What Happens When Customers Behave Questionably? From Texas to New York, Instances of Bad Restaurant Behavior

There were many national stories in 2021 where customers behaved badly.

As many restaurant employees know and can confirm, the customer is not always right. 

And in 2021 and years prior, there were many national stories where customers behaved badly.

Like in Texas, when a customer threw her to-go soup in a manager's face after complaining that it was too hot.

Like this Texas woman, who was so mad about her soup being too hot that she threw it in the manager’s face. 

“My eyes were stinging so bad, they were burning. The spices were all in the inside of my nose and caused me to have a nose bleed," said Janelle Broland, who was the manager on duty who had to deal with the disgruntled customer. 

She said she tried her best to make it up to her. “Of course I offered her refunds and was trying to get her a replacement meal or something completely different if she wasn’t in the mood for soup any more," she said. "But she continued to yell.”

Broland said the woman didn’t seem to want anything she had to offer her and eventually got so fed up that she discarded the soup in Broland’s face. Now the customer, Amanda Martinez, 31, faces one count of assault causing bodily injury, and could spend up to a year in jail if convicted. 

Or in New York, when a diner waitress was applauded after standing up to and kicking out a rude customer.

Sondra Albert says the man was a semi-regular customer at her New York diner. There have been issues before, but this night was worse than it had been in the past. After weeks of frustration, Sondra says she had enough and told him to go find another place to eat.

"He had to go one way or another," she said. 

And in the Bronx, the NYPD said a woman took an aluminum baseball bat to the windows of a store after they ran out of Jamaican beef patties.

It happened at the restaurant in the Bronx in 2019. According to the owner, after the customer was told the beef patties were sold out, she got upset and left, but she shocked everyone when she returned with a bat and started wrecking the place. 

Police say she still hasn’t been arrested.

For these and other stories about awful restaurant behavior, Inside Edition Digital’s Mara Montalbano has more.

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