Adults are humans too so in only makes sense that they would lose their cool every now and then. But there is a big difference between losing your cool and having full on temper tantrums past 7 years of age.
Interested in reading more temper tantrum accounts? Find the original thread at the end of the article.
I mostly saw the aftermath of this but I heard a lot of banging and yelling as I and several co-workers at a small company rushed to the front office to see what was going on. It turned out two women had gotten into a full throwing stuff at each other fight, including their chairs. All because one had started a diet and the other had a candy jar on her desk.
The other one I saw when I was a kid and it was insane. After a girl’s softball tournament one of the parents had a freakout while first and second place teams were lined up and receiving their trophies (my sister was on one of the teams). She ranted, screamed, yelled at the umpires, accused them of fixing the game, threw equipment around, threw dirt, stopped just short of assault (and the umpires and coaches mainly let her rant, even when she was screaming in their faces). Her daughter was standing there, holding her second place trophy, in tears. Finally this woman yelled at her daughter to come on, they were leaving. The daughter clearly wanted to stay, but the lady kept screaming, so the daughter stepped away from the team and walked toward her. The woman tore the trophy away from her daughter’s hands and threw it on the ground, the two of them heading off into the parking lot.
I felt horrible for the girl. And it was one of the first times I realized a lot of adults suck.
tbp0701
I worked at a Wendy’s for a few years during college.
The meltdown of legend was when a little-league mom came in with the whole team of kids and ordered food for all of them and some of the parents. She then began to grow increasingly frustrated and visibly upset at the amount of time it took to prepare such a large volume of food.
She begins to pointedly ask why her food was taking so long, over and over, each time her voice getting a little higher.
After a few minutes she starts saying “This is simply unacceptable” and begins to ask for a refund, despite the fact that she can see the poor sandwich maker is standing right next to me working frantically to put all her cheeseburgers together. I say, “Okay. Let me just get the manager.” She then starts screeching that she wants the refund NOW and throws her carrier tray of frosties onto the floor, gets down on her hands and knees and I kid you not proceeds to start grinding the spilled frosty into the carpet with her bare hands all the while shrieking as if her child had been run over in the drive-thru.
Hyper_Fujisawa
I work at a hotel and just the other day I had a grown woman refuse to sleep in any room and just lay on the couch in the lobby to sleep. She was upset because her room was further than she thought it was.
The saddest part about this situation is that it’s almost a daily occurrence.
Apparently, adults act like children when they don’t get their way at a hotel.
Scrotiemcdeaveballs
I met a girl online and we talked for a while. Eventually, I paid for her to visit me from Los Angeles. She was okay at first but started complaining about the stupidest stuff like that I have a cat (which she already knew). The next day she freaked out over Red Robin and made us leave. By then, I had enough, but was biding my time.
Eventually the time comes for her to go home and I give her a ride to the airport. While we are walking in she gets mad about something, and I can’t even remember what it was.
Here is where it gets good. She literally lays on the ground and starts screaming and flailing like a child. This woman was 31-years-old. I just dropped her luggage and walked back to my car and drove off.
Fun post script: She missed her flight and called me trying to get me to come stay with her at the hotel. Uhh…no.
clutchheimer
I was walking home one night and in the parking lot adjacent to my building there was a guy (late 20s, maybe early 30s) sitting on the pavement waving his arms around and yelling.
He was surrounded by four police officers who were trying to get him to calm down.
As I walked by, I heard him yell: “Just wait till my dad gets here! He’s bigger than ALL YOU JERKS!”
willywag
I worked in a call centre for a major retail chain and we provided technology support to their main corporate office as well as the stores. It was a really big desk, I think at our peak when I was working there we had around close to 70 or more agents where more than 50 were active during our peak hours. So you saw a lot of interesting people and weird characters. Still, it was a very professional environment and no one really had any major freak outs surprisingly…except for one guy.
I don’t know his name and I never learned it. But his routine was, come in when ever he wanted to, sit down at a desk, sign into the phone, put him self in a not ready status, pull out a drawing tablet, and sit there playing on it all day. He was a normal agent like the rest of us but he rarely took calls – if ever. The rumor was that he was the nephew of someone really high up in the company and that’s why his behavior was ignored. He was quiet and kept to himself and him being paid to do nothing really didn’t hurt us.
