Sometimes adults are just like tiny children. They can screw their faces up, bang their fists, and scream their heads off just because they can't get what they want. Here are some classic cases of the most unbelievable adult temper tantrums.
1. A Tale As Old As Time
Despite the fact that the mother of my daughters told me she didn’t want to be a wife and mother anymore and abandoned us, she still flipped out in court when the judge granted me sole custody. She shrieked and tore at her clothes like an insane person, and then she called in four bikers to menacingly approach the judge’s bench.
Since everyone was expecting this display, there were several sheriff’s deputies on hand, each burly and cheerfully capable of restraining the leather-jacketed string beans. The judge had them all removed from the courtroom. It was beautiful. But karma wasn't done with her yet. Shortly afterward she hooked up with her biker ex-boyfriend.
One night, after an intense argument in a roadhouse, her boyfriend drove off in his truck. She followed him on foot into the subzero Montana winter—but was found six weeks later frozen solid in a ditch. Bummer.
2. 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.
3. Concession Stand
Movie theater worker here. I was working on Christmas Day one time and the lines were extremely long. This mom and her kids came up to my line and things were going smoothly. She paid and I handed her the food and wished her a Merry Christmas, but then she asked if I could fill up a few extra popcorn containers that she had brought along.
Normally my company has no problem doing this if they had ordered large popcorn, but we were so busy that I just didn't have the time to fill the containers for her. I politely told her no. This is where it gets bad. In front of everybody, she immediately starts to cuss me out in front of at least 30 people including her daughter.
This woman then took one of her bags of popcorn and dumped it all onto the counter (it was buttered). Her six-ish-year-old daughter started to pick it up for us, but the mom told her not to. The mom said that he (referring to me) can pick it up. Amazingly this woman then proceeded to ask me to fill her popcorn back up, and wouldn't leave until I did it.
So, I, who was just a 19-year-old kid, almost wanted to cry. I didn’t know what to do, so I just filled it up for her to make her go away. After that, she gave me a smug smile and said, “Now that wasn’t so hard was it”?
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. Modern Problems Require Modern Solutions
I worked at Toys “R” Us for a bit and, as you can imagine, you see all sorts of tantrums there. Well, this one time I witnessed a man and his five-year-old daughter walk by a display of Cabbage Patch Kids. The daughter excitedly picked one up, shoved it into her dad’s arms, and screamed, “Please daddy please”?! The father sadly looked down at the floor.
“I’m sorry, honey”, he said. “I don’t have enough money for the doll today”. The girl dropped to the floor and immediately started screaming at the top of her lungs and kicking and thrashing. Her father looked baffled. I stood there and watched as his expression turned to horror. Onlookers were starting to come over to see what all the commotion was about.
Now, some people would sling that kid over their shoulder and take her out of the store. Some people would try to bargain with her by getting her a smaller, cheaper toy. Others might even just walk away, pretending that the whole ordeal wasn’t happening. But not this man. I could see an idea suddenly form in his desperate mind.
This father dropped to the floor, laid down next to his daughter, and just screamed at the top of his lungs: “YOU CAN’T HAVE IT! YOU CAN’T HAVE IT”! He was kicking, squirming, and throwing the biggest tantrum. The little girl immediately jumped up, wiped her eyes, held out her hand, and said, “I’m sorry, Daddy. I’ll be good”.
The father got up, dusted himself off, and said, “That’s better. That feels better doesn’t it”? They both proceeded to walk calmly out of the store. It was glorious.
8. Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Enraged
A long time ago, I visited my sister and her husband when they lived on Long Island. One Saturday, we all took a ride into the city to go see the Statue of Liberty. The parking lot was packed, of course, so my brother-in-law started driving around looking for somewhere to park. That's when my sister lost it. Incredibly impatient, she began throwing a massive tantrum in the front seat.
She then demanded that her husband find a parking spot IMMEDIATELY and started pounding her fist on the dashboard. Her husband very calmly told her that he was trying to find somewhere to park. My sister’s rage escalated to the point where she ordered her husband to pull over and let her out of the car. I finally spoke up and told him to let her out, but he didn’t.
I have never seen a grown person have a meltdown like that. On the other hand, though, I do remember her losing her mind like that when she was a toddler. I guess some people never grow up.
9. 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.
10. Pointing Fingers
One time, I was in a fairly empty office supply store and this lady started freaking out about someone taking her purse from her cart. She was berating the employees and calling them all thieves. She was completely hysterical…cursing, screaming, you name it. Finally, an employee walked up to her and pointed to her cart.
There in her cart, buried under a ton of merchandise, was her purse. She must have just thrown all of the things she was going to buy on top of her purse and then forgotten it was under there. For some reason, she then went nuts on the employee who found it. Finally, a manager approached her and told her to “Get the heck out of my store”!
This whole situation lasted a solid three to four minutes, which is a long time for a grown woman to be yelling and freaking out. I was pretty stunned.
11. Party Pooper
When I was in high school, a friend and I went to a party at the home of a girl whose parents had recently moved to Florida. The parents had decided to keep this house as well as the new one until she finished high school. When my friend and I got there, we found out that her 23-year-old brother, who had just gotten out of prison, was also there.
So we were all hanging out, playing drinking games and cards, and just having a good time until her brother started causing problems. It started with him kicking people off the ping-pong table, and then he started calling people out and trying to start something. My friend and I decided to get out of there since nobody was having a good time.
Unfortunately, our car was blocked in, so we had to wait for someone to move theirs first. When the girl’s brother heard that we were leaving, he went into a fit of rage. He started screaming, knocking stuff off counters, and throwing things at the TV. We finally got my car unblocked and started driving away, but this psycho had other plans.
He started running alongside my car and just whaling on the windows like something from a horror movie. It was terrifying. When I was finally able to lose him, I stopped and checked for damage, but there wasn’t any so we quickly took off. Needless to say, I wasn’t surprised when he ended up back in prison less than three months later.
12. 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.
13. This One’s Almost Relatable
I work at a fast food restaurant and this incident happened on a hot summer day when our ice cream machine was broken (surprise!). This meant that I had to disappoint a lot of people. When I told them the machine was down, most customers responded with an “OK” and walked out all sad, but this one lady acted like a complete monster.
After she ordered ice cream, I told her that the machine was broken and apologized. However, that wasn’t good enough for her. She pointed to the soda fountain and said, “No it’s not! I just saw someone get some over there”! So I tried explaining to her, without laughing my head off, that that was not the ice cream machine.
I then showed her where the ice cream machine was, behind our front counter. She suddenly made a break for it, ran over to the machine, and pulled the lever. Ice cream exploded all over her. This sent her into a meltdown and she started to demand that we buy her new clothes and give her free food. When I told her “no”, she stomped out of the place screaming her head off.
14. 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.
15. Emotional Dumping
At my old job, my boss wanted me to find an adapter to connect two cables together. Well, since we had just completely reorganized the storage room I thought that finding it would be super easy. After an hour of fruitless searching, my boss lost his mind. He took all of the boxes that had just been carefully organized by cable type and adapter type and dumped them all out on the floor in a giant pile.
To top it all off, he then told me that I’d have an easier time finding it. I didn’t find it because we didn’t have it.
16. 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.
17. 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.
18. Facepalm Moment, Sir
I will never forget my Sergeant Major from our JROTC program during high school. I was in charge of issuing new uniforms, but all orders would go through him first, and he thought he had them memorized. He told me to go and get the new cadet trousers. So I went with our Security Officer who was helping out because it was the first day and several dozen cadets needed uniforms.
We both looked for this one kid’s pants for 15 to 20 minutes. I knew then that going back to inform the Sergeant Major that we didn’t have them would end badly for me, because even when he is wrong, he is right in his own mind. He yelled at me for a solid five minutes in front of the 40+ people in the platoon as I just stood calm and kept answering his redundant questions.
“YOU DIDN’T FIND THE PANTS”? “No, Sergeant Major". Finally, he stopped yelling at me. Turns out he had forgotten to order the pants in the first place.
