There is something oddly satisfying about watching a full-grown adult person breakdown and pitch a fit like a 5-year-old. Maybe it's because it makes us feel better about ourselves and how we act in public.
These stories are about how not to act in public. Really, how not to act anywhere, but ESPECIALLY in public. These grown adults meltdown like their mommies took away their favorite binky. Like little babies. And that is being unfair to babies.
He Couldn’t Wait Six Minutes!
“I was a manager at McDonald’s:
One day a guy comes through the drive-thru and orders four fish filets. We informed him that they take 6 minutes to cook, and asked if he would mind waiting. He said no, he did not mind, so he pulled his car up to an assigned waiting spot.
Four minutes later, he comes into the store absolutely seething, the veins in his neck standing out and his face red as a tomato. He demands that we give him his fish filets NOW, screaming, ‘I’ve been waiting 25 minutes for this order!’
Now, evidently customers aren’t aware, but there is a timer on every order so we can see exactly how long they’ve been waiting. He’d been there four minutes, which we can clearly see. He screams and curses and at one point lunges across the counter as if to hit someone. He demands to have his money back, so we give him the refund, and then he insists on also getting his sandwiches. Nah man, that’s not how this works. Cue more yelling. However, the best part was when he finally stormed outside.
After stomping outside, this grown man proceeds to start ripping up all of the small, decorative flowers he can find. He kicks dirt into the walkway and threw down the ashtray. He then got in his car and attempted to ram into another customer walking in on foot, who ran away.
Our boss, being a petty little baby, called the landscaping people to fix the flower issue and sued the guy for the bill after getting his license plate off the cameras – so this guy had to show up in court, watch a video of himself flipping out, and then pay $300 in restitution!”
She Screamed And Yelled All The Way To The Back
“I worked for The Fresh Market. A lady came up and asked for a snack pack deal we had going.
Quick background: The Fresh Market is a place where people who want to shop at Whole Foods but can’t afford it go. I had some of the most awful, entitled people come up to my deli counter. We’re talking an actual ocean of ‘can I speak to your manager’ haircuts, athleisure wear, bleached hair, talking on their freaking phones at the counter and holding up a finger to tell you to wait when it’s their turn. These people were like five-year-olds in adult bodies.
So this middle-aged, ‘can-I-speak-to-your-manager’ looking woman comes up to my deli window. I pop over to help her, all smiles and cheer because I actually enjoyed working there. She wants the snack pack, which is five wings, a choice of a 1/4 lb container of one of three sides, and a dinner roll.
I explained the deal to her and gave her her choice of salads. She asked if she could sub one of our more pricy salads for the same price. I told her no, I can’t do that, as management had already been over this. Oh boy, this woman whipped around like a scorpion on crack. She starts snapping at me, demanding that I switch it out for her. No problem, I told her I’d ask my assistant manager.
He says no, so I tell her.
She gets even louder and I explain, yet again, that I am not able to do that and I apologize. She starts calling me nasty names, telling me I have a terrible attitude and that’s why I won’t get anywhere in life. She is SHRIEKING at this point, and my store managers have yet to bother moseying over to see what’s up. This woman is yelling that I’m a huge ‘witch’ and I should know better than to talk to a customer like that (the only difference in my demeanor was that I had told her no and my smile was a little less cheery; I never changed my tone of voice). She demands that she not be served by me because, again, I was a witch. My assistant manager says that’s just fine and tells her she can wait until he’s done so he can help her.
She LIT. UP. It was glorious for me. I had to hide my smile by turning towards the dishes. Then she starts YELLING across the deli at me. She comes over to the other side of the deli case where I had gone to help another customer and leans up over the counter to yell. She’s demanding that I get my manager because I’m a witch and I deserve to be fired. A grown woman was yelling at a 20-year-old, tiny girl over a $6 snack pack.
So I take off my deli coat and walk as fast as I can back, having to pass the woman. This woman starts following me and tries to grab my arm. I speed up and push through the doors to the back because if she’d grabbed me my instinct would have been to hit her. She literally storms in, hot on my heels, screaming to the entire crew that I needed to be fired, and all kinds of other crap. I just buzzed past my useless manager who had been in the back the whole darn time, obviously able to hear this shrieking, harpy of a woman, and went, ‘SHE’D LIKE TO SPEAK TO YOU!’
One of the meat guys had to step in her way so she didn’t follow me into the break room. I got to hear her being told she could not be back there. It took a good ten minutes for the manager to get her out of our back room.
