A Redditor asked:
"What is the absolute dumbest reason you've seen someone who isn't a child freak out?"
Here's a list of the worst public meltdowns that full-grown adults have had, courtesy of Reddit.
The worst offenders manage to embarrass their own families.
"Worked for a cellular company and a woman was in with her parents and they were making her get off their plan. She was non-stop complaining how unfair it was. Parents were matter of factly being like this is happening. Tried to tell them she'd just pay for her portion, parents calmly replied she'd said that before and hadn't. Complained that they could afford it. Parents calmly ignored her. Whined about how much more it cost for her to have her own plan than stay on theirs."
"While she's over loudly whining to her father across the store I start talking to the mom. She tells me it's not that they can't afford it or anything like that but that they are retired and on an okay but fixed income. The daughter was earning six figures at her job according to mom. She was also 30."
Ogier_79
"My mom threw a burger back into the drive-thru window at McDonald's because it had pickles on it. She told them no pickles. She was screaming at them and they threatened to call the cops. I sank so low in my seat."
Horselovermidwest
Giphy"Senior year in high school, was playing soccer, and the goalkeeper on the other team was being looked at by a few Pac-12 schools. When our team scored a goal in overtime to win it, the girl's mother (I assume) ran onto the field to console her daughter, then looked over at us celebrating and began calling us all sorts of names I won't type here. She even accused us of intentionally scoring just to make her daughter look bad, not to win or anything like that, we just wanted to make her look bad in front of the scouts."
EvaOfDestruction
Technology seems to be the biggest catalyst for grown-up temper tantrums.
"Worked at Gamestop, guy came in complaining his PS3 didn't work and he wanted a new one covered by the warranty Gamestop provided. Well the warranty he bought was in 2009 when it came out, and being 2017 we couldn't cover it, he threw a massive fit and left the store, came back 3 hours later with the PS3 just decimated, screaming "look what you did, I shot this with my gun because of you" threw the console across the store and left. I think he used a shotgun cause there wasn't much left to it, like it was shredded."
SubsforLunch
"This girl wanted to get her own cellphone plan. She needed proof of residency to do so. She came in with a bill in her name, unfortunately, she didn't come with it address to her. We needed the actual mailing address on the bill, not just her name."
"Cue her screaming, crying, calling me a cnt, btch, and doing everything but throwing herself on the floor. She stayed in the store for 5 hours, calling customer service 6-7 times while with us, and just refusing to accept that we needed it addressed to her."
"Multiple times she would start crying again on the phone with customer service and go "and then there's this b*tch here in the store and she's just insert tantrum groan."
Callmedelete
Sad Baby GIFGiphy"I used to be a teller in college. Before chips in cards, we could swipe your card for you and you would enter your pin. After the chip, they took away our ability to swipe. So naturally, we would have the customer insert their card. At this time, they also added rims to the numbers to avoid people looking at your pin. One guy complained to management about this and screamed in the lobby that it is unjust to have him insert his card."
"Another guy told me that banks clearly don't want to service "normal" sized people because he couldn't see the number when he typed. I said, "that's ridiculous. We don't want people stealing your pin. Fraud is expensive and hard on everyone." He just replies with 'riiiiigghhht.' You cracked the code, clearly bank managers want to lose money by excluding a large majority of the population."
ColombianOreo524
The poor retail employees put up with so much.
"Once had a thirty year old woman throw a screaming tantrum with tears and threaten to sue my company because we had been out of FarmVille gift cards for weeks and her crops or animals would die or something."
Chalupachamp
"A grown woman berate an innocent Walgreens employee because they were out of Hilshire Farms baskets and she NEEDED them. The holidays are not fun for retail workers."
CatPawSoup
Temper Tantrum GIF by memecandyGiphy"Worked at a common American food chain fresh out of high school and had a grown man scream vibrations through my molecular structure about there being a 25 minute wait on baked potatoes, which I had absolutely no control over as a cashier."
"After he finished his tantrum he left, then came back ~30 minutes later to order his meal without a baked potato. Had he been a reasonable human being, I would've told him we now had them available, but he was a d*ck, so I did the bare minimum. I hand him his food, give him a lil nod, and off he goes...but on the way back to his table he spots another guest enjoying, of course, a baked potato."
"This man RAGED back to our counter, hurled his burger at me, and had to be escorted out of the building via police intervention after several minutes of uncomfortable confrontation with our entire staff. I consider myself rather empathetic, but I will never understand that man's rage. F**K YOUR BAKED POTATO, CHRISTOPHER!"
Meek-sleep-machine
"This middle-aged woman wanted to buy a TV from the store I used to work at. For some reason, there was an extremely cheap price tag on the box. I don't remember the exact price but it was less than $20, while the TV actually cost a couple hundred. She insisted the price tag had always been there and therefore we had to sell it to her for that amount (even though all the other tvs of that type had the correct price on them.)"
