As a mature adult there are things you're expected to grow out of, like security blankets, sucking your thumb, and throwing a major hissy fit when you don't get your way. Some people have decided to turn the latter into an art, instead. We asked people to share the worst temper tantrums they've ever witnessed an adult having. The following stories would put any toddler to shame.
Image by Jean-François Gagnon from Pixabay
36. Seems reasonable.
When I was 16, I worked at McDonalds. This was in the days of Beanie Babies. A woman came in with her 2 small children. She ordered some happy meals and wanted a specific Beanie Baby. When she found out that we didn't have it, she flipped out. She called us every name in the book, right in front of her little kids and everyone else's kids. She was a real Meanie Baby.
Image by Ogutier from Pixabay
35. How do you like them apples?
I worked the front desk at a hotel a few years ago. A guest came to check in around 10pm and asked if he could get a room with 2 beds (he booked 1 bed). I told him we were sold out of rooms with 2 beds. Before I could offer him anything else, he took the bowl of apples we had at the desk and threw it against the wall. Then he took his OWN laptop, threw it on the ground and started kicking it around the lobby. Security came out promptly and told him he needed to leave, which obviously prompted more screaming and kicking. Needless to say, he didn't stay at the hotel that night.
34. The privileged shrew.
I've experienced no shortage of hospitality industry nightmares. I work in a small boutique hotel with no security and a couple of years ago a guest had a nervous breakdown that lasted for about two hours. Her husband left her in the city center and she somehow couldn't get back to the hotel, and started blaming us. Accused us all of being racist because she's Iraqi, accused the taxi driver of wanting to cheat her, got in my face to the point I thought she was going to hit me. She was screaming so loudly the other guests locked themselves in their rooms. It was the worst thing I have ever witnessed from a human being.
Photo courtesy of the Hotel Connaught
33. And then she went for the thong.
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 mind and tossing around undies. It was glorious.
Image by Jody Bloemers from Pixabay
32. Take your sauce and go.
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.
31. How dare they?
I had a grown adult roommate who was mad because her parents (who gave her $1000 a month in addition to paying her rent, phone, car, and grocery bills) would not give her an additional $600 a month. Meanwhile, I'm a grad student who makes $10,000 a year and have been supporting myself since I was 19.
She was sobbing when I came home, and I was very worried and asked her what was wrong. She had been crying for half an hour, and finally told me the story and asked me for support, saying, "It's just not fair that I have to live like this, am I right?" I responded, "I literally cannot relate to you" and walked out of the apartment because I didn't have the world's smallest violin with me.
30. A throw-down at the close down.
The worst tantrum I saw has to be when the ancient super market across the way was closing, because a new store had been built a mile away. They had this huge "everything must go sale." I was scavenging for closeouts, as was everyone else.
At the checkout, a 60-something woman, was angry that "YOU PEOPLE" didn't have what she wanted. Then she proceeded to tell the cashier (in her 40's) she was "happy she was losing her job and she hoped she would become homeless." At somepoint she also called the cashier a "nincompoop." The manager asked her to leave and she went on an incomprehensible tirade.
I just hope that old lady never walked into the new store because, the entire staff of the old store worked there too... and I strongly suspect they will remember her.
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29. Food fights aren't that fun.
When I worked as a cashier at a supermarket, our bag boy was sent to run and pick up a jar of jam for a customer ringing up who forgot to grab it ('cause he wasn't doing anything, she had a long order, and she had been decently nice thus far). When he brought it back it was apparently sugar free, and this ticked her off and she threw it at the customer service desk in anger and it exploded everywhere.
Also had several people go nutso and start throwing food when they got angry. Milk was the worst, followed by yogurt and glass items. Thankfully they never threw wine. This was at a fancy grocery store too. In a nice part of town. People were just ridiculous occasionally.
28. A cold dose of reality.
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.
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27. Sour grapes.
