Darla Neugebauer has no regrets about shouting at a small child. Photo / WCSH / Screengrab
Darla Neugebauer has no regrets about shouting at a small child. Photo / WCSH / Screengrab
The owner of an American diner has received both praise and condemnation for yelling at a screaming toddler.
Darla Neugebauer, owner of Marcy's Diner in Portland, Maine, said she asked a family to leave after listening to their young child scream for 40 minutes. When they didn't, she shouted, "That needs to stop", while pointing at the child.
The mother of the child then hit back on social media, posting on Facebook that she had "the worst experience" at the diner.
"The owner is an absolute lunatic and screamed in the face of my almost two year old child because she was crying," she wrote.
"If it bothered you so much you should have spoken to me and not traumatised my child by screaming in her face."
Neugebauer responded in an expletive-laden post, which made her frustrations clear - referring to the child as a "demon" and a "beast".
She claimed the family has ordered three full size pancakes for their child, but left them in the middle of the table where the child couldn't reach, causing her to cry.
"Snarled at top volume, 'THAT NEEDS TO STOP!' Pointing directly at the rotten child! Shocked! They said, 'did you just yell at a child?' Yup! Sure did! Shut her up too," she wrote.
"Why is OK for that kid to disrupt the experience for 75 people when mommy or daddy could have taken it outside!"
The posts have since been removed.
The mother told WCSH that the incident had upset her.
"I turned to my daughter and I was like 'Listen, this is how I'm raising you not to be as an adult. Like, you will never be like this when you get older,'" she said.
"I felt helpless as a mom that, you know, I couldn't do anything to help her, because I can't explain why there's crazy people in this world that behave like that."
Many others on Facebook have come to the family's defence.
"Wish you were in the area, I'd bring my class of 20 kids and see how far screaming at them will get," wrote Afeya Ebba.
But others were supportive of the diner owner and their perceived right to eat without being disturbed by crying children.
"I for one would gladly eat here," wrote Martha Crutcher. "Honestly a mother of and grandmother of 10, I hate it when I want to sit down to eat and disruptive children are amuck."
WCSH also reported there was a line of customers waiting outside the diner the day after the incident.