Bonus: I slipped as I was running and broke my hand trying to catch myself. Thanks, harpy lady. My store manager had me work the other seven hours of my shift when I said I’d fallen and caught myself and it hurt. I went to the hospital after because it had swollen. I honestly didn’t think it was broken, though – I was working fine and the pain was really not bad. When I came in the next day in a splint to tell him I was injured, he told me I couldn’t get worker’s comp because I hadn’t filled out an incident AT THE TIME, not knowing my hand was broken and after he told me I didn’t need to file a report for the fall. :/ He was a real piece of work.”
MORE CHEESE!
“I used to work at a pizza place. It was family owned, not fast food. I had a guy throw a tantrum over extra cheese. It was in a resort town and was, at the time, the only place in town that delivered.
This guy calls during the dinner rush when everyone was scrambling, but I answered and took the order with as much patience as possible. He made an extra point of saying he wanted like 30 packets of parmesan cheese included with his pizza. I hang up, put in the order, and put the extra cheese in a separate little bag on our delivery rack to go out with the pizza.
About an hour later, I picked up the phone and it’s the same guy as earlier but only this time he’s losing his mind because the delivery driver forgot the baggie of extra cheese. He yelled and screamed at me for a good 15 minutes before my manager realized I had been standing there too long and took the phone away from me.
I don’t know what he said to the screaming guy but it could only have been a few words because he hung the phone up real quick. Then he got all the high school girls together who worked the front (he only hired women for those jobs) and told us we never had to put up with abuse on the phone and we were allowed to hang up, something he absolutely refused to let us do before.
This was the only time the manager ever stood up for the young workers; and of course it only applied to phone abuse and we were still forced to take the in-person abuse. But it was something I guess.”
No Shirt, No Shoes, No Dice!
“I owned a restaurant in a small town.
The town’s mayor came in with his 3 or 4 year old granddaughter one time and she wasn’t wearing shoes. I politely asked if he could put her shoes on while inside. There is a health department code that requires footwear. Also, I don’t want to be held liable if the little one cuts her foot or gets injured.
I was told ‘No,’ and ‘Do you know who in the heck you are talking to?’
I was shocked. I did not expect that out of the mayor’s mouth. Especially in front of a child.
So I said, ‘Sorry but she is required to wear shoes in here.’
He then wanted to know whose ‘stupid freaking rule’ it was and, ‘Where do you get off telling ME what to do!?’
I stared him in the eye and told him:
A) This is department of health code,
B) It’s pretty sad that I care more about her safety than you do and,
C) I don’t care if you are the President of the United States…PUT HER SHOES ON!
The stare down went on for about another 10 seconds and he ripped that little girl so hard by the arm I swear he almost tore it out of the socket. He and his family never entered my place again. These self important narcissistic jerks think they can behave badly in public.
Well, not in my place.”
She Was Early And She Blamed Everyone Else
“I was a cashier at Chipotle and we were slammed, both with online customers and a pretty long line.
A woman shows up 30 minutes early for her order and is angry that it’s not ready immediately. I tell her she’s early and if we had it ready 30 minutes early, it would be cold, but she doesn’t listen.
I let the crew know that she’s ready and they do what they can. I keep taking orders and someone else comes to pick up their order on time and they get their food right away and she starts screeching and cursing at me about favoritism. I offer her a free drink cup for her wait (and to just get her the heck away from me) and she FREAKING THREW HER CUP AT ME. She yelled, ‘I didn’t order this, give me my order!’
When it was ready, she pretended it was cold and asked for a refund. Take off, cup lady.
Conflict In The Parking Lot That A Guy Can’t Let Go Of
“I used to work at a pizza joint. I was delivery driving there.
The worst guy I had wasn’t even a customer, just some freaking jerk.
I’m getting back from a run and it’s fall. There are lots of trees in our parking lot, with so many leaves covering the pavement you can’t even really see the parking lines well. I pull in to a spot, and back out to straighten up and slide back in. Only as I back out, this dumb idiot in a van comes hauling butt through the parking lot like he’s driving down a busy street. We almost have a little fender bender and I’m going, ‘C’mon man!’ I literally just looked over there, then the other way, and this dude was NOT there. But it works out, I stop short and he hauls past me.