One day though he stands up abruptly yelling curse words at the top of his lungs. An entire call centre suddenly goes dead and all eyes go to him. He storms off to the break room with his tablet in hand and what followed was the sound of something being bashed against something else and the repeated shouts of profanity. That lasted for around 15-30 seconds, where he walked calmly out of the break room sans tablet, quietly sat at his desk, and glared at his computer monitor.
I didn’t see him the next day and never saw him again. I’m assuming he got moved into upper management.
g3istbot
I was working at Burger King and a lady came through the drive-thru just as we opened at 6.
She demanded a McGriddle then drove up before we could tell her she’s at the wrong place. She screamed at us “Where it at? Where’s my McGriddle?” She Wouldn’t leave the drive-thru until we gave her a McGriddle.
Yes, she was drunk. Yes, the police came.
Mazzidazs
I was working at a small convenience store. I usually work as a cashier and another person works in the back of the store at the deli.
Well this guy comes in and wants a breakfast sandwich from the deli and my co-worker tells him it’ll be about 10 minutes because she has to make it. He starts to get really mad that he has to wait. I guess he thought they were pre-made or something. Anyway, he waits while she makes his sandwich and comes up to pay and I ring up his sandwich. The price is $3.99 and it’s written on the sandwich but it has a tax for prepared food so it’s actually a little over $4.
He starts yelling at me about how I had the price wrong and he’s in a hurry. When I explain we have tax for sandwiches and he gets pissed, grabs the sandwich and flings it right at my head and runs out of the store. So he pretty much wasted 15 minutes and I got a free breakfast sandwich for lunch.
Tipsyreindeer
“Stan” comes into office and notices “Bill” has muddy boots propped up on Stan’s desk.
Stan goes red in the face, leaps on to Bill’s desk and proceeds to do what I can only describe as a riverdance.
“How do you like mud on YOUR desk”, Stan screams.
I about crapped on myself laughing.
SerialGhost
I used to work at a grocery store. I once watched a lady go into a screaming, swearing fit because we wouldn’t let her into the meat department to buy sausages…because that section had been blocked off by the fire department.
There were three or four firefighters there, in plain view of the woman, in turnouts, tearing apart one of our refrigerator units because the motor had started smouldering. You could see and smell the smoke. This lady screamed at my supervisor for five minutes before one of the firefighters came over and literally told the woman to screw off which absolutely made my day.
Our store manager sent the fire station a giant gift basket afterwards.
Lachwen
I watched a guy in Wal-Mart act out at like 10pm because some sections at the store were blocked off to be waxed overnight.
He had his entire family, which included 4 young kids and was freaking out at the self-check out lady over the section being blocked. He keep asking why they didn’t do it later in the night even as she explained that it’s a long process that takes literally all night.
theknightinthetardis
I saw a full grown adult pitch a fit about the increased price of milk. They went and grabbed the receipt of their last week groceries. The difference was 3 cents. They proceed to go through every derogatory word to describe the poor hourly worker while stomping their feet. After 10 minutes of this, the managers finally arrive to only have it repeated for another 10 minutes.
Management caved and awarded the individual the price of milk for a week ago. All of this was over 3 cents.
Macabalony
My ex-girlfriend was terrified of being alone. Not like the crippling sadness from not having a soulmate literally being in a house or apartment when no one else is home.
One Christmas I went home to visit my family and she went to visit hers in a different town. Something went wrong and she got into a fight with her sister. So she left and went back to our apartment, I still had about a week left of my trip home to see my family. She called me and said she expected me home that day because she couldn’t be at our apartment alone. I told her I took time off work and came home to see my family because I rarely get to do so, she started screaming at the top of her lungs that I needed to get home as soon as possible because she was terrified.
I hung up because I practically went deaf in one ear from her screaming so she called my dad and screamed at him that she was going to kill herself if I didn’t go back because she couldn’t be alone. Absolutely ruined my Christmas with my family. I ended up going back later that day and lost a lot of respect for myself.
Nigelrover
I watched a man (who will be my father-in-law later this year) completely lose his damn mind over a waiter stating he couldn’t make a modification to an item on a restaurant’s menu.
