There’s nothing quite like an adult totally losing their sh*t over something, deserved or not. We usually reserve the word “tantrum” for toddler meltdowns, and forgive them as such, but for grownups? It’s a bit harder to justify.
Or is it?
#15. Customer service is no picnic
“When I worked in the bakery at Whole Foods, we had a customer who kept asking us to make banana muffins with A LOT of pecans on top for her – but only a few at a time, like two or three. In general it was a request we could accommodate, but we had a few considerations we had to account for, like the fact that if we made them and she didn’t pick them up we couldn’t sell them to anyone else because pecans weren’t on the ingredient list.
The problems started arising when she would call us while she was on the way to the store, expecting to pick them up when she arrived. She was about twenty minutes away and they took 45 minutes to bake. Even if she had called us while she was an hour away, we were on a pretty tight production schedule and someone would have to interrupt the work they had to get done that day for an unexpected special order for this one customer.
First she got mad that we couldn’t magically make them in twenty minutes because chemistry. I was unfortunately the supervisor on shift when she called most of the time, so she’d keep me on the phone for fifteen minutes raging about how the customer is always right – even though she was factually incorrect in this circumstance. She started saying we should just make them her way all the time so that we always had them on hand for her. I explained to her that that we could get heavily fined by food inspectors if we did that, but that only made her angrier because f*ck the man, I guess?
Eventually my team leader said that we had to put our foot down with her and tell her that she had to put in special orders two days in advance just like everyone else. When we told her this, she of course got like sputtering infuriated (along the lines of “How am I supposed to know when I’m going to want them?!?!”). We were able to just say “well management says so, sorry,” and we thought that was that. She went along with it for a couple days, sending her poor mother to pick them up for her because she was too angry to step foot in the store – her mom always looked so apologetic.
Finally, though, she came in personally to berate my team about how rude and inconsiderate and generally shitty we had been to her. Then she asked to speak to our store manager, who had been made aware of the whole Banana Nut saga. He escorted her outside and told her she was banned from the store. We found out later that she had also been banned from the three nearest Whole Foods locations over this exact same set of circumstances.”
#14. Sometimes you just really need a cheeseburger
“Had a patient family member that was super picky, constantly calling the nurses station, constantly coming out of the room to complain.
She was upset because she ordered a guest tray, wanted a cheeseburger, and it hadn’t come up yet.
Another patient coded next door. So basically, patient was literally dying. All of us nurses left crazy lady to go to the code, and the lady went batshit, yelling YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT MY CHEESEBURGER! We ignored her lol.”
#13. Common sense need not apply
“I was at the pharmacy around 8pm, waiting in line behind an older lady. The pharmacist tells her she’ll have to pick up her prescription tomorrow at 10am because this location doesn’t carry this particular medication. The following ensues:
Lady: I’ll wait
Pharmacist: No ma’am, we physically don’t have it in this store. You have to come back tomorrow at 10am.
Lady: Let me speak to the manager.
Pharmacist: I am the manager, I’m the pharmacist and this is my store. I’m telling you, we do not have this medication right now.
Lady: Can you just give me one pill and I’ll get the rest tomorrow?
Pharmacist: Ma’am, we don’t have any of the pills here.
Lady: What if I pay you for the cost of that one pill right now, and I get the rest tomorrow?
Pharmacist: Ma’am, I can’t give you one pill because we have zero pills in this store. You’ll be fine until tomorrow at 10am, I promise.
The woman proceeds to go APE SH*T. She begins throwing stuff on the shelves onto the floor, stamping on them, screaming about how she will sue this pharmacy and how she’s never seen such terrible customer service in her life. She even started kicking the partition between her and the pharmacist, threatening to go back there and fill it herself. It didn’t even seem like she was upset about the medication itself, it was more that she didn’t get her way and didn’t want to come back. He asked a clerk to come help and the whole time, she’s grabbing for things and throwing them onto the floor in fury. She gets escorted out and we could still hear her yelling outside.
Edit 1: The medication wasn’t for any kind of mental disorder or anger problem.
Edit 2: I’m not disagreeing that it’s incredibly frustrating when you need a medication and it isn’t available. I’m simply reporting the outrageous behaviour that I witnessed.
Edit 3: Pharmacists & pharm techs, you guys are saints. Thank you for what you do and for what you have to deal with on a daily basis.”