19. Love Thy Rager?
When my significant other and I lived in a duplex, we had next-door neighbors who were in their 40s, so they were a little older than us, but acted like they were in their teens. On most nights they would get totally smashed and start blasting music. On one such night, the noise was so unbearable that we had to resort to calling in a complaint.
This was after the lady of the house screamed at my partner for politely asking them to turn down the music. This woman literally yelled, “Call the authorities! I dare you”! After they showed up, made the couple turn down the music, and left, the real fun began. The woman started turning the music up to extreme levels, then dropping it down to almost nothing.
But that’s not all she was doing. When the music was low, she would run along our shared wall, banging and screaming at the top of her lungs and swearing at us for calling the authorities. She’d then turn the volume back up and repeat the process over and over. She was shrieking in such a way that other neighbors were coming outside to see who was in such peril.
We had to call the authorities a second time, but by the time they arrived, she had worn herself out and all was quiet. I do have a recording of her banging on the walls and screaming, though, and I do listen to it whenever I need a good laugh.
20. 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.
21. 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.
22. The Happiest Time Of The Year
When I was in high school, I worked in a computer store at the mall. Christmas is a busy time of the year, so on all receipts, we put a note that there would be no returns, refunds, or exchanges during the last week of December. The post-Christmas sales are chaos, especially in a mall. To make up for that, we extended all returns by a week. We can all see where this is going, right?
A customer came in on December 26th—the single busiest day of the year because of the sales. This man received two of the same product for Christmas and wanted to return one of them. Fine, that makes sense. He’s got the gift receipt, but when my coworker told him that we’re not doing any returns or exchanges at the moment, this dude flipped his lid.
He went on a solid five-minute rant about how we’re screwing him over and taking money from his pocket (keep in mind he’s already said it was a gift). The store is absolutely PACKED, so he’s pretty much just going into meltdown mode to ensure we give him what he wants and then send him on his way.
My manager came out of his office in the back to see what the all commotion was about. My coworker explained the situation and the manager then asked the customer if he’d like an exchange or a refund. The customer’s body language softened and he took a deep breath to calm himself and said, “Yes, I’d like a refund”.
My manager then told him, “Come back next week and we’ll give it to you. Now, if you’re done screaming at my employee, then get the heck out of my store". The customer then turned the Meltdown Meter up to 11 and fully freaked out. Mall security had to come and he was barred from the mall for six months. I guess he never got his refund...
23. Live, Laugh, Rage
My mom has always thrown tantrums when she doesn’t get her way, but her tantrum during Thanksgiving of 2012 definitely takes the cake. She always makes plans at the last minute and then freaks out when things don’t go her way. For the two weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, I had been asking her what the plans with her family were going to be.
I needed to know ahead of time because her family lives over an hour away, so sometimes it’s hard to fit them in. Whenever I asked my mom, she kept saying that she hadn’t made any plans. I finally told her that I was just going to do my own thing, and I made plans to go to Thanksgiving dinner at my cousin’s house at 3:00 pm.
My cousin had just bought his first house and wanted to host dinner that year. He asked that everyone bring a dish. The NIGHT BEFORE Thanksgiving, my mom said, “Oh, we’re going to my dad’s at 2:00 pm tomorrow. You can just ride with me”. I never ride in a car with her because she refuses to take me back to my car or to other places that I need to be.
I said, “I won’t be able to do that. I have to go to Rickey’s at 3:00”. She replied, “Well, get Rickey to change it”. I told her that I couldn’t ask him to do that because there are a lot of people going and everyone had made plans in advance. She said, “Well, go late”. I told her I couldn’t do that either because I am taking food.
She then tried to say that I could go to her dad’s and still make it to Rickey’s on time. I said, “No, I can’t. It’s over an hour away. Sorry, but I’ll just see y’all at Linda’s [my stepdad’s mom] in the evening”. My mom sat there quietly for a moment. Then she got up and walked out of the room. About a minute later she came back into the room holding a vase. That's when the nightmare began.
She threw the vase at me and started swearing and screaming. “You ruin my life! I hate you! You ruin everything for me! You're such a selfish little jerk"! While she is yelling all of this, she is grabbing anything she can get her hands on and throwing it at me. She started pulling her hair while she was screeching. She then threw herself on the ground and started thrashing around.
She stood up and broke the folding door off the laundry closet and started kicking the dryer while still screaming. She was not forming any actual words by this point. She then took her pants off, flung herself back on the ground, rolled around, and screamed some more. I told her she needed to calm down before her blood pressure got too high as she has passed out during tantrums on multiple occasions.
She screamed, “I hate you"! one more time, threw a cup at me, and then went to her bedroom. I could hear her back there beating the walls and screaming. Her tantrum lasted for about 15 minutes. I called my boyfriend and said, “I know it’s late, but could I come and stay the night with you? My mom is having one of her tantrums”. He told me to pack a bag and come stay with him for a few days.
While I was packing, my stepdad came home, and my mom doesn’t dare act like that in front of him. She came out of her room, totally calm, and said, “You need to clean the mess you made”. I looked around at all the broken glass and stuff laying everywhere. “You mean the stuff that you threw at me because you weren’t getting your way”?
She said, “Well, you shouldn’t have made me mad”. I left the house and didn’t speak to her for several days. Shortly after that, I moved out.
24. 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.
25. 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.
26. That, Um, Special Bond
One time my sister and I had just got home from grocery shopping and I was putting away all the food, as usual, when she asked me to feed her cat because she really had to pee. I always feed her cat, but my mistake was simply asking, “Can’t you feed him after you pee? I’m putting away the groceries”. She threw a massive tantrum and stomped away.
I then fed her cat because he shouldn’t have to suffer due to her meltdown. About 10 minutes later, she passed me in the hall and said, “Night”. To which I said, “I fed your cat. You’re welcome”. She replied, “Well I cleaned his cat box, so YOU’RE welcome”. Like, whoa, cleaning up after your own animal!? THANK YOU, YOUR GRACE!
27. A Whole Foods Tantrum
I used to work at Whole Foods and this one time a customer started screaming at the cashier, who was a really friendly older lady. The manager came up and tried to calm this man down to no avail. This guy was hysterical. The manager eventually shooed him out of the store, telling him whatever he wanted to hear just to get him out. But he was just revving up.
The man kept screaming at the store—from the parking lot—even after the manager went back inside. Then, this guy, still fuming, got into his truck and started driving like a maniac. He proceeded to scrape the entire side of his truck on a parked forklift as he rounded a corner in the lot. He got out of his truck and started yelling at the manager who had come back out to see what was happening.
This time the guy was mad at the manager for being so stupid as to have parked the forklift where he wanted to drive. By now this customer was red and sweaty and had started screaming about lawsuits. As far as I know, no action was ever taken. The guy just messed up his truck (and his dignity) big time.
28. 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.
29. 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.
30. There Goes The Neighborhood
Near the beginning of December, I had a new neighbor move in. She was a 70-year-old woman who would turn out to be a nightmare in a flannel nightgown. During her first night in her new place, she booted her helpers out of her apartment in an onslaught of screeching and swearing. Then she proceeded to throw things around while shrieking, “I don’t have any forks”!
This woman gets in-home health care, wherein twice a day a nurse shows up to help her with her diabetes medication. Almost every visit ends with her screaming, swearing, and threatening to end her own life by taking a double dose of her meds. Our landlord prefers that we keep the door to our shared porch locked at all times, but this lady likes to leave it unlocked.
If my boyfriend or I lock it when we’re coming or going, she’ll come out, unlock it, then screech at our door, “Leave the door unlocked! I’ll lock it myself”! However, the real cake-topper of temper tantrums was the day she stood out on the porch steps, yelling out into the empty street, “Hello! Hello! I just need someone to talk to! I don’t care if I freeze, I just need someone to talk to”!