"When the employee said no, she demanded to see the manager. When the manager said no, she threw a tantrum, screaming all her way to the exit while threatening to call the police because we wouldn't sell her this brand new large flat screen tv for like fifteen dollars."
86sleepypenguins
“you suck a**”
"A lady came to eat at a diner I worked at, and had an absolute melt down because her toast was overdone. We gave her new toast minutes after she complained the first time, and she spent the rest of her time there throwing a full tantrum over it. Instead of signing her check she wrote 'you suck a**' in big letters on the bottom. I always say, someday I hope I have so few problems that I can spend a full hour and a half raging over toast."
thestiine
He had no children in his car...
"Our city does a free lunch program during the summer. They'll give a school style lunch to any kid under the age of 18 if you go to the designated location. During COVID they converted the program to be grab-n-go. Technically you were only supposed to get one meal per kid in the car but usually they were pretty lax about it."
"I happened to pull up just after a man asked for 20 lunches. He had no children in his car. The woman who was handing out the lunches told him that she could only hand out 1 meal per child and he had none. He then proceeded to berate her and threatened to shoot her, which in my city is very plausible."
BeeEyeAm
The VP
"My friend's boss, a VP, freaked out over the colors on the slides for his presentation. Now you have to know, he picked the colors and the graphics department told him the combo wasn't a good choice but he insisted so they made them up his way. Then when he saw them projected (this was in the olden days when presentation were projected onto screens) he freaked out."
"I know all about this since I had a front row seat to the festivities because he called my friend while we were out to dinner. My friend then had to interrupt our evening to get a rush order of different colored slides made up THAT night and flown out to his boss."
"Also, another good friend was head of the graphics dept. so I got to hear what the VP said to them, both when he originally ordered the slides and when he got them. 'You people are ARTISTS, you should have known better than this!" God, what an a**hole."
feliciates
Overbaked
"I when I worked at a grocery store bakery, I had a women have a mental break when I told her I couldn’t bake a used condom into a cake for her."
ShepherdDesign
Nbc Idk GIF by Good GirlsGiphyI scream... you scream...
"I worked in retail for a while, so this was a common occurrence. The best example was one day a man came into our store (a popular eyeglass store) and I helped him try on some glasses, walked him through lens types. Seemed perfectly nice. Then we get to the paying portion and he demanded I give him a discount."
"Everything in the store had a fixed price point and it was very corporate and we couldn’t give discounts. Not me, not the managers, no one. Dude then threw what I can only describe as a tantrum in the store. He was screaming at me so much that everyone in the store stopped what they were doing and watched."
"It was exactly like telling a child that they can’t have an ice cream or something. The kicker was he didn’t even have a reason why he thought he should get a discount, like a senior discount or student discount or something (we didn’t have any discounts anyway). He just demanded that he get one."
Neat_Consequence8289
The Law
"Wife had a client whose mom came to every family court hearing. At one hearing opposing counsel hooted, hollered, and waived his hands a lot for about ten minutes. My wife stood up, quoted the relevant statute and sat down. The judge ruled in her favor. Client's mom goes off because the other guy was the better attorney according to her. After my wife won the hearing by following the law. Mom isn't allowed to set foot in my wife's firm for that stupidity. If you want to hate humanity be a lawyer."
Monkey-Tamer
Every Woman
"My friend's mother has problems with every woman he has ever brought home. His current girlfriend is an absolute delight, especially considering his ex. But she finds reasons to be upset with her. The stupidest thing she has been upset with was because his girlfriend moved a towel apparently."
bpanio
Monopoly Blues
"When my wife and I were still dating we had a roommate who freaked out over basically everything. She started crying over a game of Monopoly, started crying over a game of Pandemic, yelled at me because I asked if she used my vegetable broth, and smashed a ceramic bowl across my face because I asked her to keep her cat in her room for a little bit (like my wife and I were doing with our cat) after our cats got in a fight."
tim_to_tourach
The Break Up
"In high school, my younger sisters knew someone who became so distraught when Justin Timberlake broke up with Britney Spears that she had to stay home from school."
fumor
britney spears television GIF by RealityTVGIFsGiphy“it’ll peck your eyes out"
"I was doing a volunteer outreach to help unemployed men find jobs, we set up a temp office in a poor area, matched job orders with skills. Most of these guys were pretty tough looking characters. About a dozen guys were in the waiting area and a hummingbird flew in a window, pandemonium ensued, one guy was screaming “it’ll peck your eyes out" within a few seconds the place was empty, until I escorted the hummingbird out with a cap."
Disposable70
Moral of the story?
Essential workers need to be paid more to deal with these peoples' BS.
We should learn something from them though.
It costs literally nothing to be a good person and treat other people like human beings.
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