Kids who think they’re untouchable usually have to learn the hard way.

So, what would you do if a little kid stuffed candy in his pocket right in front of you, then smirked like he’d gotten away with it? Would you ignore the behavior? Or would you wait for the perfect moment to call him out?

In the following story, one grocery store employee finds themselves in this exact predicament and does the latter. Here’s the scoop.

“What about the candy your kid put in his pocket?”

I just remembered an old story from when I worked at a grocery store. I was a cashier, and a woman came through my line with her two children.

The girl was smaller than the boy, and the boy was tormenting her as a result (hitting her, poking her, pulling at her, just bothering her, basically).

To her credit, she never hit him or poked him back but instead kept yelling at him to stop.

The mom was basically doing that monotone “Cut it out. Stop it” that extremely checked-out moms have perfected. It’s pretty par for the course at this point.

Had the kid not done this, it might’ve turned out differently.

Except as mom is putting up the groceries, her son takes a pack of candy (I think it was some kind of Hershey’s chocolate) and sticks it in his pocket.

When he sees me watching, he smirks at me and sticks out his tongue. So, of course, game on.

I put on my cheery retail smile and started scanning. As the order flies by, the kid starts to look around and gets bored. I guess he thought he got away with it.

I wait until the very end, and as the woman pulls out her card to pay, I smile and say, “How about the candy as well?”

He didn’t see it coming.

This kid’s head spins around from looking at the end of the register, and he gives me the most incredulous expression.

The mother looks at me and goes, “What candy?”

Looking into her son’s eyes the whole time, I say, “The candy your son stuck in his pocket earlier.”

This woman goes from 0 to 100 in 1 second flat.

The mother made a huge scene in the middle of the store.

She spins around and starts SCREAMING at her son, waving her arms, just flipping out, and spanking him.

The kid is freaking out, and his little sister is just looking on with the most satisfied expression I’ve ever seen.

She pays and hauls him out of the store, the candy bar at the edge of the register, as a homage to the craziness that just occurred.

As horrible as I feel about that kid getting spanked, I hope it makes him think twice before acting like such a little jerk again!

Yikes! The other customers were probably very uncomfortable.

Let’s see how the fine folks over at Reddit feel about it.

Here’s someone on the other side of it.

For some mothers, it would’ve been more like this.

This reader has done the same thing.

According to this person, he deserved it.

What a little brat!

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.