Then, from across the street, there came a return yell. “Ain’t no one want to talk to you, you miserable old battleax”! The old guy across the street had come out onto his porch and was hollering back at her. From there the “conversation” devolved into her bellowing she didn’t want to talk to him, and he was shouting back that no one wants to talk to awful people like her.
I couldn’t stop laughing during this exchange, because the angrier she got, the giddier he got.
31. Rage Happens
One time during the summer, I was complaining to my wife about how nobody else in the family picks up the dog’s poo, and that I was sick of doing it. I needed to mow the lawn, though, so I grabbed our pooper scooper and went to go clean up the yard. About three droppings in, the scooper broke. I went into full-on tantrum mode.
I screamed at the top of my lungs, swung the scooper over my head, and shattered it on the sidewalk, sending plastic pieces flying every which way. I looked up and saw my wife standing there shaking her head. She then pointed as if to say, “Look behind you”. I turned and saw the neighbor’s realtor showing the house to a nice-looking older couple. It was gloriously embarrassing.
32. 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".
33. 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.
34. Not Lovin’ It
This took place one summer many years ago when my sister and I were back home from college. My mom had dinner going on the stove when my sister came downstairs. My sister said to my mom, “I want McDonald’s for dinner. Can you go get some”? To which my mom replied, “No, I’m already making dinner”. A cloud came across my sister’s face.
“But I don't want what you're making”, she screamed. “I want McDonald’s”! My mom restated her earlier position, at which point my sister literally collapsed to the ground in a heap and began sobbing hysterically and screaming at the top of her lungs. All through her hysterics, she continued screeching and begging for McDonald’s.
The whole situation was so absurd that my mom and I just sat there laughing at this college-aged woman behaving like a toddler, which of course only made my sister sob even more. She eventually got up off the ground and went upstairs without eating dinner that night out of protest.
35. Confession Time
I have to admit that I have thrown one tantrum. It happened the night before I had a 12-page essay due. I had technically finished the essay a week before, but I waited until the day before to turn it in so that I could reread it with fresh eyes. Well, that brilliant idea didn’t go to plan. When I went to reread it, the second half was gone!
I lost my mind. I started screaming and throwing everything in my room. My parents ended up checking on me to see what was going on. My bro, who works in IT, checked out my computer but he wasn’t able to find the other half of my paper. I decided to turn the paper in late and accept half the letter grade off. I ended up with an A-. I’m still pretty proud of that paper.
Oh, by the way, I’m a preschool teacher now, and I’ve learned to control my emotions much better.
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. 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.
38. Hello, It’s Karen Calling
I used to work in an office supply store where we sold cell phones and activated people’s cellular accounts, but other than that, we had absolutely nothing to do with anyone’s cell phone service. This should be obvious to everyone. Unfortunately, it isn’t. One time, we had this customer come in with a problem on her cell phone bill.
Her bill was a few hundred dollars because she’d gone over her data limit—significantly. I explained to her that we only sell the phones and she’d have to talk directly with the service provider. She didn’t care. She wanted a refund on the phone AND the bill. She started full-on raging at me, every other word being a swear word.
Now, I LOVE ragers. LOVE ’EM. For nearly 20 years one lived in my house and I called him “Dad”, so I know exactly how to have fun with these kinds of people. Cue my “cool as a cucumber” mode. I reiterated that she should talk to the service provider and gave her their toll-free customer service number. She accused me of dismissing her and passing off her problem to someone else.
She then spent 15 minutes screaming at the poor call-center grunt on the other end who explained to her that her data package only covers X, which the woman was well in excess of. I know this because the rager had her phone on speaker for some unknown reason. At this point, my manager is standing off to the side waiting for me to give her the nod to intervene.
No dice. I’m having too much fun. I suggest to the customer that if she streams a lot of content there are a number of Internet providers in the area that are reasonably priced. I start suggesting wireless routers and laptops. At this point, she’s going thermonuclear, but keep in mind she also could’ve simply left the store.
I then suggest that if she gets a laptop, why not a scanner/fax/printer multi-unit too? Then I start explaining the BS extended warranty. By now she’s noticed that I’ve completely disregarded her entire complaint, which is pretty accurate, as I have. Even though she’s visibly shaking and has tears streaming down her face, she continues to scream at me.
She demands to speak to my manager, which is my cue to tap out. My work there was done. I gave the nod to my manager who walked over and told the woman that she won’t have ANY customer treat her staff like that and that if the woman doesn’t leave that instant, she’ll call the authorities. The customer left, so spun up that she screamed garbled gibberish as she walked out of the store.
39. The Lunatic Next Door
Our neighbor at our previous house would leave his windows open all the time. It was an odd thing to do in Florida, but I wouldn’t have even noticed had the man who lived there not been completely insane. Standing outside talking at a normal volume on a Saturday afternoon? He called the authorities to complain about the noise. Closed our wrought iron gate when we got home from work? Called them again. Barbecue in the mid-afternoon on a holiday? Yep, called them again.
When the authorities responded to the call about the barbecue, he told them that he was pretty sure my husband was in the country as an unlawful non-citizen. They laughed. I had tried going over and talking to this neighbor, but there was absolutely no way this man could live around other people. He even called the authorities once because I walked across the driveway in high heels.
Eventually, the authorities stopped responding, and that was the point when he completely blew a gasket. I was sitting on the patio while my dogs wandered around the yard, and suddenly he came storming out of his house swearing and screaming, “Put the dogs inside! I’m so sick of this”! over and over. I was surprised, even though I knew how insane this guy was.
I told him that the dogs weren’t barking and that I didn’t understand why he was upset. He started shouting that their tags were jingling and their nails were clicking on the concrete. He then started screaming over and over, “It isn’t fun living here” while punching a palm tree and shaking my fence. That time I called the authorities.
We moved shortly after that, largely because it was almost impossible to live there and enjoy our beautiful backyard without him going ballistic. I was also afraid of how far things would escalate after seeing him beat the life out of a tree. A couple of months later, our landlord called us asking us to make a statement about this man’s behavior.
The landlord apparently had to sue the guy because he started harassing the next tenants the same way. They said that they couldn’t live there like that, forfeited their deposit, and took off, leaving the house vacant.
40. 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.
41. 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.
42. Drama On The Slopes
Last year, when I was working at a ski resort as a lift operator, a very angry man ran up to me and told me to stop the lift and remove a guy who had just gotten on. I obviously didn’t do either of those things, but 15-year-old-me then asked him what was the matter. Apparently, someone on the lift had taken this man’s son’s ski poles.
Now, I knew the alleged thief because he also worked at the resort and was a pretty stand-up guy. I really couldn’t believe that he had taken this man’s son’s ski poles and run off with them. It made no sense to me. I tried to tell the man that my colleague most likely didn’t take the poles and probably just has the same model as his son.
This made the man become VERY aggressive. He gave me one of those “I’m bigger and stronger than you” nudges to my shoulder, and just as I was telling him not to touch me, the “thief” got to the bottom of the hill. I called him over and asked him if he took the kid’s poles. Of course, he said no. I was satisfied, but the dad, however, was not.
The dad said that his kid saw the guy take the poles from the rack and go up the lift. My coworker denied this, which really rubbed the dad the wrong way. The dad grabbed the guy by the coat and told him that if he didn’t give his kid the poles back, he would beat the daylights out of his worthless stoner body. My coworker and I told the man to let go, which he did not do.
Eventually, the “thief” made a swift move and broke the dad’s grip, popped his skis off, and shuffled backward while holding one of his skis in his hands. THIS is where it gets crazy. My coworker told the dad to back off. The man did leave but the son didn’t. I tried asking the son what was up with his dad. He just told me that we’d better find his poles or they would sue.
Just then the dad and my manager showed up. After I got my manager up to speed, he told me to go back to the lift. As I turned around, I felt a strong pull on my hood. It was the dad. He started screaming and swearing, saying over and over that we’re all just a bunch of lazy thieves and that we don’t care about the customers.
