Some people make it impossible to keep your cool. But when working with the public, you don’t always have the luxury of saying what you’re really thinking.

This restaurant worker tried her best to stay professional after a group of customers complained about their meal and then tried to walk out without paying.

And to make matters worse, even after she and her family offered to make things right, one customer refused to let the situation go.

Before long, tempers flared and the argument spilled outside the restaurant.

That’s when this employee finally reached her breaking point.

Read on to see what happened next.

AITAH for telling customers trying to dine and dash to “****” ?

I am 20F and work at my family restaurant. Long story short, three adults came into my job today. They were rude from the time they first sat down, but it is what it is.

Their food comes out, and one of them finds a hair in their food (it sucks, but it happens). We apologized and said we could replace it or take it off their bill. He said, “Yeah, I’m not paying for that ****.”

The lady ate her food, and whilst I’m taking another order, I see them get up and leave. I know they had not paid for their food, so I ran after them. I usually wouldn’t, but I was just not having it.

She got so fed up that she snapped.

One thing leads to another, and he is screaming in my face and my mom’s face about how we are racist and how he is going to “**** us up” and how he’s not paying for his food.

We literally told him 100 times that she just needs to pay for what she had.

Then everyone is yelling. My mom is yelling for help, and I’m just trying to get the money from someone. Eventually, she hands me $17, just enough to cover her food.

Then I go, “Ok, can you shut the **** up?”

Then, the woman really crossed the line.

And he goes, “I’ll slap your ******* glasses off your face.”

Then the lady gets them to leave.

I just feel horrible because I feel as though I made it worse when I shouldn’t have said anything. Should I have just let them leave and not have caused an issue? Any advice if this happens again?

Now I’m scared they are going to come back and something bad is going to happen,

AITA?

Wow! It seems like everyone was on their worst behavior.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a waitress who refused to return a tip after a party returned to the restaurant with a complaint.

Let’s check out what the people over at Reddit think about what happened.

This reader thinks the people were in the wrong.

Here’s a way to handle it if they ever come back.

According to this comment, the man was broke.

Good point.

This restaurant worker didn’t handle the situation particularly well.

For starters, chasing people outside over a restaurant bill rarely ends well, and telling the man to shut up only added fuel to an already heated situation.

At the same time, the customers created this mess. They tried to leave without paying and kept pushing long after they should have walked away.

In the end, everyone made mistakes, but the biggest share of the blame belongs to the customers who tried to scam the restaurant in the first place.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a customer complaint that led to them losing their VIP status.