Only it doesn’t end there. As much of a hurry as this jerk seems to be in, he slams the brakes, throws it in reverse, and stops in front of my truck. He gets out and storms over to my window, screaming about how reckless of a driver I am and how he’d sue me so hard my head would spin if I’d have hit him, etc… I’m thinking, ‘Forget you dude, I’m not the one hauling through the lot like it’s the interstate!’ but I’m on the clock. Off the clock, you stick your head in my window and scream like that, I’m gonna roll that thing up while your head is still in it and we’re gonna take a trip down the street. But I’m working, I have to be nice. So I apologize even though this guy was the one recklessly hauling butt through a parking lot. He screams some more, goes on his way. I go in, tell the manager to not be surprised if some jerk suddenly calls going all psycho because this is what happened.
Sure as heck, a few deliveries later that I come back from, they tell me the psycho driver called and threw a fit. But my manager has my back, I’d been working there for years. He knows me, he knows I’ve never really had any complaints against me and I keep my head down and work my tail off. He could tell this jerk was just being a jerk. At least I had the management’s support, they all liked me.
I get a few more complaints from this guy even though I only ever encountered him the one time. He’s making stuff up about how I haul butt into the parking lot, just driving like a maniac, which is hilarious because this is what he was doing on the day of our little incident. And I’m going, ‘Uh, I haven’t even seen this dumb idiot since that first time.’
Finally, later that week on a day I’m not even working, he shows up in person just ranting about how they needed to do something about me and this was the final straw because he was leaving the McDonalds in this lot with his daughter and I nearly ran them over hauling butt out of the place and he had to yank his daughter back over the curb and messed her ankle up.
Our district manager also happened to be paying our store manager a visit on this day. So after a quick briefing of the situation, he steps in, tells this dude that this employee (i.e. me) isn’t even working today so cut this crap out and don’t ever call or come back here again.
It all finally clicked a few weeks later when I was outside having a smoke break. We had armed security guards in this lot because the place was kinda in the ghetto of Fresno. I’d talk with one of those guards if he was there when I was working and he happened to hear my little story from one of my other co-workers. He tells me he knows this guy too. He’s a troublemaker. The guy thrives on it.
Apparently, his security company also handles this dude’s apartment complex. They roll through there somewhat regularly just to check on things and this guy is always causing trouble with the apartment manager over dumb petty nonsense with the other tenants. He shouldn’t have even been driving that van because his license had been revoked! That’s probably why he lost his mind nearly having a fender bender with me. He would have been in some deep trouble if he got caught driving. And I’m going, ‘Man, I SO wish I’d have flipped out and called the cops that day! Just so he’d have gotten busted for that crap!'”
She Was So Mad She Was Going To Kill Someone
“I went to a Subway in a gas station. The women behind the counter were definitely not happy to be there, and one of them was just absolutely raging to anyone that would listen about how her boyfriend had done messed up, and she was going to go home and stab him as soon as she saw him, and that she had been in jail before, and she was fine with going back again.
All of this, she’s just alternately yelling this stuff and screaming, all while people are trying to place their orders. So, it was basically like:
‘Hi, I’d like to order a chicken –‘
‘YEAH I DON’T CARE WHAT HE SAYS, I’M GONNA CUT HIM THE EFF UP!’
‘–bacon ranch, on–‘
‘I DONE BEEN TO JAIL ONCE, I’M OK WITH GOING BACK!’
‘–wheat, please, toasted, and –‘
‘HE DON’T KNOW WHAT’S GONNA BE WAITING FOR HIM!'”
The Door Wins
“I watched a grown woman yell at a teenager in a restaurant/gas station because her chicken tenders weren’t the right shape.
She stomped her feet and angrily walked out, trying to slam a door that was on a closer. Then when it wouldn’t slam, she opened it and shoved it real hard to try to get it to slam, but again, the closer prevented it. For like 15-20 seconds, she was basically in a fight with a door. Like, her body was flailing about and her hair was whipping around as she was trying to get this door to slam.
Eventually she gave up and left. The teenager and I just kind of stared at each other in disbelief. She didn’t ask for her money back, or another order, she just stomped out, tenderless.
The chicken tender box was opened and left on the counter, while I am no chicken tender-from a gas station connoisseur, they pretty much looked like a standard-shaped chicken tender.”
All He Wanted Was Some Cheese
“I used to work at a fast food pizza place and one of our regulars threw a 15-minute-long fit because he couldn’t get extra cheese for free.
He left, only to come back 5 minutes later and screamed more, demanding a refund for the pizza he ALREADY ATE because of it.
Meanwhile I’m just in the back making dough and my manager is threatening to call the cops if he doesn’t leave.