I broke his grip, moved back, and told him that I’d call the authorities if he touched anyone again. His response was to try and tackle me. I started to dial 911 and he just went crazy. He was screaming and threatening to sue, but then he started throwing snowballs at us and other customers. Finally, the authorities made the 30-minute drive and cuffed the guy.
After my shift, I went and found the kid’s poles, which were, in fact, the same model as my coworker’s.
43. Hulk Mode Activated
This tantrum was my own. It was embarrassing. It happened at work. I’ve always been a little on the immature side when it comes to dealing with stress and anger. I had a boss who I mostly corresponded with via phone and email since we worked in different offices. He knew all the ways to push my buttons and he would often yell at me over the phone.
After one particular conversation with him, I FLIPPED. I swore, threw my phone at the office door, which shattered it, and then I swatted at some soda cans that were on my desk. BIG MISTAKE. Unfortunately, one of the cans still had pop in it and it hit a coworker of mine. He got splashed, which made him extremely mad. I apologized and left the room.
I got in my car and headed over to Mark’s Work Wearhouse and bought a $50 gift card. I came back and gave it to my coworker so he could go buy a new shirt. To this day I still cringe about how I acted. I do still lash out sometimes, but NOTHING like that. My god, I should have been fired. No one said anything to my boss about it, though.
44. 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.
45. 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.
46. Not-So-Common Knowledge
Ooh, I have a story that happened a few days ago. I work at a CVS, so I’ll often have customers who come in wanting to return an item. No big deal, it’s a simple task. As long as the person has the receipt and the item, I can make a return. If they don’t have the receipt I can give them store credit. That’s pretty standard, right?
Well, it was about 40 minutes into my shift and there had been a steady flow of people, so, so far it was an average day. I was standing there waiting for the next customer to come in when I heard the doors open. In came a woman who all of the other employees have dealt with at least once, except for me. “Oh boy, it’s my turn”, I thought to myself.
I greeted this customer as she approached my register and slapped down three receipts. She started asking for a price adjustment on nine items and then asked about the battery promotion we had been running the week before. I told her that the batteries weren’t buy one, get one free anymore but they were half off. So, she stepped away to look for the sign.
I called my manager for some backup with the lineup. When this woman came back, I told her that there wasn’t anything I could do about the batteries since the receipt clearly said, “All batteries are buy one, get one half off”. Then she started asking about the items that were actually Christmas clearance items that she bought MONTHS ago.
My manager stepped in and explained that there was nothing we could do about it, which sent her into full-on rage mode. “I WAS TOLD I COULD GET AN ADJUSTMENT ON THESE ITEMS. WAS I LIED TO? WHY CAN’T YOU DO THIS”? Finally, she calmed down slightly and asked if she could still return the items since she has the receipts.
My manager told her that as long as she has the receipts, we can make a full return otherwise she will get store credit for the amount of the item’s current price. The customer didn’t understand. The two of them went back and forth until the customer finally turned back to me and asked if I understood what my manager was saying.
“Yes”, I said. “As long as you have the receipt and the item with you we can make a full return”. Then she said, “Oh, you mean I have to have the item with me? No one ever said that”! I told her that that was because it is common knowledge, which made her scream at us some more and then leave. Moral of the story? You must have the receipt and the item with you to make a return. Also, don't be a jerk to your cashier because I actually could have done something for her.
47. There Are Two I’s In Narcissist
Both of my parents are narcissists so I am trying to choose from many here. Probably the worst was the tantrum my dad threw when I told him, as a premed college sophomore, that I didn’t really want to be a doctor, I wanted to be a nurse. I’d laid out a path from RN to NP to graduate work, and had a solid list of reasons why nursing was a better fit.
His vicious screaming condemnation happened IN PUBLIC, in the parking lot in front of my dorm at my Expensive Private College. Among other things, he called me “damaged goods”, words that still cut to this day. He told me I was too good to take orders from people and refused to let me transfer to a school with a nursing program.
This whole humiliating tantrum happened in the early evening when people were out and voices carry. Of all his tantrums, that one’s definitely high on the worst list. By the way, I should mention that I graduated with my BSN, summa cum laude, in 2004. I work in cardiology and love my job (most days). The narcissists and I no longer speak.
48. 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.
49. 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.
50. Yo Quiero Taco Toy
When I worked at Taco Bell, I had a set of parents, who had apparently just given up on being decent humans, let their nine-ish-year-old kid berate me because I didn’t have the brand-new kids’ meal toy. They just stood there and let him rant with that “I've given up” look on their stupid faces. I had to do something to make this brat shut up.
I went to the back room and found the toy he wanted in a box that was not supposed to be given out yet because it was still three boxes away in the rotation. When I gave it to the kid, he screamed in victory and ran outside—directly into a rosebush. It took his parents 10 minutes to pull him out. I wasn’t able to take orders for a few minutes because I was laughing so hard.
51. Breaking Even
After Hurricane Sandy, we had to ration gas here in New Jersey—you know, because there wasn’t any. We even had to do the even/odd license plate system where plates ending in an odd number can buy on odd-numbered days and vice-versa. So on the day for the odd numbers, I was sitting in my odd-numbered car in line for gas.
The line went around the block, so I made the most of it by listening to 1970s music to get the full experience of gas rationing. I noticed that the SUV a few cars ahead of me had even-numbered plates. I chuckled, thinking, “Oh, this is gonna be good”. Finally, the woman in the SUV got all the way to the front of the line…
Of course, they refused to serve her because she had the wrong plates. She got out of her car and actually started jumping up and down at the pump screaming her fool head off. She was being discriminated against, it wasn’t fair, she’d spent all that time waiting in line, she needed gas, she had KIDS, yadda, yadda, yadda, blah, blah.
The attendants just stood there and watched her have a tantrum, and then they calmly guided the line around her car and continued filling up the cars of people who had the proper plates. This woman was dumbfounded. You could tell she had fully expected her tantrum to work. Instead, she was put into a time-out and ignored. She had absolutely no idea what to do.
So, she stood there quietly for a moment with her arms dangling and a stupid look on her stupid face. Then she got into her SUV and puttered away. I have no idea if she managed to get gas the next day.
52. 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.
53. 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.
54. Gotta Catch ’Em All
So, I have epilepsy. At the time of this story, I was 23 and I worked at a retail store as the supervisor in the shoe department. One of my employees was a cocky 17-year-old who had to get the job because his mother made him. I hated that this kid worked for me and I tried to trade him off to other departments, but no mercy was shown.
Well, one night his mother came in to visit her son while he was on the clock. No big deal. Except that she couldn’t find him, and when she asked someone to look for him, he was caught sleeping in the stockroom. His excuse floored me. He claimed that he caught my epilepsy. Yes, he said that I specifically infected him with epilepsy as if it were contagious.
He didn’t get fired for that, but he did get a severe warning. I guess he had been sleeping a lot at home and was blaming his new “epilepsy” on me. One day shortly after that, his mother came into the store right when it opened, she had been waiting at the door, and found me working in my department. She was super mad.
“You infected my son with your disgusting disease”, she yelled. “We can’t trust him alone anymore. We have to constantly watch him” and so on. She had me pinned in a corner so I couldn’t escape without physical contact. Did I mention she’s 400+ pounds? I was surprised at first because she didn’t introduce herself as his mom—she just started yelling so it took me a moment to connect the dots.
By the time I figured out who she was, she had started making threats of lawsuits against me and the store. She was saying that I should be required to wear a shirt or a suit to identify my condition. I said, “So I have to wear a scarlet letter because you don’t know how seizures work”? The reference made her pause for a second as her left arm was still waving in the air, arm fat flapping and all.
I smirked a little bit at the look of confusion on her face and that just revved her up even more. Before she could start a new tongue-lashing, the store manager walked past and instructed me to go to the stockroom because we had received a big shipment that I had a lot to unload. The manager then proceeded to walk this lady right out of the store.
