Is it ever ok for a restaurant owner to yell at a toddler? That is what many people are asking after the owner of Marcy's Diner in Portland, Maine, snapped at a nearly 2-year-old child who had been crying for about an hour Saturday, according to NBC's Portland affiliate WCSH 6.
Darla Neugebauer, the owner, said the child's parents ordered three pancakes and didn't feed them to the girl, causing her to cry loudly. After several attempts to get the family to leave or to take the girl outside, Neugebauer finally got fed up and told the girl to be quiet.
"I slammed my hands on the counter and said, 'This needs to stop,'" said Neugebauer, referring to the toddler's screaming, according to USA Today. "She looked at me, and she stopped."
According to a post Neugebauer made on Facebook, the girl had already been crying for more than 40 minutes when she took action.
The child's upset parents asked Neugebauer whether she was screaming at a child, she said, according to Fox News.
After leaving the diner, Tara Carson, the child's mother, wrote about the experience on Marcy's Diner's Facebook page. She criticized Neugebauer for screaming at her child, writing: "Who in their right mind would behave like this unless you are deranged?"
Neugebauer replied from the restaurant's account, at one point saying, "You are lucky I didn't get really f***ing nuts because being physical is not something I cower from."
Even though she received backlash on social media, Neugebauer has stood by her actions.
"Life's full of choices and you've got to live with all of them," she said. "I chose to yell at a kid. It made her shut up, which made me happy. It made my staff happy, it made the other 75 people dining here happy and they left. They may never come back, and other people may not come in—their loss, really."
