My mom used to run restaurants. My stepfather used to be a chef in high end restaurants and is the kind of guy who expects to be treated better than he is currently being treated, regardless of whatever that treatment is. They are not fun to go out to eat with.

The “most embarrassing experience” is actually their most embarrassing experience, one where I embarrassed them.

My wife and I pride ourselves on being a “relief” table when we go out to eat. Both of us have been servers, and there’s always the counterpoint to the difficult table, that’s us. Barring horrible service or bad food, we are super easy customers, tip well, and try to have a good time with our server. Furthermore, we just treat people nicely. So you can imagine our distain when my parents act like they’re royalty at a dinner service.

My wife and I went out to dinner with them. They were being particularly tough. My mom was acting like she was Gordon Ramsey analyzing the business, critiquing everything down to the amount of bubbles in her seltzer (“looks like it’s time to change the CO2”). My stepdad was getting more and more heated over stupid things like the amount of ice in his drink and how the waitress didn’t top off his water, which he was barely sipping on, fast enough.

It came to a head when my stepfather ordered a steak medium well. It came back medium well, but for some reason he changed his mind while it was cooking and they hadn't read his mind! So he gave them attitude, as did my mom. They jumped really quickly to demanding free stuff.

I’m an adult and this may be the first time they realized this. I interrupted in front of the server and said something like, “Really? This is what you’re doing. That’s what you ordered...” I turned to the server and said, “We do not need anything comped.” I then pulled out my wallet and handed her my card and said, “This is for the bill. We’ll happily wrap up with what we have here. I’m very sorry for their behavior, you’re doing great.” Then the line that stung them so deeply they still bring it up years later: ”I was taught to treat people nicely, a lesson that seems to have been forgotten. Thank you.”

They turned red, the server walked away, I looked down and cut my steak, and didn’t say a word. They were so flabbergasted that the meal was virtually silent except me asking my step father how his steak was a few minutes later. I signed the check, gave a big tip, and we walked out and said goodbyes.

They’ve been nicer to servers each time that we’ve gone out since.

My dad just loved to argue, and he loved a deal.

We were shopping in a department store, and I found a pair of pants I was mildly interested in. The pants were tagged at (let's say) $40, but the sign on the rack said "All pants $25".

I was mildly interested, so I asked the salesclerk if they had them in my size. The clerk said, "Those aren't supposed to be on that rack."

My dad lost his mind and insisted on getting the pants for $25. Then he started demanding a courtesy discount on top of that. He spoke to the floor manager and then the store manager.

Meanwhile, I didn't want the pants. They were okay, I guess, nothing awesome. I just didn't care very much about them and was more than happy to move on. I told my dad I didn't want the pants, by then he didn't care about what I wanted, he wanted the pants at the better price.

Eventually, after like an hour of arguing, the store manager said, "We're not giving you the pants at that price. Take them or leave them at $40." So we left them.

One time I was in a record store with my dad. He bought a record that was €19.99. He paid using a €20 bill. The clerk took the money and put it in the register and gave my dad the CD in a plastic bag. I started walking off when I noticed my dad wasn’t moving.

As I turn around, I hear him say to the record store clerk: “You still have to give me my cent back.” The clerk replies that they don’t return one or two cents because they don’t accept them and as such don’t have them in the store. My dad replies by saying that is “judicially impossible” and asks for the manager. To make a long story short... one of the clerks gave my dad a cent from his own wallet.

I don't like going to restaurants with my mom. She thinks that because she worked as a waitress for a year -- 35 years ago! -- that it gives her the right to act like a complete monster to servers. She also thinks not tipping them will encourage them to "get their act together."

Joke's on you mom: I always find our server after we're seated, give them a $20 bill and apologize in advance for your poor behavior.

When I was 6, my mom took my brothers and I out to Golden Corral for dinner. She went up to the buffet, got a steak, and came back to the table. She’s an avid A1 steak sauce fan and cannot, I repeat, cannot eat steak without it.

