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If you’ve ever been to a theme park, you’ll be familiar with the health and safety boards that are prominently placed next to the ride entrance – as well as, usually, the end of the queue. If you’ve had to queue for a long time, you’ve likely read them over and over out of boredom more than anything. So you’ll be well aware that plenty of rides require you to be a certain height, and there are numerous rides that you should not attempt to ride if you are pregnant or have a heart condition – and sometimes if you have back or spine problems too.

It only takes a little bit of common sense to realise that, as much as those rules are in place to protect the theme park legally and financially from repercussions of folk getting injured on board, they’re also to give you ample opportunity to decide for yourself if a ride is right for you – and so that you can make an informed decision with regard to your own health and welfare and that of your children (born or otherwise).

So when the ride operator in this story received an odd request from a family, he was surprised to say the least. Of course he followed the health and safety procedures and refused – but he was not prepared for what happened next.

Read on to find out why.

The Pushy Tourist Family

The summer between my first and second year of college, I worked as a ride operator at an amusement park in Los Angeles.

I actually had a pretty good time there, my co-workers were pretty much all college kids and the managers were super-cool.

Customers were there to have fun, and we seldom had any problems.

Let’s see what happened one weekend when this ride operator did have customer problems.

So, it’s the weekend before Labor Day, it’s over 90 degrees outside and the line is about 90 minutes long. Understandably, the riders are a bit crankier than normal.

Well, this particular ride I worked on was not a thrill ride, but it did run on an elevated track. Each “car” was arranged in three rows of three, and each seat has its own harness.

A tourist family of four comes up, mom, dad, teenage son and a 4-5 year old daughter. I tell them that they have to sit 3X1 or 2X2, duh…

Dad decides this is unacceptable and wants to hold his daughter on his lap. I politely inform him, no, that’s not possible.

Read on to find out how this demanding dad responded.

At this point, he absolutely freaks out and starts screaming at me, six inches from my face. He is so angry, he’s mixing in his native French with pretty fluent English.

300-400 people are in line watching this go down, while his wife has this huge smug grin on her face. Mom and dad realise they have an audience and are actually HAMMING IT UP.

Before the supervisor can even come over, dad scoops up his daughter and tries to push past me onto the ride. I hold my ground and at this point am genuinely starting to get annoyed.

Dad puts daughter down and actually gives me shove. At this point, I’m pretty angry, so I shove him back.

Uh-oh. Let’s see what happened next.

Ten years later and I can still see it in slow motion. Dad trips over the daughter, falls backwards into his wife and all three go down in a heap.

Daughter starts wailing, mom and dad are screaming at the top of their lungs, half the crowd is laughing hysterically, the other half are in shock…

Ten minutes later, I was fired and five minutes after that, escorted off the premises. Strangely enough, it was the ride manager and not security that walked me out. She was super cool and even apologised for having to fire me.

I felt awful about the kids. Mom and dad? **** ’em.

Genuinely, how stupid can these parents get.

The policies are for their own safety, and you can’t just pick and choose which ones you abide by.

But to assault a member of staff because he’s refusing to put your child’s safety at risk? It’s crazy.

Let’s see what the Reddit community had to say about this.

This person thought that the parents were crazy for not wanting to comply with the safety measures.

While others thought the ride operator was quite right for standing up for himself.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who cleverly shuts down customer arguments about closing time.

Meanwhile, this Redditor could not comprehend why the ride operator was fired.

Honestly, sure he shoved the customer back, but it’s so easy to argue that this was self defence after he himself was yelled at and then shoved by the man. Really, it’s the customer that should be being escorted from the premises for violent conduct and attempting to intimidate a ride operator into allowing him to ignore the safety policies and ride with his daughter on his lap.

The policy is in place for a reason, and the park would have been in big trouble if the family had rode as they wanted to and the daughter had been injured – or worse. So the fact that the ride operator refused to back down is actually a great thing for the park, and definitely not a fireable offence.

Who is in the wrong here? There’s no question that it’s the rude parents who think they’re better than the rules – because by refusing to allow them, the ride operator might have just saved their daughter’s life.