The owner of a diner in Portland, Maine is unapologetic after she yelled at a toddler for crying in her restaurant on Saturday.
Darla Neugebauer, who runs Marcy’s Diner, says she lost her composure after the child, who was sitting at a table with her parents, wouldn’t stop wailing.
In a now-deleted post on the restaurant’s page, Neugebauer said that the parents had ordered three full-size pancakes for their two-year-old, who cried loudly when the food arrived and sat in the middle of the table.
After almost an hour and two attempts to encourage the family to leave, Neugebauer said she freaked out.
"I turned around, slammed both hands on the counter, and then pointed at the child and said, 'This has got to stop.' Oh, and then the mother screamed at me because I was yelling at her child. You know what lady, you should have taken the kid outside," she told WMTW.
Tara Carson, the child’s mother, told WCSH6 she was shocked by Neugebauer’s reaction.
"I turned to my daughter and I was like 'Listen, this is how I'm raising you not to be as an adult. Like, you will never be like this when you get older,'" she said. "I felt helpless as a mom that, you know, I couldn't do anything to help her, because I can't explain why there's crazy people in this world that behave like that."
Carson later posted an angry message to the diner's Facebook page, which Neugebauer responded to, saying the mom was lucky she didn’t get “really f****in’ nuts because being physical is not something I cower from.. male or female.”
The controversy has generated a huge response from users, with one person calling the mom’s actions bad parenting while another dubbed the owner "unhinged."
If her actions cause her to lose business, Neugebauer says she isn’t bothered. “I’m sad about that, because it’s their loss," she told WMTW.
What do you think? Was it fair for her to yell at the child? Let us know in the comments below.
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