Apparently, the kid’s mom had called the store the night before and gave the same kind of speech to the person in customer service. The mom looked like such an idiot being escorted through a two-story department store screaming about how seizures are contagious and if she catches them from her angel she’ll be back, etc. It was a great day.
55. Ready To Rock And Rolex
I used to work at a ski lift. There was another lift very close to mine that took skiers to a different part of the mountain. At closing time we would walk to the end of the corral, look up the mountain, and, if no one was coming, we would close both lifts at the same time: 4:00.
This was the last Friday of the season and, at the end of the day, the other liftie and I went out and looked up at the mountain. We could see a couple of people near the top. We checked the clock and since it was already 4:00, I started walking back to my lift to shut it down. A few minutes later, I heard someone cussing up a storm.
The people who were up the mountain were now down and a man was having a massive tantrum because we were closed. He approached me screaming that we had closed too early. I told him that we didn’t, and he started calling us liars, saying that he knows it isn’t 4:00 yet because he “has a Rolex”. He goes on to make this point three times—and he even pulled back his glove to show us.
My coworker was able to get him almost calmed down by telling him that another nearby lift will get him back to the base lodge. He is OK with this until he realized that he wasn’t going to the top of the mountain, just down a short hill. He exploded again, but there was nothing we could do. We had already started our closing procedures. The lift was stopped and the all-clear signal had been sounded.
My coworker told him (again) that he couldn’t go to the top. The man then berated us some more and said, “I’m going to go file a complaint”. I finally lost it and told him to go F himself. This guy didn’t even blink, so I think he’s probably been told this before. This whole time I was thinking, “How could this guy be smart enough to make enough money to buy this watch, but dumb enough to think that the two people who were standing there holding shovels actually cared?
56. 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.
57. 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.
58. Showdown At The Clearance Store
I worked at a clearance store once. For those who don’t know how those work, the company buys some product that didn’t sell at another store for whatever reason, adds a cost increase, and tries to sell it. Thus, whenever someone asks, “Are you getting more of X in stock”? The answer is always and without exception “no”.
I worked at this store as a kid and there was this one customer who would always come in with our flyer and demand that I produce some product that had already sold out. When I told her we didn’t have any left, she would scream and scream that I was withholding it from her. She knew me and would always start with the screeching the moment she saw me.
Anyway, I once left the ladder in my aisle by mistake because I was trying to avoid one of her scream sessions, so I moved to the next aisle over. She attempted to climb the ladder because she was convinced that I was hiding some $4 wooden bird feeders from her. That's when she did the unthinkable. After falling off the ladder TWICE, she saw a rabbi walking through the aisle and grabbed him by the arm.
She demanded that the rabbi climb the ladder to find her bird feeder. He suggested that it might be a good idea to ask an employee for help instead. She then started in on a rant about how as a religious man he had to help her because I was deliberately withholding her items out of spite. As she started breaking down into tears, some teenage customer overheard it all.
The teen climbed the ladder and started looking on the shelves to find her item. Of course, he didn’t find it. So, when he got down (I was watching from the next aisle over, peeking between two boxes), I casually walked up and grabbed the ladder away. After I did that, she went and gave my manager a piece of her mind—for the next 40 minutes.
I remember when I got home that night, I told the story to my family. One of my relatives started yelling at me about how I should be nicer to the elderly since they live on a fixed income. I suggested they might want to spend less money on bird feeders if that was the case. I hope I never turn old and crazy enough to lose all my dignity as that woman did.
59. Credit Where It’s Due
When I was maybe about seven years old or so, my mother had an argument with my father about money. During the argument, she proceeded to take all of her credit cards out of her wallet and cut them up into small pieces, leaving the pile on the kitchen table. She then yelled for my younger brother and sister to come into the room.
She lined us up, showed us the cut-up credit cards, and told us that she was never going to buy us anything ever again and that if we ever needed anything we’d have to ask our dad for it. When I was still upset a few hours later, she told me that I shouldn’t worry because she could get all her credit cards replaced—as if that was the real issue for me at seven years old.
60. 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.
61. 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.
62. This Makes Total Sense
I was at a restaurant with my uncle and cousins who were visiting from far away. It was my first time seeing them in many years. At the end of the dinner, one of my cousins snuck off and paid for everyone’s meal as a nice gesture. This made my uncle irate. He started yelling and complaining that he wanted to pay his share. But wait until you hear why…
I kid you not, he demanded to pay because he has a movie ticket points Visa card and he was close to getting a free movie. He argued, screamed, and swore at our cousin in the restaurant over a few free movie points. He would not drop the issue until he managed to get our cousin to apologize to him for costing him movie points. I don’t think those cousins are going to fly down to visit again anytime soon.
63. Finger Lickin’ Mad
My coworker and I went to KFC for lunch a few years ago and there was a guy ahead of us in line. Other than that, this KFC was empty and the drive-thru was also empty. The guy ordered a chicken meal and the lady at the counter replied they are currently out of that kind of chicken and it would be about a 20-minute wait.
The guy said OK and ordered a different meal. The cashier asked if he wanted original or crispy. He said original and she replied they are out of that and it would also be 20 minutes for that. At this point, he is obviously upset, but he said, “Fine. Crispy then”. To which the lady at the counter responded they were also out of crispy and it would be 20 minutes.
Well, that just set this guy off in a hilarious fashion. “Why did you even ask me then? This is a K…F…C...: KENTUCKY FRIED CHICKEN! How can you not have any chicken? What do you sell, bread”?! He went on for about five minutes. We finally had to leave because we were laughing so hard. Normally, I would feel bad for the worker, but, really, it is a KFC.
64. 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.
65. 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.
66. Have It Your Way
I used to work at a cafe in an upscale health club some years ago. Among other items, we sold a cheeseburger cooked to order (that is to say rare or medium or what have you). As I was working, a girl of about 12 came up and ordered. When I asked her how she wanted the burger done, she responded, “Medium-rare”. OK, cool.
She handed me a set of keys to pay (club members were encouraged to load money onto little keychain dongles so that they could leave their wallets in lockers while working out or swimming). I scanned the keys, her dad’s picture came up, and she was good to go. I told her it would be a few minutes and to take a seat.
A few minutes later, the burger came up and I served her. At some point, her dad had wandered in and sat down with her. Not two minutes after I dropped off the food, her dad was up at the counter screaming at me about how we were trying to poison his daughter. He was in such a rage that he stormed into the kitchen and threw the burger at one of our cooks.
If you trust your daughter to buy a $12 burger on her own, you should not be shocked when she orders it the way she likes it.
67. King-Sized Karen
I was working in a department store at the return desk, the day after Christmas, which was the busiest time of the year for us. This one customer wanted to exchange a queen-size comforter set for a king size. Any normal person would realize that the size difference between the two means that they will need to pay the difference, which, in this case, ended up being about $15. Seems reasonable, right? Wrong.
Upon hearing that she would have to pay money, this customer instantly went thermonuclear. This was not a gradual, building rage—it went from “Yes, I was hoping I can exchange this item for a bigger size, my good man” to “Don’t give me that excuse, you bleeping bloody bleeper”! I didn’t even have time to react before she was verbally bombarding me with every known curse word in her sailor’s dictionary.
All I could do was stand there dumbfounded, and apparently, she took offense to this. She threw a punch that narrowly missed my face. Finally, my fight or flight reflexes kicked in and I jumped back behind the counter so she couldn't reach me. I picked up the phone to call security, but they arrived before I could complete the call. She was still yelling obscenities while the guards were tackling her to the ground.
68. 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.
69. 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.
70. The Only Disability Is A Bad Attitude
My dad’s a quadriplegic and when I was in high school he finally got an electric wheelchair after having used a manual chair for more than 20 years. I’ve tried out both of his chairs and the electric one is much different. You barely tap the stick and you’re speeding away. Needless to say, it took Dad some time to get used to this crazy new chair.
