this day. How do you schedule alterations on a dress that you never purchased? Why would you wait until a week before the wedding to pick up your dress? How do you make it to adulthood without knowing how basic buying and selling transactions work?
Flickr, Office of Public Affairs
96. The Mother Of All Pettiness
I had my graduation from engineering on the same day as my mother's birthday. I, of course, had nothing to do with choosing the date. But you couldn’t convince my mom of that. My mother said I "ruined her birthday"—and then she got a cruel revenge. She scheduled her birthday party to be on my actual birthday. Her birthday is in March, mine is in August.
97. No Parking Zone
I lived in a duplex that shared one large driveway with another duplex. Parking could be tight, but all of us cooperated and made the best of it, except for one woman. She left a note on my car two days after my husband and I moved in, telling me not to park there because she didn’t like that I was "in front of her door."
I was at least 15 feet away from her house and that was the only spot I could park in without blocking anyone else. I left her a note back explaining this. She banged on my door at 11 PM and screamed at us, calling me the c-word, and demanding that I get rid of my car. We eventually shut the door on her. The nasty notes persisted and were ignored.
I confirmed with my landlord that this is where I should be parking and he said yes, ignore her. Then, she started barricading that part of the driveway, so that every day when I got home, I would have to get out of my car and move her stuff before I could park. This became a real pain in the neck when I broke my elbow.
She used her trash can, a pedestal with a birdcage on it, and a bench to block the driveway and I had to move all of them to park. I started just picking them up and gently moving them towards her porch. Then she came up with something else. She started putting Vaseline on them. I grabbed her trash can and got a gloppy handful of Vaseline. Sure enough, everything else was coated in it as well.
I decided to use my foot to push everything up against her house. Mind you, nothing was damaged or knocked over, just moved. She called law enforcement and reported that she saw me vandalizing her things by picking them up and throwing them into her house, kicking stuff over, and smashing them into the ground. The officer was angry.
He thought that I was the teenage girlfriend of the guy who lived there, not the adult leaseholder. So he pounded on the door yelling, "Sheriff's department! Come outside!" We went outside. He pointed to me and asked, "Are you the girlfriend!?" I resisted the urge to say something snarky in response to what I found to be a misogynistic and demeaning statement.
He went off on me saying, "Your behavior needs to stop right now, I don't know where you're from, but in [town] we do not tolerate this kind of disrespect blah blah blah!" Well, he didn’t know what he was in for. 15 minutes later, once we'd gotten a word in edgewise, he changed his tune pretty quick. He realized he'd been misled by our neighbor. We told him we were sorry he got dragged into a petty parking dispute.
He told us he's been dragged into stupider stuff and told us that if she puts up the barricades again, to call them instead of moving it ourselves, to protect ourselves from false allegations. In fact, he wanted us to call any time she does anything to harass us. She also received a mean letter from the landlord telling her to knock it off.
We got a mean note from her saying, "The reason I don't want you parking by my door is because you are trash! Your druggie psychopath girlfriend runs amok vandalizing! I want nothing to do with you," among other things. We called law enforcement and she got spoken to by them, and the landlord sent her another mean letter. Hopefully, that'll be the end of it.
98. A Matter Of Size
While I was driving home from work one day, I saw two half-ton trucks driving two feet from a poor old man’s bumper. I drove next to them and flipped both of them off, then told them to pick on someone else. I had no idea what I was in for. In response, one of the guys roared past me while screaming and cursing at me and got a half a mile in front of me.
That was when the second truck with a trailer got behind me. I, also driving a truck, looked in my mirror and couldn’t see the truck’s grill because he was that close. I was watching both as we came up to an intersection at a red light. I’d driven the route countless times and knew the light was just about to change.
As the truck in front of me braked, I continued at full speed with the other truck still on my bumper then quickly switched lanes. He had no chance. Going fast, he went right into the back of his buddy’s truck, and the trailer on the truck flipped. That made the tank spray gunk everywhere. The highway was shut down for two hours.
99. Following Up
My insufferable manager followed me after work to my second job because she didn't believe I had one and was just using it as an excuse to get out early. My manager at my second job said, "There's some crazy lady banging on the doors yelling your name." So, I grabbed my uniform from my bag, opened the door, threw it in her face, and told her to shove off.
100. Left In The Cold
When I was 15, my dad made my mom choose between me or him. He was angry at me for the dumbest reason ever: I'd refused to give him my email password. I thought my mom would take my side, but I was so so wrong. Without hesitation, she told me to leave. But that wasn't the worst part. It was the dead of winter. I had no coat and ended up wandering around town by myself.
After spending the entire evening freezing, I had no choice but to sleep under the stairs of the building we lived in. Later that night, my father gave my mother permission to let me back in. Years later, I told them about this trauma, and once again, they let me down. They screamed at me called me a "stupid liar" while I bawled my eyes out.
Pexels
101. Angling For An Invite
My mother-in-law threw a pie through my window on Thanksgiving because I would not let her in my house. She had attempted to ruin our wedding not one month prior to this and I was not dealing with her nonsense. We told her to leave and she threw a pie through my window, shattered it, and my dog cut her paw on the glass.
She wasn't invited to our house because she's Satan incarnate and for some reason she was shocked that we wouldn't let her in because she's “family.” We needed a $4200 window replacement since ours is an old 60s home with giant custom windows. And she wonders why we are not in contact.
Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
.jpg){kind=link}
.JPG){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}