I never wanted to work that shift again knowing he went there regularly.”
He Blamed Himself In The End
“I worked at Papa Murphy’s in high school. A guy came in one evening and ordered a pizza. He asked how long it would take and my supervisor told him it shouldn’t take more than five minutes. The guy looked a little surprised but said he would be back in a little bit because he had something to pick up next door.
A while later he returns to pick the pizza up and upon seeing that the pizza wasn’t baked, he flips his lid and demands a refund. He even yelled out, ‘Who doesn’t bake their pizzas?’
Immediately after he yells that, he looks up to see the sign, ‘Handmade. Home baked’ to which he then retorted, ‘Well, I guess I’M the jerk.’
I’m pretty sure he was embarrassed because he said nothing else after that.”
At Least The Barista Got Some Revenge
“So, this dude was a regular at my Starbucks and he was a massive jerk, so of course to keep him complacent, he got what he wanted all the time.
What he wanted was to not have to pay a 50 cent up-charge for getting his latte made with special milk, in this case half and half. His logic was that we offered half and half free on the bar, so he should get it for free, too. What his logic failed to account for was that a grande-sized beverage uses about three times as much half and half as any person who just gets regular coffee, but hey, what do I know other than the measurements used to make the drinks with?
Well one busy day, he comes in and it’s so swamped that the cashier doesn’t even register who it is, charges him for the milk, and moves on. He doesn’t notice for about an hour. When he realizes what happened, he freaking hulks out on the poor woman, screaming at her and threatening her for five long minutes. This woman, I should note, was a hardcore former punk covered in tattoos and piercings who was not intimidated by anything. She had to leave early because she had a panic attack so bad that she became physically sick.
This jerk chose the wrong store to pull that crap at, because I’m a petty person and you don’t mess with my people like that. I memorized his face and could probably pick him out in a lineup five years later. Every time he came in, he got charged for his milk. If he tried to complain, I’d remind him that this is a company directive and I would be in trouble if they found out I didn’t charge him, which was true. I told him that I understood his frustration, I’m lactose intolerant and have a medical reason to need special milk, I but still have to pay the up-charge for soy. I told him that he’d have to go higher than me to get that changed and suggested he call the company.
Every time, he’d get angry. Every time, my boss would give him a free coffee coupon. But I ate up 10 minutes of his time every time I did this, and it got to the point where if he walked in and saw I was on register, he’d turn around and walk back out.
That’s pretty much the best revenge you can get in retail. The best part is he probably wasted more in gas driving to our store where he might get it for free than going to another store where they charged him for it.”
Melted Cheese Melt Down
“I was in a Subway in London once after a very long work day. They were about half an hour from closing and the woman working told the gentleman in front of me that they had already turned the toaster off. I’m a little disappointed but figure the meatballs will melt my cheese just fine.
The gentleman in front of me, however, was absolutely appalled that his cheese would not be melted and his bread would be without the slight crunch created by a light toasting. He berated the two young girls working there for the entire time they were making his sandwich. He was livid, his fury was burning with the fire of a thousand suns. His cheese would not be melted.
It came time to pay and he complained that they weren’t giving him a discount on account of his cheese still being in solid form. He couldn’t believe it. He berated this poor young girl some more about having to pay full price for a sandwich in which the cheese would still be solid. I had let this happen for a few minutes but his filthy attitude was now holding up the young lady from finishing her artwork on my sandwich and I just wanted to get my train home, eat my food and sleep.
So I said to the guy, ‘Look mate, it’s a bit of melted freaking cheese, they’re closing soon, you’re holding up the rest of us and we all just wanna get our food and get home.’
Now I had about 6 inches on this guy, so I figure I’m safe to get a bit verbal without any physical repercussions. The bloke goes into full on flipping meltdown. What business is it of mine how he speaks to Subway staff and what he gets annoyed about? He literally screams at me:
‘WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE SPEAKING TO ME LIKE THAT, YOU LITTLE FREAKING POOF? I’LL DRAG YOU OUTSIDE BY YOUR EARS, YOU JERK.’
So I probably could have taken this guy, he was pretty small, but I was not in the mood to attend work the next day with a black eye and an explanation of ‘a wee, angry, Irish coke addict hit me in Subway last night because he was upset his cheese wasn’t melted,’ so I held my hands up and said nothing.
I actually ended up getting my sandwich for free as a thank you for sticking up for the girls that worked there which was nice. My only regret is that I didn’t fight him. To this day, I wish I’d battered the insolent wee jerk.”