She poured out the A1 onto her plate, tasted it, and was instantly horrified. She proceeded to pour out the Golden Corral Steak Sauce right next to the A1 and it matched perfectly.

Outraged, she called over a waitress and eventually the manager, showing them her little experiment and how she exposed the Great Steak Sauce Fraud of '06.

My brothers and I were scarred for the rest of our lives. I still have nightmares about it.

My grandmother wasn't only a "let me talk to your manager" type, she was pretty mean, and her dementia completely turned off her filter for that.

I've blocked out all the context around this story other than the fact that I took her to buy yarn and something went wrong. I think maybe they shorted her a couple bucks or wouldn't honor a coupon or something. Whatever it was ended in a "let me talk to your manager" followed by a tirade to the manager about how they shouldn't be hiring Mexicans.

I just remember having to talk over her and say, "Oh my god you can't talk to her like that. Nothing you just said is okay." I tried to push her wheelchair out of the store as fast as possible with her digging her feet into the ground trying to get me to stop. I wondered if I'd go to jail for elder abuse if her ankles snapped in the process because nothing was going to stop me getting her out of that store.

I got her into the car and then went back in and apologized until I was blue in the face. Wish I could say it was an isolated incident, but it definitely wasn't.

As an interesting side effect of caring for her, I have a tendency to wander off and pretend to look at things when we get to the register if I'm with someone and I'm not the one paying. I think she gave me an honest to god phobia.

I used to work at Best Buy. One day, I stopped in with my mom one day because she wanted to buy me the Star Wars DVD box set for my birthday.

I had a huge, HUGE crush on the girl that was working the customer service counter. Well, the DVD set rang up $10 more than it was priced, and my mom deliberately didn't say anything until after the transaction so she could claim the $5 Michigan Scan Law bounty.

If you don't know, there's a crazy Michigan scanner law: the price must be clearly displayed where the item is located on the shelf, or on the item itself.

If the item is rung up and the machine prices it at higher than the signage and the customer has 1) paid that price and 2) has a receipt then within 30 days they may contact the seller. The seller is required to pay back the difference as well as a "bonus" which is 10 times the amount of the price difference, min $1 and max $5.

Anyway, my crush didn't know how to process it and the manager was busy, so my mom tore into her about how it was her job and how she should understand how to do things.

At my job. To a girl I liked.

My life was misery for a while after that.

Scene: Any fast food drive-thru.

Worker: "Ma'am, can you please drive forward a little bit while your food finishes up?"

My mom: [folds her arms] "No!"

My mom asked me to call her a taxi via an app.

She ended up calling me multiple times complaining about how the driver didn’t use the route she thought was best (she never owned a car and doesn’t know how to drive), even though the guy just used the best possible route the navigator suggested.

She ended up getting out halfway and taking the subway. The driver proceeded to call me in tears, completely shocked, unsure of what he did so wrong, and apologizing. I felt like total garbage.

I never called her a cab again.

My mom returned a fridge because it was too cold on the inside.

My mother-in-law is truly a "talk to the manager" type. Going out to eat with her is always a nightmare. Her orders have 14 special requests, but she's not at all kind about it; she is defensive from the get-go, like you're an idiot who's already screwed the order up. "Nooo dressing. Not on the side. Nothing. Completely dry. Do you understand? I will send it back!"

The one I will never forget was dinner at Joe's Crab shack. In case you've never been, it's one of those places that every so often plays a song and the entire staff is required to drop everything to do a little synchronized dance. It's quick, everyone gets a little kick out of it, it's part of the fun.

Now my MIL knew this, it's not like she'd never been here. But apparently she was not willing to wait 2 extra minutes for her dry salad, so she started going off as soon as the dancing started. She got a manager who clearly knew her well and offered a quick apology, a discount, and her dry salad.

But MIL's not completely satisfied. She tells us that even though dinner for our party of 8 is on her, she's not tipping the waitress a penny. She proceeds to complain, loudly, for the rest of the meal, and antagonize our waitress over petty issues.