He accidentally ran into a few things around the house and put a couple of holes in the kitchen cabinets. Cue Mom three sheets to the wind and charging through the house with a hammer, banging on the walls and doors, swearing and screaming, “IF YOU CAN PUT HOLES IN THIS HOUSE I CAN TOO”! She smashed holes in the laundry room, the hallway, and in Dad’s bedroom door.
Mom and Dad don’t speak anymore.
71. No Shirts, Big Problems
My wife and I used to live in a little cluster of rental houses that were all grouped in threes. A rather large, mean couple moved in across from us and they had two Dalmatians whose nasty personalities matched their owners’. This couple would let their dogs wander around off leash all the time. Shortly after the pair moved in, the wife brought a female friend to live there too.
We soon learned that this couple had become a rather unattractive trio. As could be imagined, this arrangement soon caused some strife in the household. Night after night—for months—we could hear the three of them getting into huge screaming and crying matches. These were so easy to hear because they didn’t have their arguments like normal people…
They would sit outside, shirtless, yes, all of them, on our shared sidewalk and scream and cry. They wouldn’t even move to let people walk on the sidewalk, so anyone who wanted to pass had to walk in the dog-poop-covered grass instead. Everything came to a head when the two lady friends took off on a cruise without the husband.
While they were away, a repo man came and removed all of their electronics. Then the hairy obese husband (still shirtless, always shirtless) packed up his belongings and left. The confused women came back to a very empty house. Shortly afterward, the landlord offered them an easy out of their contract and they left ASAP taking their gross dogs with them.
72. 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.
73. 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.
74. Cut Off At The Genius Bar
One time I saw this couple at the Apple Store arrive at their Genius Bar appointment 25 minutes late. The woman threw a huge fit when they couldn’t be seen right away. She loudly demanded to be served NOW because they had driven over an hour to get there. She yelled and swore at the person checking them in and just made a total scene.
Finally, a manager came over to try to pacify her and told the couple something like, “I’ll take a look at the phone now, but if there’s a real issue I will have to make another appointment for you”. So, I watched them describe how during phone calls their iPhone would sound all garbled and quiet, and everyone told them that they sounded like they were in a tunnel.
The manager asked, “Does this happen all the time”? To which she replied, “Yes, and it’s brand new”! The manager took another look at the phone, pulled the packing tape off, and made a call. He then handed the phone to the woman and said, “Does this sound better”? I’ve never seen someone turn so red so fast. Watching the woman sheepishly take the phone back from the manager was priceless.
75. USB = U So Beserk
This happened at work recently. This one customer kept complaining that he didn’t understand technology but wanted a smartwatch/fitness tracker. He originally picked out a Garmin and when we went to set it up, he entered his email and saw that he already had an account. I asked if he owned a Garmin product, and he said no, someone must be using his email without his permission.
I asked if he was sure and he angrily said, “You know this is just like when you people set up my GPS. Since you set it up, YOU should have the password. He started making a scene by moving his hands around and shouting at me about how stupid I am and how he was currently on vacation and can’t reset his password until he gets back to his office, which was in another state. I wondered who goes on vacation in Boise, Idaho, but kept that to myself.
So, I returned the device to the shelf and he chose a different watch. Fitbit. I set it up, got all his info entered, and explained that I wasn’t sure why the calculator already says he burnt 900 calories. I have never seen one of these past the setup stage. Will it do that every day? No clue. Whatever. His rage is starting to build up again and I just want him gone.
I tell him the charger is in the bag and he goes on his way. Five minutes later, he came back and, even though I was with a customer, he interrupted me mid-sentence by slamming his bag on a nearby table and screaming, “You didn’t show me how to charge it! I explain that it’s a USB charger and it plugs from the back of the watch into a computer or any USB slot.
He just stares at me and my customer with the dumbest face. I tell him I’ll be with him in a second. My customer turns to him and explains what a USB is and what it looks like. The angry man says, “So I have to take my laptop with me everywhere if I want to charge my watch”? Again, I tell him I’ll help him in a second.
He didn’t like that because he proceeded to pull the plastic Fitbit box out of the bag and straight up hulked the poor thing into about eight pieces and kicked one of the pieces across the floor. He then showed me the charger—again with a dumb look on his face—and then just stormed out.
76. 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.
77. 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.
78. But Was It Heart-Shaped?
I work in a hotel and a husband and wife walked into my lobby, looking for a room. She was plastered out of her mind, and he looked rather miserable. He asked for a room and the rates. As I’m giving him the rates, she sloppily interrupts with: “What about the Jacuzzi room”? I obliged by telling them the price of the Jacuzzi room. The husband doesn’t seem interested.
She, however, demands the suite. He doesn’t want to pay that much. She tells him something along the lines of “Stop being such a wuss. Get me the Jacuzzi room or we’re so done”. The guy didn’t even reply, he just walked out of the lobby, leaving her there. She broke into tears, stomped her feet, and screamed after him.
She turned to me and slurred, “Screw that. I’ll get it anyway and he can pay”. But then it dawned on her. She didn’t have the credit cards. He does, and he’s gone. She called him, in tears, still screaming, as I tried to pretend that I can’t hear. I had to struggle to keep a straight face when she said, “I’m sorry for embarrassing you. Look, just come back here—WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU’RE ALREADY OUT OF TOWN”?!
79. If You Can Make It There…
This happened when I was working at a tech repair shop in New York City. Without looking up at the waiting crowd of customers, I called for the next customer. It ended up being this girl who was a camper at the summer camp I worked at the previous summer. She was there with her mom. This was awkward enough, but I clenched my teeth and figured soon it would be over. Hah.
Well, her mom ended up being a raging Karen. This woman brought in a basically new computer that she assumed was broken. It wasn’t installing some piece of software, so she was demanding a totally new machine. I told her I’d look into it for her, and brought the computer to the back. It turns out she just didn’t know what she was doing.
So within a few minutes, we successfully installed the software and got her back up and running again. Relieved that this was about to be over, I came out grinning and gave her the good news. She refused to take it. I glanced down at the camper’s face and she gave me a subtle knowing glance tinged with silent dejection.
I calmly explained to her mother that I wasn’t sure what had happened (which is code for “You messed this up somehow”), but it has been taken care of. I happily told her that we wouldn’t charge her for it. This was not good enough. She refused to accept that she didn’t know what she was doing, and she still demanded a new computer.
I tried to assure her that everything was fine: “Look, it’s working”! I said, desperation creeping into my voice. She replied, “Look, I don’t CARE. That’s NOT WHAT I WANT. I TOLD you I want a NEW COMPUTER”! I was a bit speechless at how quickly this had escalated, so I went to the manager on duty and explained what was going on.
The manager went out and tried to talk her down, but she kept throwing out the same phrase: “NO! That’s NOT WHAT I WANT”! She was like a child who had already made up her mind. I don't want you to fix my toy, I’ve already decided that it is broken and I WANT A NEW ONE. Sadly, the manager eventually relented to avoid making more of a scene.
This Karen ended up getting a whole new computer. It wasn’t a total loss since the first one was fully functional and all we had to do was wipe the data and resell it as an open box, but we did have to eat the cost of the software. I finished up the transaction and took one more glance at the camper whose face said, “I’m sorry”. Truthfully, I think I felt more sorry for her. She had to live with the woman.
80. 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.
81. 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.
82. Maybe She Should Stick To The Bus
Some lady in her mid-30s was waiting to make a left turn and get back onto the main road that I was driving on, but just at that time, another car was backing out of a parking strip on my right side, which I promptly turned into because it was the only parking spot open. When I went into the store to pick up my bus pass, I didn’t know what would be waiting for me outside.
When I came out, the left-turn lady was walking up the sidewalk toward me. As soon as she saw me, she started cussing up a storm, calling me every nasty name in the book, and screaming that she had been waiting for the spot I took. Things got worse when a couple of guys who were walking nearby came over and asked her what the problem was.
She proceeded to tell them that I took her parking spot. I guess she knew one of them because he gave me a dirty look and asked if he needed to kick my butt. I shrugged and said I had the right of way and had no way of knowing what her intentions were. I kept walking to my car and she kept screaming all the way up the block and over into the next.