#12. A sad day for humanity
“I used to work at McDonald’s. One time a guy came through the drive thru and ordered chicken nuggets. We gave him his food and he drives off. A few min later, he comes in to the store and runs up to the counter ranting about how we forgot his BBQ sauce. My manager meets him at the counter, apologizes profusely and him some BBQ sauce packets (extra too, maybe 6-7 packets). He proceeds to throw them at her and the rest of us workers behind the counter. We all had BBQ sauce splattered on our uniforms, on the walls, equipment etc. After he ran out of ammunition, he ran out of the store and drove away like a coward.
I was 15 then and I pretty much lost my faith in humanity.”
#11. People who work at McDonalds just do not get paid enough
“When I worked at mcdonalds I was scheduled for an early morning shifts. This guy ordered a steak, egg, and cheese which wasn’t something we batched cooked. The next three people behind him all ordered batched cooked items and got them before him. The guy proceeds to scream and shout and then get in my face. I tried explaining why but he was just screaming over me. The cook came out to try and explain hoping the guy would back down. We couldn’t find our manager anywhere to try and get help…. His co workers slowly inched towards the door until they were far enough to just run. In the end he demanded a refund which the cook side fine please get in line and wait (ya he actually made the guy get back in line for the refund) as the guy is getting to the register his food was ready and he took it and left with no refund. Then the manager came out trying to figure out what was going on…”
#10. It’s hard to admit you’re wrong
“I used to work for Goodyear tire & auto stores about 10 years ago.
A man, 40s, well dressed, came in wanting an alignment done on his truck. When they told him a price, he got upset and said that he had purchased a “lifetime alignment” from us and would not be paying. Our sales guy explained calmly that Goodyear does not, and has never sold lifetime alignments, but Firestone does, and perhaps he is mistaken. The man became furious, insisting that we perform his alignment because he paid for a LIFETIME ALIGNMENT, and that of we don’t be will sue for breach of contract. Manager gets involved, there’s no calming this guy down, he has us check our system and he’s never even been to a GY store before at all, that just made it worse, etc. The next few minutes was him yelling incomprehensibly at our manager, other customers in the lounge, demanding action be taken on his vehicle. Finally the manager says he’s calling the cops and the guy goes on a full blown profanity induced rampage through our store on the way to the door, knocking over coffee dispensers and cups, a magazine rack, and ends it by kicking open our door. The kick ripped the hydraulic door closer off the wall above the door, and he left.
Our manager ran into him a week later at a car dealership, turns out he was a sales manager there. Our manager walked out and cited that guys behavior as the reason they just lost a sale, then he forwarded the security cam video of his rampage to the GM of the dealership. Still not sure what happened on that part.”
#9. Assault by bagel
“Not so much a tantrum but just an incredible rage incident. I watched as a woman exiting an Einstein Bros Bagels looked into her bag and – in anger over some error in her order – perfectly frisbee’d an all grain bagel across the length of the store, over sitting customers, and beaned the cashier perfectly on the head. Her aim was so impressive that none of us, including the cashier, could do anything but stare in silenced awe.”
#8. Truly excellent
“The parking garage near my work is a frustrating place. The monthly customers have a parking pass that lifts the gate to get in and to get out. The thing is, the pass and their sensor dont work. You have to creep up to where you think the sweet spot might be, wave your pass around, reverse and try again, curse a bunch, endure people behind you honking despite them going through the same thing….. frustrating.
Not surprisingly, I witnessed a grown man throw the most excellent temper tantrum I’ve ever seen. The gate wouldnt go up, and he just started screaming in his car and smashing on the horn, straight out of a movie. The worst part is is that the gate always seems to go up right when you reach peak rage. So he’s yellin’ away, and then the gate is just like “Alright, man. I’ll open. Jeez.””
#7. Stay calm
“A 60ish year old man was getting gas and the pump allows you to pay for a car wash at the same time. He adds the car wash to his bill.
Drives around to car wash, big huge large see from space type sign “Temp Out Of Service”
Goes inside starts screaming that this mother fucker tried to steal his $7.99. The guy explains that the ticket is good for 90 days and he’s sorry. Slams his fist on the counter screaming that if the car wash was out of service the pump shouldn’t have offered it to him in the first place. Demands a full refund including the gas for wasting his time.