I made sure to get my bill separate so I could tip for the entire table. I wrote a quick note on the receipt, something along the lines of,  "Way to stay positive even when the customer's a jerk."

Ugh, my dad. He can be such a jerk if you get his order wrong. It could be fast food or a nice sit-down restaurant. He often yells at wait staff if they “undercook” his steak. It has to be well done or he claims to have lost his appetite.

One time we went to Burger King when I was younger and we sat down to eat. He took one bite of his burger, spit it out and immediately started bitching about it being under cooked. He cut in front of everyone in line to yell at the cashier, then he asked who was the cook. When the cook appeared, he threw his burger hitting the poor kid directly in the face with a lidless burger. He’s now banned for life from Burger King.

I was 13 when this happened. My mom had made a reservation at a hotel for a trip, but when she got there the lady said there was some error with the reservation and that my mom’s payment didn’t go through. Instead, she offered us a double bedroom for a discount.

Rather than just taking the room, thanking the lady, and leaving, my mom decided the best course of action would be to scream, in the middle of a hotel lobby, “NOBODY IS GOING ANYWHERE TIL I GET MY [BLEEPING] ROOM!” She then proceeded to pester the lady, who clearly couldn’t do anything about it, until eventually she called the police on my mom for public disturbance. Mortifying.

The grocery store had this sign up that said if an item rang up higher than an advertised price it was free. It was the 80s and stores did stupid stuff like this that I never see in stores today.

Mom was buying a box of Little Debbie cakes and they rang up for $2.85 instead of the advertised $2.50. So now mom wants her free cakes. Cashier doesn't know what to do, summons a manager. Manager tells her to ring up the sale and he'll be right back.

Comes back and hands my mother 35 cents cheerfully and says, "There you go!" My mother points out the sign behind him and he says, "Oh, the last manager put that up. It doesn't make any sense. I'm the new manager and I just haven't had the sign removed yet." (It was a printed plastic sign that was screwed into the wall).

Mom insists they honor their sign, he says nah. Now, up to this point, I am totally on board with mom's actions.

Mom gathers her things, decides against taking the Little Debbies on principle, and we get in the car. Mom wordlessly drives downtown to the main store of this 3-5 store chain, knowing the office is next door. We walk into this perfectly 80's wood-paneled office where my mother asks the secretary to speak to the owner of the store. She is permitted to do so since this is a family owned business and their "corporate office" is smaller than the row of cubicles my staff occupy at work.

Here my mother unleashes a tirade about how she has lost faith in his brand and how his word is meaningless since they will not honor the sign etc. This guy stands up, profusely apologizes, validates her anger and then pulls out his wallet and hands her a $5 bill along with a promise that he will speak to the manager and the sign will either be honored or removed.

We get home and find that the ice cream we bought melted in the trunk because it was summertime. The melted runoff had ruined the cereal and the bread.

Not long ago, my mom asked to treat my wife and I to lunch at Outback Steakhouse.

We get there and order. My mom orders iced tea with extra lemon. Tea shows up with one lemon. Usually no big deal, right? Just ask for more. Well, instead of doing that, my mom turns to the waiter and says, "What? No extra lemon? You fail as a waiter. No brownie points for you."

The dude stands there for a moment and then says rather flatly, "I'll be right back with more lemon." I turn to my mom and am like -- "That's how you get your food spit in! You've just sent the message that this will be a poor tipping table and he's going to totally focus elsewhere."

She argues, "Well it should have inspired him to work harder to impress us!" I think from that point I just mentioned that from his end, his odds of making money are now higher at some other table. It's just how people work.

Next, mom makes a super complicated order. I texted my wife, who was sitting right next to me, and say: "This dude is going to butcher that order on purpose."

When the food comes out,  her order is all up. Basically a totally wrong order. She asks for it to be fixed -- a bit more subdued this time. It comes out technically correct but obviously carelessly prepared/cooked. I chuckle inside.

Here's the insane part: after all of this she turns to us and says, "I was right about that waiter! He sucks at his job!"