A dude I was standing behind in line at the grocery store got annoyed at the cashier for charging him by the pound for grapes. He was adamant that the listed price was for the bunch and was making a huge scene and getting nasty with the cashier. He asked me to come with him so he can show me (was within viewing distance from the register and I just wanted the line to move). We walked over to the grapes and he showed me the label and said "what does that say?" looking all proud. I pointed at the small text under the price and said "per pound." He got even more ticked off and checked out swearing the whole way through and left.
26. A good deed pays off.
I was in line behind some lady in a gas station who was absolutely insistent the guy take 23 cents off whatever it was she was trying to buy. He tried every way he could to explain to this lady that he couldn't do it but she just wouldn't listen.
I finally gave up and just slapped a dollar down on the counter and said I'll pay for the rest of it. She then of course insists that he not accept my money and that she wanted him to give her the 23 cents. Instead he quickly picked up my dollar and told her to get out.
Now it's my regular gas station and he gives me a free Redbull on Monday mornings.
25. Losing it over a dime.
I once saw a little old lady in an unbridled rage absolutely red in the face screaming at a teenage Baskin Robbins employee, because she wanted $0.10 off a $0.99 ice cream cone. The deal was only available on Sundays and it was Thursday.
She made us wait in line behind her while she argued over a dime. The cashier couldn't do anything because the register was electronic and wouldn't apply the discount.
I was about to pay the lady in loose change to move along, but someone stepped in to assist us off to the side. We were in and out in a few minutes, and the irate octogenarian was still raging when I left.
24. What a waste.
Once had dinner at a restaurant with a group of people who'd been partying all day. Just after the meal was served, one guy lost it about something and upturned the whole table. Food spilt, plates destroyed, dresses ruined, and he walks off down the road. To make matters worse, we all had to chip in to pay for the smashed plates and un-eaten meals. What a great end to a fun day.
23. Serious as a heart attack.
Had a patient's family member visiting 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 crazy, yelling YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT MY CHEESEBURGER! We ignored her, obviously.
22. Parking lot panic attack.
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 don't 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. It's frustrating.
Not surprisingly, I witnessed a grown man throw the most excellent temper tantrum I've ever seen. The gate wouldn't 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."
21. The deadliest of weapons.
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.
Image by Bruno Glätsch from Pixabay
20. Keep your hands to yourself.
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.
19. It's classical, not classy.
We had a dress rehearsal for an orchestra concert and the duet before us went over time, apparently because they started late.
When we kindly reminded them, the violist snapped and said something under his breath how we had made them wait at a previous rehearsal (which was not true; we were told to take more time). Our clarinetist said "Excuse me, would you like to say that to my face?"
What followed next was two mature, adult, professional classical musicians screaming at each other on a symphony stage. Luckily, the violist backed down and admitted fault because even the artistic director couldn't get them to calm down.
18. Cart wars.
I used to work at a Whole Foods as a cashier and on one particularly busy night I was about to have my customer pay when he took his cart, pulled it back and slammed it into the next guy's cart at the register next to mine. (those registers are really tight quarters) My guy then raised his voice saying, "I can't even reach the machine to swipe my card! Move your cart you jerk!" This was crazy because he could have just moved his own cart out of the way but insisted on slammed his neighbor's instead. So the next guy over, calm as a zen master, slowly turns to the guy. Looks at the carts, looks at me, looks at my guy and just says, "We can fight about it if you want." Me and the other cashier tried our hardest not to laugh but the look of embarrassment on my guys face as he realized how ridiculous he was acting was something else. He got shut down.
17. Just here to browse.
We were in a shoe store where a woman was trying on multiple pairs of shoes. The salesman kept bringing her pair after pair to try on.
Finally, he said, "I've shown you practically every style shoe in your size that we have in stock. Do you like any of them?"
She grabbed a high heel from one pair and threw it at him, hitting the salesman in the chest. She yelled, "I wouldn't buy shoes in this store if you paid me!" - and stormed out the door.