83. One Knuckle Sandwich, S’il Vous Plait
When we were dating, I took my future wife to a chic little French restaurant in Lake Worth, Florida, figuring I could score a few points. Dinner was great—but then the whole night went south. An old man at a table of six septuagenarians next to us jumped up and grabbed one of the waiters by the collar, put his face in the guy’s grill, and yelled, “I don’t like your attitude”!
It turned out that a different waiter had upset him earlier and he had the wrong guy. He realized that, muttered something, and sat down, whereupon his wife pulled back and punched him in the face—hard. He got up and stormed out. After that everybody else wrapped things up and left as quickly as possible. We tried not to laugh, but it wasn’t easy. Good times.
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. How To Wreck Christmas
My mother-in-law has a lot of tantrums, but this one happened on Christmas Day of this year. My two-year-old nephew got two train sets for Christmas. The one from my mother-in-law was age appropriate and the one from an uncle who has never had children was for ages 5+ because of smaller parts. The boy’s parents said “thank you” for both gifts.
As the boy started unwrapping the rest, my MIL lost it on the uncle who bought the 5+ train. “How dare you buy a gift that is not age-appropriate? You should know better”! Then she started dragging me into it and saying that he should learn from us about how to buy age-appropriate gifts. She even threatened to return the inappropriate train set.
So now the parents of the boy started playing with the train that my MIL bought just to make her happy. The two-year-old doesn’t play with it on the tracks, he just wants to roll the train on the carpet. This causes my MIL to freak out about how he doesn’t even know how to play properly. Poor kid! She also had several other issues that day, but that was definitely the worst.
87. Caren vs. Male Karen
I worked at the front desk of a family resort in the Poconos for some time before the place eventually shut down. If you’ve never been to the Poconos, you’re better off. We had one employee at the front desk named Caren. Caren was in her late 60s, retired, and the epitome of a nice older woman. Now here’s where the tantrum happens.
It was the week of Christmas, which is the last few months of the resort’s operation, so we’re busy—to put it mildly. This 40-something man and wife are checking in with Caren and he says, “I’d like to check in, and I’d like to get into my room immediately”. Now, I should mention that check-in time is 4:00 pm and it is only 11:00 am.
Caren gets his name and says, “I’m sorry, Sir. We are unable to get you into your room until 4:00 pm, but you are more than welcome to use all the facilities until then”. This sets the man off. “Do you know who I am? I drove for hours just to get here and wait in a line for over an hour just to be told I can’t access my room for another five hours? This is ridiculous”!
Caren attempted to respond by saying, “Sir, I’m very sorry, but check-in is at 4:00 and we’re so busy”. But the customer cut her off. “I don’t care what time check-in is, I want to get to my room, and I want to get to my room now! What is so hard to understand about that? If you can’t get me what I want, the next words out of your mouth better be ‘I’ll get someone who can’”!
Caren tries to respond, but can only get out a few stutters. “S-s-sir, I-I-I can’t do anything, these other guests are all waiting just like you”. The guy loses it. “I don’t give a hoot about any of these people. My family and I came here to have Christmas vacation and you’re stopping that from happening. You’re ruining our holiday. I demand to speak with a manager”!
By now the hubbub of the lobby has gone silent. All eyes are on this grown man who is demanding things and yelling like a child who has been told he couldn’t play with mommy’s phone. It was not a good look.
88. 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.
89. 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.
90. Comedy = Tragedy + Time
So I work in housekeeping at a resort and we have a policy that whenever a housekeeper finishes with a room, whether it is occupied or the guest is checking out, we set the in-room thermostat to 23 C (74 F) to conserve energy and show that we’re environmentally conscious. Most housekeepers don’t actually do this in occupied rooms, though, because guests hate it.
However, it was only my third week of working there and I didn’t want a manager upset with me that early on. So, after I finished the room, I raised the thermostat. As I was going down the hall to get to my next room, I heard the other guests come back and start complaining about the heat. Suddenly, the mother stormed out of the room toward me.
She screamed, “Did you turn up the thermostat”?! Me, being rather meek, just quietly replied, “It’s policy”. That response got me a glorious reply that at the time scared me, but now just makes me laugh. “Well, policy ends today,” she screeched. “I pay for air conditioning, and I deserve it”! I was mortified at the time, but it’s kind of hilarious to me now.
91. Terror At The Cracker Barrel
This happened when I was working at a job that was a few hours away from my wife. On one of the weekends that I could hang out, she, her parents, her sister, and her sister’s boyfriend all showed up to take me out to a nice dinner. It was an amazing surprise. I should mention that I live in a state that has a few college football powerhouses and my sister-in-law, her boyfriend, and I all have degrees from the same one.
Anyway, we went to Cracker Barrel and waited in the area that has all the merchandise for sale. The boyfriend-in-law and I were looking at some hats that had our alma mater’s logo on them. Just then, a worker came up and made fun of our alma mater because she got her degree from our main rival university. We retorted, thinking that it was all in good fun, but she became very upset.
She looked at me with icy cold shark eyes and said that I shouldn’t insult the people who make my food. I still thought she was joking. As I continued to banter, she went to an 11 on the rage scale. What she said next wiped the smile off my face. She then told me point blank to “enjoy the extras in my food”. At this point, I realized she wasn’t kidding. I started to feel very uncomfortable and I decided to tell the manager.
He comped the entire meal and made sure that I got an entirely new plate of food. Within 10 minutes, the manager fired this waitress. As we were eating, she stormed into the dining area and threatened me and my family. I was a college athlete and a bouncer on the weekends for extra money—I know how to handle myself. I told her that she is about to step into something serious. As this was happening, my wife called the authorities.
This caused the waitress to take off. When the officers got there, they took a statement, and before they left, they told us that they have a case for harassment and disturbing the peace. We thought that was the end of it, but we were so wrong. As we got into our cars, the waitress, who is now in her truck, jumped a curb and blocked us into our spots. She started revving her engine and lurching at us.
I happen to have a baseball bat and glove in my car, so I asked her if this was really going to happen. She looked at me like this was the first time someone has called her out. I played for a relatively famous coach, so I can take all sorts of verbal intimidation. I also know how to respond to threats in a calm, detached way that makes insane people even crazier.
It was time for a showdown. The waitress in her truck and me with my Louisville slugger (just protecting my wife and family, of course). She ended up taking off when the authorities came roaring up from around a corner. I filled out another statement for harassment. Our family went home and laughed about it for a long time. We still joke about it.
92. 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.
93. 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.
94. Crazy Girlfriends Be Like
A friend of mine took up with a young lady who had some psychological quirks. I was talking to him on the phone one time when suddenly I heard his girlfriend screaming in the background. “Who are you calling?! You’re calling some woman that you’re cheating on me with! I know it”! He said a few calming sorts of things to her, but her rage kept intensifying.
She got to the point where she was shrieking about how she was going to end her life. She even went so far as to announce that she was heading to the bridge now so that she could jump off. Then there was a big noisy slam and then silence. I was still on the phone with my friend, but we were both too embarrassed to talk.
Suddenly, I could hear a big commotion in the background—she was back. And get this: She was demanding that he drive her to the bridge. Because it was raining. Thank goodness that he finally got away from that relationship, but it was an expensive accomplishment. And, yes, she was very pretty.
95. The Wedding Wrecker
My mom has always thrown tantrums when my sister was getting more attention than her, but the worst time was on the day of my sister’s wedding. My mom wouldn’t even get out of bed that morning. These tantrums form like hurricanes, sucking everyone in our family into their exhausting vortex until we become shells of our former selves.
Mom’s tantrum meant that I had to pack all of the sweets that she was in charge of, in addition to packing the trellis I had made as my low-budget wedding gift. I was also late for my tux appointment because I was pleading with her to get out of bed—all while my dad cried and ignored getting any of his stuff organized.