No -- your behavior made him not care about you.

After being a total jerk and paying the price, she walked away feeling validated and haughty. I slipped in a nice tip with a "sorry for my mom" note.

I grew up in a smaller town right on the cusp of its big growth boom. We knew our town had finally made it when we got an Olive Garden.

We used to eat there 2-3 times a month. My mom and I would always split an entree and my dad would get his own. We knew the rule: if you’re splitting an entree and you get more than one of the family style bowls of salad, than you’ll get charged an extra $4 for the extra person. Which is fair, 2 entrees come with 2 unlimited salads.

One day my dad decided he wanted more salad. The waitress said if she refilled the bowl, that we would be charged the extra $4. Lo and behold my parents threw the biggest tantrum because only HE wanted the additional salad. They demanded to speak to a manager and the manager explained the rule (which we knew) but offered to comp the extra salad just to get my parents to stop yelling. And they did.

When our bill came, the manager comped my dad's entree and the additional salad fee. Well, my mom got up. She interrupted the manager while he was talking to other guests and threw the check in his face. She was furious that he had comped my dad's meal! He ate the meal therefore we would like to pay for it. She wouldn’t stop raising her voice until she was allowed to pay for the meal (but not the salad).

The manager was confused but obliged. When they brought the change, the manager slipped a few free appetizer coupons. My mom ripped them up and threw them on the ground as she left. Safe to say I didn’t eat out with them for at least a month and I still refuse to go to Olive Garden with them.

One time my grandad got a sausage roll at a football match during half time. When he got back to his seat, he found it was overdone, the pastry was quite burned. The man was irate. He didn't take it back straight away as the second half was about to start, but he spent much of the second half angrily lamenting his savoury snack letdown.

So he takes it home, calls the customer service number on the back (I assume he had a few choice words for the poor soul on the other end but I wasn't present for this), and keeps the remainder of the sausage roll in the freezer for the next couple of weeks.

Skip ahead to the next match day. My grandad tells me we're heading out early so he can have his sausage roll replaced. The customer service line told him to go to Kiosk 3 at the front of the ground next to the ticket office. When we arrive, however, the shutters are down at the food place. The old man looks around growling and turning red in the face, stamps right over to window number 3 of the ticket office and slams his frozen burned sausage roll down like a flaky gauntlet.

At this point I'm trying to convince him the ticket office was a completely different department to the catering concession but my grandad was having none of it. The lady working the ticket window continually attempted to convince him the same -- they sell match tickets not hot snacks -- but this just got him angrier and angrier.

At this point I'm mortified by the whole affair, wishing I'd have stayed back at the house until nearer kick off.

Eventually, after an hour or so, the shutters come up on the food concession. Fella at the counter goes, "You must be Mr. Alaginge," and calmly resolves the situation, dispatching a freshly baked sausage roll with the steady hands of a surgeon. My grandad is completely satisfied with the result of his hour of insolent rage. As we're walking away he turns to me and says, "That's how you get these things sorted."

I was out to breakfast with my mom, and our waitress straight up disappeared. We sat for a good 30 minutes after having ordered nothing but eggs. It was an off time, so the diner was pretty quiet. It was as if our waitress had just evaporated. Naturally, my mom asked someone if we could speak with the manager. She stops by, my mom lets her know what's happened, and asks if she can check on our waitress, our food, etc.

Ten minutes later the manager shows up with our food, and the waitress in tow. She put our food down, then proceeded to rip into the waitress. This poor woman broke down in tears, apologizing profusely. We felt awful, didn't even bother finishing our food. Once the manager was out of sight, my mom found the waitress, gave her a hug, and a larger tip than usual. It was rough, leaving us both sufficiently embarrassed.

My mom once called Domino's regional corporate office because a pizza I ordered for her, THAT I PAID FOR, was "too expensive."

She did get four free pizza vouchers out of it but I'm so glad I was not around for the embarrassment of it all (I ordered it online from my job in the next state. Why? Because she wanted pizza.)