Pixabay
16. Getting whacky at work.
This happened at my old job. One day, we had a huge tech overhaul they didn't prepare anyone for. Entire machines we're used to using were just gone, sometimes replaced, sometimes not. After three hours of literally everyone asking the manager how they were supposed to do their jobs now, he walked to the middle of the room and turned in a slow circle, screaming at the top of his lungs and gesturing wildly, saying, "EVERYONE JUST DO WHAT YOU ALWAYS DO."
...So I went to my workstation and waggled my fingers in the air where a keyboard had been the day before.
15. Setting a great example for the little ones.
When I was in high school, my boyfriend was planning on joining me and my friends for an indie movie night at my house. Boyfriend called me up to say that he couldn't make it because he had to watch his siblings, and I overheard his dad screaming, stomping and yelling at the top of his lungs. He kept calling me a 'stupid little waste of time'.
I should mention that I was 14. Who calls a 14 year old girl that?! I ended up calling the police on him twice later; once when he punched his son in the face and another when he followed my mom and brother home. He wanted to 'teach her a lesson', we found out.
I don't wish pain on anyone, but if he died in a car fire I'd probably do a little dance.
Pixabay
14. Strong feelings about bins.
In the office I work in, there is a bin behind my desk/pod, whatever you want to call it. Its been there a long time and people use it to put their tissues in when they come out of the toilet.
Someone moved it to a different position, and there was a banterous discussion for 5 minutes about how it doesn't matter where it is. During this, the woman who sits on my table who is normally quiet yanked off her headset, launched it at the guy sitting next to her (thankfully not me), stomped over to the bin, took it back to its normal position (we have many bins in quite a small office it really wasn't a big deal) and then proceeded to scream at us till she went red in the face about how we are being childish.
Image by Jan Vašek from Pixabay
13. Don't mess with a man's points.
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 kid 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 apologize to him for costing him movie points.
I don't think those cousins are going to fly down again any time soon.
Photo by Craig Adderley from Pexels
12. That's some trashy behavior.
Just landed in Orlando, picked up my bag and it was SHREDDED. I knew it was a cheap bag, just went to customer service to get a trash bag to hold my clothes so I could get to the hotel. Middle aged lady in front of me is going nuclear that the little ID tag was missing from her bag. No other damage. She'd had 2 connections, but that customer service representative better cough up that tag right now, how dare he lose the picture of her dog, rant goes past 5 minutes. I tap her on the shoulder and ask if this is really what she spent money to go on vacation to do, held up my torn up bag with clothes falling out of it and said some off us have real problems. She stomped off without another word, I apologized on her behalf to the representative and asked for a trash bag. She hooked me up with a free Samsonite because of it.
Pixabay
11. Something needs realigning, and it's not the car.
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. Hopefully he at least got demoted.
Image by S. Hermann & F. Richter from Pixabay
10. Gotta feel for the guy's dog.
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 angry 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 in an attempt to get rid of fleas (Flies Off is for flies, not fleas). 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.
9. There's no revenge like retail revenge.
Back in the day I worked at a popular auto parts store. A couple pulled up in a beat up old Lincoln that was pulling an old box trailer that was absolutely COVERED in Christian bumper stickers and bible verses. That was my first warning that something was going to go wrong. Lady and her husband come in, looking for a window motor for the drivers side door for their Lincoln. Now this store chain has most parts for a good number of vehicles. Very rarely can we flat out NOT get a part for you. But if we have it at another store, we can get it shipped to our store within a day or overnight depending on what time the part is ordered.
So this woman asks for a part for her super old car and we don't have it in stock. She starts yelling immediately, calling us names. Customers are staring and laughing at her. Manager goes into the back to 'figure something out.' She asks if we have anything to sit on, but Autozone doesn't have any chairs for employees to sit on, let alone customers. So this woman flips over a stack of those personal plastic carts you can get at any grocery store and sits on those. Meanwhile she's barking orders at her husband to get her stuff. The husband is acting like a dog that's been hit too many times and just looks glad that she's not telling at him. Finally our manager comes out and tells her that one of the other stores in town has the part in stock of she wants to drive there and get it. She finally agrees after a few minutes, so they depart.