From her bed, she said all of the meanest things she could think of. She told us we hated her and said we should just go to the wedding without her. We were supposed to be on the road at 10:00, but she didn’t even get out of bed until 11:00. I was so distraught from trying to get her going that I left many of my tools and the reinforcement wire behind.
Without those items, the trellis blew over and broke, which meant my hours of picking flowers and wrapping them were for nothing. Once we arrived, blurry-eyed and exhausted, she pulled a 180 and was laughing and joking around with everyone, while dad and I were on the brink of a nervous breakdown. I actually slipped out during the reception to nap in my truck and ended up missing most of the fun.
96. 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.
97. 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.
98. 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.
99. Be A Baby, B-E, A Baby, B-E A B-A-B-Y!
For some reason, I accepted a job stage managing a recital for a dance company that was owned by an ex-NBA cheerleader who I had been warned about. Apparently, she could not handle stress and had thrown an actual rolling-on-the-floor tantrum the previous year. My experience was just as cringe-worthy…
It was time to program the lighting cues for her show but since we “had all done this last year” we wouldn’t need to do it again. This was a bit of a headscratcher since her dances were totally different this time. Anyway, she broke down in a massive crying fit when things didn’t go smoothly. This was full-on embarrassing, toddler-esque blubbering—a super ugly cry.
Anyway, I didn't throw water on her like her mother did last year, but I did open the mic on my wireless headset so the rest of the crew could all have a good laugh at her weeping and wailing and carrying on.
100. Fast Food Frenzy
Witnessed a complete and total mental breakdown at McDonald's. An employee got overwhelmed by lunch hour traffic and started screaming and yelling and swearing in front of kids and an officer. The employee even pushed an elderly employee who fell down and she was promptly taken away by the officer. All of it went down in less than a minute.
101. Repeat Offender
I've always wanted to tell this story. It happened on my third day at my new job. It was at a cell phone store, and I already felt pretty comfortable working without any help. All of a sudden, this customer walked in, ignored the other customers who were waiting to be helped, and slammed her phone on the counter in front of me.
She said she had just bought this phone and then started talking about how it was not a really Galaxy S3. She was convinced it was fake. At first, I thought maybe she was trying to swindle us by swapping it or something, but when I determined she was just spewing nonsense, I apologized and told her there was nothing we could do.
She was not happy, so I checked in with the assistant manager who told me to give her the runaround because it was more than 14 days after she had purchased it. When I told her that we could not give her a refund, her horrifying reaction only intensified. She pounded her fist on the counter over and over again, screaming while she did it. After a few more pounds, she bellowed, GIVE ME MY MONEY”!
She then continued to scream and pound both of her fists like hammers as if she were Donkey Kong. I calmly explained that we could not give her a refund, but we were more than happy to exchange it without a restocking fee. She didn’t think that was good enough, though, so she started to act like Donkey Kong again, but this time she stomped her feet as well.
She then started telling me that she has three kids in her car right now, and she can’t take care of them with this garbage phone. She said she needed her money back so she could feed them. I told her our policy once again, and she grabbed the phone, screeched, and pushed the door as hard as she could. I thought it was over, but…
She left the store, still screaming at the top of her lungs. She then sped out of the parking lot and, instead of backing up out of her spot, she drove over the cement parking divider and floored it, spinning her wheels across the grass in front of the store. Alas, that was not the last of her. I encountered her again a few months later.
She was buying another Galaxy S3 because her son broke the other one. Then, three weeks later, she came in saying that the phone was “defective”. Since she couldn’t prove that it was faulty, we went through the same Donkey Kong routine again. This time, however, she wouldn't leave. She kept stomping her feet and screaming at customers about how we were ripping everyone off.
Eventually, it got to the point where the stomping was getting a bit scary, so I told her that she was making our customers uncomfortable and threatened to call the authorities. Just as I pretended to dial, she rushed out of there. I later learned more about her from another customer of mine who is her best friend. Apparently this maniac has also been banned from Walmart and several restaurants in the area.
102. Wi-Fi Rage
I have pretty bad hearing issues and wear hearing aids. Normally when I fly, I leave them in for the safety check, then pull them and promptly check out. I was on my way back from work-related travel and had the cheapest most awful seat on the plane. About 30 minutes into the flight, this 20-year-old guy starts having an EPIC meltdown.
Apparently, the Wi-Fi on the plane is too slow for him and he starts pounding and banging the seat in front of him. He then hits my tray with his knee, knocking my hearing aids up and away. I try to get up to catch them and he hits me right in the face. I’m a 5’3" tall, 100 lb girl, and this guy is like six feet tall and pretty big. He sent me hard to the floor.
I was told that after that, someone restrained him, the plane turned back around, and he was escorted off the plane. The attendants were super nice, and the other passengers helped me find my hearing aids. I still don’t know what happened entirely, but they let me lay down across two first-class seats with an ice pack over my face for most of the cross-country flight.
103. Putting Your Foot in Your Mouth
My mom had a rule about no shoes in the house under any circumstances—but one day, it came back to bite her. My brother's friend had prosthetic legs, so he always had shoes on. He came over one day and my mom got really mad and confronted him, yelling: “Why do you think you're so special that you don’t have to take your shoes off in our house when everyone else does"?
He responded by lifting up his jeans and showing his Air Jordans resting in a pair of fake legs and said, "I'm sorry, ma'am. If I take them off, I'll have to take my legs off, too". My mom offered a half-hearted apology and went upstairs. She never commented on it again.
104. Spoiled Sister
My sister refused to look for a job and as a result, moved back home. She used my parents’ vehicle to drive around with her boyfriend and go to parties. One day there was a family emergency and the car wasn’t in the driveway for her to use. Her reaction was chilling. She threw a tantrum, trashed the house, and ran away with her boyfriend.
By the way, my sister is 22 years old.
105. 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.
106. 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
107. If You Can’t Take The Heat…
While my brother Kyle and his friend Josh were surfing, Josh’s girlfriend Luna and I were sunbathing on the beach. It was hot and about a hundred degrees, so we were in bikinis. We were talking about the usual stuff when I noticed some teenager, who looked like he was 15 or 16, watching us. Luna and I ignored him, but only until he started getting closer and closer to us.
Luna is short, but she's incredibly muscular from working out hours every day, so she seems intimidating to a lot of people. Anyway, when the guy was too close for comfort (arm's distance away from Luna and me), I asked if there was something he wanted from us, because he'd been watching us for at least 15 minutes. The guy never looked at my face, just my chest.
Yeah, I was in a bikini, but I was covered. The guy's mom (our Karen) came over to Luna and me at this point, then asked if we could cover up. Luna looked at Karen with a “Really”? expression, and Karen had that entitled face. "It's only fair. You're distracting my son, and I'm afraid you'll seduce him with your bimbo wear". Luna and I looked to each other and burst out laughing.
I know it was kind of rude, but when would you hear “Cover up”! at the beach during a heatwave? Kyle and Josh came back to us, and Josh asked if everything was OK. Karen pitched a fit that Luna and I were seductive and flashing her son. "Only in your son's dreams, lady. We were not flashing your son". Karen looked like she was going to smack Luna, so Josh stepped between them to keep them apart.
Kyle saw a patrolling cop on the boardwalk and waved him down. The officer had red hair, like my brother and me. He waved to Kyle and me, then came over and asked if everything was alright, and if there was a problem. Karen looked smug. "These harlots were trying to seduce my baby boy! Arrest them for exposing themselves to a minor"! The officer just looked from Kyle and me back to Karen.
What he said next was epic. "Lady, my cousin is not a harlot, your son isn't a baby, and if you had any brains at all, you'd teach your son to respect women and not see them as 'scantily clad objects' during a heatwave. By the way, do you see the ocean? We're at a beach. My cousin can wear anything she likes". Karen's jaw dropped, then she grabbed her son's arm and pulled him away while Kyle and me, Josh and Luna were just grinning.
I didn't just soak up the sun, I basked in the awesomeness of my officer cousin!
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