Then it gets bad.
He starts calling the guy an ISIS member and throwing things off the shelves before storming out. Calls the guy all sorts of names. I thought his head may have exploded with all of the veins showing.
This man is my father. We don’t speak anymore.
Edit: you couldn’t pump the gas without seeing the carwash was out of service.”
#6. Keep emotion out of it
“I worked in a grocery store and a woman asked me to slice her organic bread. She flipped out when she discovered that non-organic bread was also sliced on the machine. She stomped her foot and yelled, “But that messes up the organic integrity!” It was my last week working there, so I simply told her, “Ma’am, please understand, I’m not emotionally involved in the situation.” She froze and just walked away with the bread.
Edit: Thanks for the gold! This happened at an EarthFare around 2005. Hope more people can use the line, it worked for me. I think I got the line hearing Rocky Balboa tell a guy who couldn’t pay his debt that he wasn’t emotionally involved.”
#5. No good deed goes unpunished
“Was at a restaurant with my uncle and cousins from far away. First time visiting with them in years. At the end of the dinner one of my cousins snuck off and paid for everyone as a nice gesture.
My uncle got irate yelling and complained that he wanted to pay his share because, and I shit you not, he has a movie ticket points Visa card and he was close to getting a free movie. He argued and told off our cousin loudly in the restaurant over a few free movie points. He would not drop it until he got our cousin to apologise to him for costing him movie points.
I don’t think those cousins are going to fly down again any time soon.”
#4. Score one for the wife
“My mother-in-law doesn’t handle stress very well, she tends to start lashing out at people and starting fights for no reason.
On the morning of my son’s 1st birthday party she started to lose it as we were running around getting everything ready before the guests arrived. She first cornered my wife and started freaking out over the thermostat and some other unrelated pointless crap, then found me and started a fight over the garage door (it needed oiling and I hadn’t done it because I was busy setting up the party). Volume of the voice steadily increasing.
My wife marches up to her and actually sent her to her room to calm down, and she did it! She stayed up there for an hour while my wife and I finished putting up decorations. It is a memory I will cherish forever.”
#3. He must have had a real itch
“When I was working at Petco, I used to see all kinds of adult temper tantrums. People needed to take care of their animals, but hated how much that costs. Of course they would take it out on the store employees. People that wanted fish were the worst. They would try to get away with spending so little on fish and never wanted to clean their tanks or buy the stuff to do that. Then they wouldn’t properly introduce new fish to their tanks and would bring in samples of their water that was just terrible and be pissed when they couldn’t get another fish for free to replace the one the killed.
However, the biggest adult temper tantrum was from a guy that bought Flies Off (really cheap) in an attempt to get rid of fleas (relatively expensive). He used the whole bottle and came back expecting a refund because his dog still had fleas. He was told no and things went south quick. He was yelling by the check lanes about how he deserved a refund. Screaming at the manager in front of everyone making a huge scene. He then kicked over this spinning rack holding dog collars and yelled that he was going to come back and shoot up the windows. We called the police. He never actually came back, but what a total piece of garbage over like 5-10 bucks.
Edit: I think a lot of people are thinking this guy bought a cheap flea remedy. He bought “Flies off” which was cheap repellent for flies. There was much more expensive flea collars and stuff that people didn’t want to buy. Now that I think about it, it’s entirely possible some of these people were somewhat illiterate and read flies as literate people would read fleas. Maybe this guy was one of those people and thought he bought fleas off.”
#2. It was glorious
“I worked as a bra fitter in a department store. We had an older lady, probably late 60’s with her rich old husband (80’s) come in to the store wanting to buy bras after she had 2 weeks earlier gotten a boob job. We explained that because of swelling she should wait to buy bras and she became so enraged she literally started yelling abuse at us and pushing over entire racks of underwear. Picture a thin, somewhat wrinkled woman in rhinestones, losing her sh*t and tossing around undies. It was glorious.”
#1. Seriously screwed the pooch
“I told a grown woman she could not pet my service dog while he was working. She got herself so worked up she started shouting, and told me that if I didn’t want people to pet my dog I shouldn’t bring him into the grocery store. I expect this sort of behavior from young children, and I also expect their parents to keep them under control.”
h/t: Reddit
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