But our commercial manager wasn't done yet. He had been working at this store chain for about 15 years at that point, so he was familiar with every other store and commercial manager in town. He put out calls to every store telling them, 'If this woman comes in looking for that part, you don't have it.'
Image by Ryan Doka from Pixabay
8. Every purchase comes with a police escort.
I'm in retail, so I witness my fair share of adult temper tantrums, but ever since I became a manager it's 10 times worse because now I'm the one that gets called up to deal with the tantrums. A few weeks ago a woman wanted to return a curling iron that had clearly been being used for years, and wasn't even a brand that my store sold so she obviously had no receipt and no original packaging, meaning it wasn't eligible for return anyway whether or not it's something she had bought at our store.
When I told her this, politely of course, she puffed up and asked to speak to the manager. Okay, I'm a manager, but the store's general manager will be here tomorrow if you want to leave your number and I can have her give you a call. Nope, not acceptable, she wants cash for it today. Even if I somehow was able to accept the return (my system literally won't let me) it would be store credit only, never cash. I tell her this, and she flips out.
Screams at me (literally, not figuratively), tells me she's calling the cops and corporate and the Better Business Bureau AND the attorney general, and then she tells me karma is going to bite me and I'm going to have a stillborn baby. Which was really fun to hear considering I'm currently nine months pregnant. All because she couldn't return her used curling iron. I had no doubt in my mind she was on some sort of substance.
She only stopped because another customer in line piped up and said 'Hey lady, my husband is a cop and he's waiting for me in the car, want me to go get him?' and that convinced her to leave. I then went to the back and cried, and went home early.
Photo by Artem Beliaikin from Pexels
7. That escalated quickly.
4 years ago, I worked at Target. Any retail job will show you infinite adult temper tantrums. One day, a man in his mid 40s, well dressed, was buying lighters and his two young sons were with him, maybe 8 and 11. As my current customer finished, I informed the man that I would need his ID in order to sell him the lighters. He started frustrated laughing and said "do I look like I'm under 18 years old?" I said, "I believe you're over 18, sir, but when I scan the lighters, it will ask for your ID. If you don't have it, I have to call my manager to put a code in. Just trying to make things as easy as possible for you." He said, "you're a loser," and threw the lighters at me and went to leave. The current customer, as the dude stormed by, said "stop being such a jerk" and the man turned around and got in his face. They started arguing, but my current customer kept his cool while the guy shouted at him. I'm pretty sure the dad does this frequently because the kids were tugging on his clothes, asking him to stop.
Another time, a lady had 2 carts full stuff. She was an extreme couponer and would resell these products in Facebook. She had calculated it and After everything was done, she was to get $280 in products and we would owe her $0.50 cents. The issue is, it is not possible to pay someone out of the register. The system won't allow it. I offered to $0 out her balance but insisted I couldn't give her money. She requested to speak to my manager. As my manager came over, the woman starts accusing me of stealing from her. Then she explains to my boss the situation and my boss corroborates my story. The women says "then you can go screw yourself," tipped her cart over and left.
Image by SofieLayla Thal from Pixabay
6. Twist ending.
A 60 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 says "Temp Out Of Service"
Goes inside starts screaming that the kid working the cash 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.
5. Losing it over the laundry pile.
I had a job years ago where all but one of us had to do this really annoying group task involving lots of back and forth trips to a laundromat on the hottest day of that year. We were academic counselors for a summer program, and we had to walk groups of 30 students about a mile away to do laundry because the college's machines broke and these kids were getting stinky.
The only one exempt from this task was the one suckup who always kissed the butt of the main top supervisor. We all assumed she was exempt because she kissed so much butt, but I think the supervisor just forgot to assign a task to her because she was so useless.
