I was at the airport about a year-and-a-half ago and I saw a woman who must have been in her thirties acting LIKE A TODDLER because of some petty little inconvenience.
And the funny thing was she actually had a toddler with her and that little girl was as cool as a cucumber…and I could tell her husband was mortified by the spectacle.
But guess what? This isn’t necessarily rare…
AskReddit users talked about the worst adult temper tantrums they’ve ever seen in their lives. Let’s take a look.
1. First world problems.
“When I worked in retail at a place that sold phone accessories but not as a primary product (office supplies), this lady came in asking for a case for her iPhone 6, which was 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.
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 NOWWWW!”
I just walked away. First world problems, honey. First world problems.”
2. Kicking and screaming.
“My roommate 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 verrrry 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.”
3. Get rid of that one.
“There was this girl that was part of our friend group for a while in our early 20’s; she was the definition of spoiled.
Her parents were amazing – they were 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 but middle-range) car, designer handbags and sunglasses – the whole 9 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. 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 and 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 b**t-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, that she never wants to see them again, and that they’re the most horrible people she’s ever met.
We had already started fading her from our friend group somewhat but it was a fairly quick downhill slope from there.”
4. Sounds like a keeper.
“My ex girlfriend 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 shirt.
This was in Mexico City and I’m from Canada, so I was a bit shocked. I laughed my a** off and told her she was being ridiculous.”
5. Breakdown.
“This old boss I used to have…I was a part-time graphic designer and they stuck me with making this training CD presentation for a client.
I basically had to learn to code HTML to do the thing. Figure 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 auto-run 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…the client is coming to see this later today! AND THIS IS 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, I’m talking about here…and I was a 19 year old college student at his first job.
The dude finally turns to his business partner, sobbing: “BILL! WHAT…WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO, BILL?!”
And Bill just looks at him like he was fu**ing crazy and said “We tell them to push the godd**n button, Steve, get a fu**ing 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 through twice about it.”
6. Here comes the Yelp review.
“Went to see the Spurs play in Portland and a fan tried to terrorize the poor guy at the ticket window into giving him a full refund because Pops was resting half his roster that night.
Finally the manager had to intervene and patiently explain Popovich is infamous for that, buyer beware.
The guy ripped his ticket up in frustration and started typing up an angry Yelp review of the Moda Center right then and there.”
7. Time to cool down.
“Some people I work with got in a disaagreement over management styles.
One got so pi**ed off she took a leave of absence for a month to cool down.
When she came back it started again and now she’s gone for 3 more weeks.”
8. Anger issues.
“I work with a guy who has such anger issues. I’ve seen him shout and scream at machines.
Ive witnessed him once throw a large socket wrench at the machine it bounced back and hit him on the head. His biggest tantrum happened when we came to work his pen had leaked over his overalls and he blamed someone for tampering with it.
He took the rest of the week off unpaid as no-one would own up to it.”
9. A real tragedy.
“Worked at a Chipotle. A customer asked us not to cut his quesadilla. The newbie forgot and cut it.
And he saw and immediately lost it. “ARE YOU FU**ING KIDDING ME” He yelled at myself, my managers and his young kids next to him. We apologised and offered to make another one without cutting it.
He said, “forget it, you’ve done enough”.”
10. Wow.
“My 53 years old father stomped his feet like a little kid because we were trying to make him pack more than three pairs of underwear for a two week long business trip.
He packed the underwear, btw.”
11. Board games bring out the worst in people.
“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 pi**ed and pulled up the official Scrabble dictionary and 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 not to be seen again.
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 pi**ed. 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 cards and s**t 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- 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.”
Have you seen any epic adult temper tantrums?
Tell us your stories in the comments.
Thanks in advance!