Just the other day my dad got super snippy with the cashier at Trader Joe's because he thought she was going too slow and chatting too much with the customer ahead of us.

This doesn't really sound like much of a horror story, except that he's in his 80s and I'm in my 50s and you'd think by now I'd have gotten past the point where he could make me want the ground to open up and swallow me. But nope. It never ends.

I once watched my father lose his mind over those liners for hanging baskets as a teenager. You know, the ones that are made of coconut pulp?

Anyway, we went to Home Depot and I went with him to buy herb plants. I check out, no big deal. He checks out, and they ring up more expensive than he thought, and he complains. They were on sale, 30% off or something. She points out that that was just the smaller ones, not the big ones like he got.

He immediately starts screaming about how stupid the people that work there are for 'mislabeling' something. Just chews this poor teenage girl out for 10 minutes and then storms off. I'm standing there, she's in near tears, and her manager is standing there. I apologize to this girl profusely, and call him an idiot. she says, "Hey, at least I don't have to go home with him like you do."

There's a reason I moved several thousand miles away from him.

Really cute little asian fusion place. Extremely sweet waitstaff. Dad didn't like the shrimp shumai, and proceeded to make really exaggerated faces of disgust, loud comments about how it's horrible while people were sitting all around us, etc.

The sweet waitress who barely spoke english asked how it was. My dad said, "Oh, not good. Not good at all. Is there a manager here? Or someone from the kitchen staff?" Cue immense sadness and embarrassment.

Let them be, it's just shrimp shumai.

We went through the drive-thru at Taco Bell. I asked for 3 soft tacos, no lettuce. When mom saw my tacos with lettuce on them, she made a u-turn and went back. She walked inside and threw an unwrapped taco in the cashier's face. "These were supposed to be without lettuce. What does this look like to you!?" SMACK.

My dad got escorted out of a mall by security and banned from the entire mall for making a sales assistant cry after screaming at her for about 30 minutes because they wouldn't fix my water-damaged phone. He's an abusive jerkwad who think's rules/policies don't apply to him and that being aggressive and demanding will get him what he wants. I cut off contact with him a few years ago.

One time when I was about 3, my mom didn't get the honey mustard she wanted from McDonald's. So she said to the employee, "Do you want my daughter to cry?" Then she turned to me and demanded, " Cry, Annie, cry." She had trained me to cover my face and bawl whenever she did this. I still feel embarrassed. This is definitely wasn't the only time this happened, just the earliest I can remember.

When I was a kid, my mother let my brother and me sleep on the floor during a long-distance flight. For safety reasons, the flight attendants told my mother that we were not allowed to do that. Mom started to argue with the flight attendant, who then took the matter to the pilots. The pilots threatened to turn the plane around unless we got up off the floor, but my mom continued to argue.

The pilots announced they were about to turn around because of my mother, so all the passengers got understandably angry. Eventually she caved in, but only when she had every single person on a Boeing 747 ready to throw her out the door.

My mom needed to return some shirts at the mall because they didn't fit right. It was past the allotted time that she had to return them, so the employee said that there wasn't anything she could do. My mom started SCREAMING at this girl who was probably about 16 or 17, calling her names and demanding to speak to the manager. When the manager told my mom that they couldn't do anything and that the return policy was on the receipt, my mom threw a fit and knocked over a display that was next to the register and stormed out of the store.

I was probably 6 or 7 at the time and I was mortified. I apologized for her behavior and picked up what I could before she started calling for me to follow her. The manager was super sweet to me though and told me that I was a good kid and to stand up to my mom when I could get away with it.

So my mom and I were at a pizza place. She called over the waiter and said, “I would like your manager please.” So he brings the manager. He asks, “Is something wrong ma’am?” She says, “Yes, your music is over 80 decibels and it’s really not attracting customers. Fix it." Meanwhile there is a huge line at the door waiting for an open table.

My mom once demanded to talk to a manager at a restaurant for seeing a plastic straw on the floor. She threatened to sue for endangering wildlife.