On our third trip back she's literally lounging in the lobby with her feet up on a chair doing NOTHING. The supervisor walks by, notices her, has what seems to have been a moment of realization and then tells her to get a group and start doing the same laundry trips the rest of us are doing.
She. Went. BONKERS. She's not screaming, but she's whining really loudly and quickly and repeating "that's not fair...this isn't fair!" over and over and over again. The fact that she felt it wasn't fair is what infuriated me most. She then punched a hole in the lobby wall in frustration over having to do the same job everyone else had to do.
Two days later the main supervisor got fired, and the assistant supervisor who this lazy worker was badmouthing in an attempt to get into upper management's good graces was then made the top supervisor. This did not end well for the lazy one.
4. What a headache.
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 NUTS. 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.
3. He made a turkey of himself.
I was flying out of JFK with my boss and team analyst. We had about 1:15 before our flight leaves so we decide to sit down and eat at one of those restaurants where you order via a tablet. My boss and I get burger, he gets his with a side salad. Teams analyst gets a chicken sandwich.
Guy at the table next to us looks at my bosses plate, and very condescendingly states: "you're eating my turkey burger." Boss lifts his bun, confirms burger is beef and answers: "no, I'm eating my hamburger, not your turkey burger."
Guy at table next to us now stands up, looks like a German villain from a bad 80's movie. Guy makes a bee line to the waiter that served us and starts screaming: "Where is my turkey burger! I was here 4 minutes before the 3 of them and still don't have my turkey burger!"
Waiter is visibly nervous. Guy keeps screaming: "I ordered a turkey burger, it hasn't came. I want my turkey burger, I demand satisfaction!" Waiter says he'll check and rushes back into kitchen, slinks back out about two minutes later. Noticeable knows he has to confront this guy again and doesn't want to.
"Sir" says the waiter, "no order has been placed at any of the tablets on your table." Guy starts screaming: "You think I don't know how to use a tablet! I want my turkey burger, I demand satisfaction!"
5 more minutes ensue of him screaming about demanding satisfaction. Waiter finally grabs the tablet at his table, and finds out the order for turkey burger was keyed in but the submit order button was never hit.
Guy is now angry and embarrassed, has a look on his face like he's going to go home and beat his wife. Waiter looks smug, he's the one who actually got satisfaction out of all of this.
2. Coupon clipper goes berserker.
One time I was in Target trying to return something, so I was in the customer service line. There was a lady a couple of people in front of me at the counter arguing with an employee about some coupon she was trying to use. Evidently this had been going on for awhile before I arrived, as I could see the people in front of me were visibly irritated and antsy.
The whole time this was going on, the woman's husband had their two kids standing right next to the main door of the store waiting. Mind you this was about 9 pm at night, and both kids were in their pajamas (so were both adults, for that matter). One of the kids was literally screaming the entire time. Periodically the woman would turn aside from her conversation with the employee and outright yell at the kid to shut up.
This lady wasn't backing down about the coupon business, and neither was the employee. It got to the point where both of the people in front of me gave up and just left. I wanted to do the same, but I really needed to return this item and didn't want to have to come back another time. So I'm now next in line, and can hear a lot better what's going on. This lady is freaking out now, telling the employee how she'll get her fired, getting inches from her face and yelling, all kinds of insane stuff for an adult to do. The employee, God bless her, remained cool and calmly told her the coupon could not be honored.
This whole time I just assumed this coupon was for some significant savings, but what I heard next, I'll never forget. The customer screams, "I'm not paying 24 cents extra!"
24 cents. That was what the coupon was for. This lady had been standing here for literally 45 minutes willingly embarrassing herself and keeping her exhausted kids from sleeping over 24 cents. I seriously don't understand some people. Shout out to that employee though. I would need a long shower and a few drinks after that interaction.
1. This lady is nuts over nuts.
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.
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 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.