LETS_G0_BUFFALO
I work in a fairly popular bakery. Every Wednesday, we have a big sale (one of our more popular items will be very cheap for the day). This particular Wednesday the sale item happened to be cookies.
We were selling them for 75 cents and, as you can imagine they sold very fast. Our bakers prepare for this and usually having five extra trays of cookies to sell. One of our most popular cookies sold out, but we couldn’t make more because we ran out of supplies for that kind. Most people were very understanding and just picked another cookie. Then enters a not so understanding lady.
She saw that slot for cookies was empty, so she asked if we had anymore. I kindly said that no, we were out but the bakers just went off to get the supplies to make them. They should be ready within the hour.
She lost it. She started screaming about how she needed them because she wanted to impress her friends. I suppose she was telling them she made them or something, I don’t know. She actually grabbed the cookie display and tipped it over, ruining our stock for the afternoon. She stomped on them all, saying how if she couldn’t get her cookies, no one could. She is now banned from the store and we keep the cookies behind the counter where only we can reach them.
kittyjo29
I worked part-time for a marketing company promoting food brands many years ago.
I made some simple dishes and served them in the store from a food cart. This family rushes in with more than 5 kids and plunders the samples. After stuffing themselves the parents ask if it was pork meat in the food.
All meat dishes being pork I said yes. They threw a huge tantrum since they were not allowed to eat pork.
Silvfer
In my mid-twenties, I was living in a pretty big house and splitting the rent with five other people. We had a communal kitchen but the vegans (there were 3 of them) kept their pans and utensils separate. No problem.
And then I bought a blender.
A month or so goes by, and one of my vegan roommates started a macrobiotic thing that I never fully understood, but involved a lot of blending.
Lentils? In the blender. Parsnips and spinach? In the blender. Blackberries? Tofu? Beans and rice? In the blender. Everything he ate was room-temperature paste from the blender.
I was completely cool with that. I put it in the kitchen for the household to use. Myself included. There was one reason I bought that blender, and one reason only.
Peanut butter banana smoothies. I freaking love peanut butter banana smoothies. You peel a bunch of bananas, put them in the freezer, pull one out later and stick it in a blender with some peanut butter and some milk. Perfection.
I knew the blender was getting some heavy vegan mileage, so being the kind-hearted, conscientious person that I am, I used soy milk. No problem.
I was at the point of switching on the blender when my aforementioned roommate ambled into the kitchen, obviously hell bent on another paste feed. He locked eyes with me. I saw panic rising in his face. “Don’t worry, it’s soy milk.” I said, thinking the matter quickly resolved. The panic remained. It grew. His eyes widened and both of his hands rose in unison to grip fistfuls of hair at his temples, elbows akimbo.
“WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU DOING?” He bellowed, knuckles white, hair follicles at their last extremity. “I’m making a smoothie, buddy. What’s up?”
Hands still buried in his hair, pulling at the temples, elbows pointed out at the walls, my roommate achieved a physical feat I have only ever witnessed in cartoons. He leapt in to the air, both legs raising simultaneously, knees spread to the side, nearly reaching his chest repeatedly, with both of his feet timed to punctuate the words that followed.
“YOU. CAN’T. PUT. BANANAS. IN. THE BLENDER!” Around The “BL” in blender, he slipped but completed the word before he landed. Hard. He maintained eye contact with me through the whole ordeal until the fall. While on the floor he regained eye contact and began raving incoherently about enzymes while pulling yams out of his grocery bag and tossing them around on the floor.
I turned the blender on and made my smoothie. When I was done, he had gone to his room with his yams.
Why the banana’s couldn’t go in the blender? I’m still asking till this day but not because my roommate didn’t explain his reasons to me. I would just zone out after a while when he talked about food.
I remember that eating the pasted food had something to do with the process of chewing and the production of gastric juices. All I can recall about the bananas is that enzymes were involved that would break down some other quality of his food. Amino acids, maybe?
He was dabbling with Hare Krishna consciousness at the time, so maybe they have an anti-banana outlook. He also thought melons were very bad for you, and once threw away an entire sack of my potatoes because a couple of them had a green cast to the skin, making them a neuro-toxin.
contemptiblecreature