Look, sometimes, we get angry. It could be a noisy neighbor, disgusting food, an annoying stranger, or anything in between. Children throw temper tantrums in these cases, but as adults, we're expected to respond to such situations more..."reasonably." However, many adults can also throw a tantrum that can lift the roof off the house—often for completely ridiculous reasons. Read on to hear about some of the craziest adult hissy fits we've ever seen.
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. 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.
11. 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.
12. 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.
13. 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.
14. 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.
15. 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.
16. 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."
17. 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.
18. 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.
19. 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.
20. 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.
21. 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.
22. 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.
23. 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.
24. 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.
25. 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.
26. 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.
27. 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.
28. 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.
29. 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.
30. 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.
31. 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.
32. 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.
33. 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.
34. 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.
35. 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.
36. 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.
37. 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.
38. 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.
39. 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.
40. 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.
41. 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.
42. 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.
43. 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.
44. 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.
45. 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.
46. 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.
47. 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.
48. 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.
49. 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.
50. 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.
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