A bad temper has a way of turning small problems into much bigger ones.

This diner customer found that out during a Sunday breakfast after spotting a pepper mill on a nearby table and deciding he wanted it.

Instead of taking a moment to figure out whether the pepper belonged to the restaurant or another customer, he immediately jumped to the conclusion that someone was refusing to hand it over.

That decision quickly turned a perfectly ordinary breakfast into a public scene.

Even his his wife tried to get him to listen. Unfortunately, he seemed far more interested in being angry than finding out what was actually going on.

Read on to see what happened next.

“PASS THE PEPPER, *********” A Tale of Bad Manners and Poor Anger Management.

I like fresh ground pepper. My wife likes fresh ground pepper. My friends like fresh ground pepper. I particularly like it on my weekly Sunday breakfast which, as it happens, takes place in the same local neighbourhood diner as it has for 10 years.

Alas, this diner deploys simple pepper shakers, inadequate for our tastes, so we bring along our own purse-sized mill.

This diner, I should further point out, is generally patronized by regulars each Sunday morning and we are on smile-and-wave basis with most of them.

It all started when the man asked for the pepper.

As usual, this past Sunday, we were enjoying our breakfast, talking, laughing over stupid jokes — the usual.

At the table to our immediate right was a couple of about mid-50’s (same as us) but unfamiliar to us, not regulars, and the man had a loud voice. So loud, in fact, that he made our conversation a little difficult.

During a lull in our conversation, I heard him say, “Pass the pepper.”

My friends then mentioned that they were going for a bike ride later and wondered if we’d like to join them. I thought it over, and just as I was about to answer I heard a scraping of a chair from the next table. Suddenly, the man with the loud voice was looming over our table.

Suddenly, his friend jumped to his feet.

“I SAID ‘PASS THE PEPPER’, *********!” he barked and reached across the table to grab my pepper mill. A cacophony of protest, surprise, queries and exclamations followed. I managed to block his hand and looked up at him.

“Hey, what are you doing?” I demanded.

My friend, a very mild-mannered and gentle man, jumped to his feet and squared up.

“PASS. THE. PEPPER!” the man snarled again. “What is so hard to understand?”

He grabbed the pepper mill and also stood up.

I quickly slid the pepper mill off the table and into my pocket, then I, too stood up.

“The pepper?” I asked. “You mean my pepper? That isn’t the communal pepper.”

“What the **** is wrong with you?” he shouted. “I want the ******* pepper!”

At this point, his wife/girlfriend/companion, quicker on the uptake, realized his mistake and tried to get his attention.

His wife was calling his name.

“Roy, ROY, sit down — it’s not — ROY! Listen!” she tried but Roy, doubling down and in high dudgeon, was not to be denied.

“Get that ******* pepper out of your pocket and hand it over, NOW!”

Eyes were uncomfortably on us. Other tables were watching this play out in surprise and shock. At this point, a server approached with her arms full of someone else’s breakfast, “Hey, guys, not sure what’s going on, but I have hot food here. Coming through!”

As she passed, Roy shouted again and this time threw his hands in the air in a “what the ****?” gesture. It all happened in a blur and before the server could deke, she was covered in sunny side up eggs, home fries and sausage.

She tried to call out to him even louder.

“ROY!” the woman screamed.

“What the ****! Hey! Watch out!” screamed the waitress.

“Oh NO” and a dozen other exclamations from the onlookers erupted all at once.

“****,” Roy shouted. “See what you ******* did?”

His wife had scrambled to her feet to assist the server who dropped the second plate as well. My wife also got up to help, and the owner, Donna, a sweet-faced 65-year-old, suddenly emerged from the kitchen.

The owner was shocked.

“What is going on?” she said, alarmed.

Everyone started talking at once, and Roy, alpha Roy, shouted over everyone.

“THIS ******* (indicating me) WOULDN’T PASS ME THE PEPPER!” he roared.

Donna gaped uncomprehendingly at him for a moment. She looked at the mess on the floor, the now red-faced and furious Roy, the other customers, and then at me.

Roy seemed a little embarrassed.

“He . . . what? There’s . . . pepper on your table . . . ”

“ROY!” his wife screamed again “APOLOGIZE NOW AND SIT DOWN!”

“It’s my pepper mill,” I said again, “not the restaurant’s.”

“******* idiot,” Roy shouted, “why didn’t you say something, *******?”

Donna asked him to leave.

I laughed out loud and looked with amazed surprise at my friend. He stared straight at Roy and said in a quiet, but firm voice, “Listen to your wife and sit. Down.”

Donna looked around at the mess and confusion. At this point, approximately 45 seconds had elapsed since Roy first lurched to his feet to steal my pepper.

“I think I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” she said to Roy. “I can’t have this in my restaurant.”

Roy’s wife, nearly in tears, began apologizing rapidly and repeatedly. Roy started protesting and demanding that he get to eat his breakfast. Donna, sweet-faced but tough, told him he could leave voluntarily or she would have the police assist him.

His wife paid and they left.

“Roy, now!” his wife said.

She left a wad of money on the table and grabbed his arm, pulling him to the door.

“I am so sorry,” she said to Donna and the server.

I guess he loves his pepper too.

Wow! Imagine being that serious about pepper.

If you enjoyed this post, check out this story about a hardware store employee who lost his cool with customers wandering around after closing time.

Let’s check out what the folks over at Reddit think about it.

This is so true.

Yes! This!

People like that guy never take responsibility.

That would’ve been perfect.

Some people never seem to understand that being rude is a terrible way to get what they want.

If Roy had simply asked about the pepper mill, someone probably would’ve explained the situation in less than five seconds.

Instead, he immediately jumped to yelling and treating everyone around him like they owed him something.

That approach didn’t get him any pepper. But it did get him thrown out of the restaurant.

His wife clearly understood how embarrassing the whole situation was. It’s a shame Roy didn’t figure it out too.