Flipping Out in Public

[Jackoleen]

Dear Disney Enthusiasts,

XXX!

[carolinakid]

Nah, I've never flipped out on a stranger in public. I have a great deal of self control and I'd hate to look like a crazy idiot in front of others. I admire people who remain calm. I've seen people flip out in stores, restaurants, airports, hotels, hell even at Disneyland and I don't think it does them any favors. Most people stare at them and feel sorry for the poor person receiving their "attack". Just my opinion....Maybe flipping out works for some....

[disneyboy20022]

Nah, I've never flipped out on a stranger in public. I have a great deal of self control and I'd hate to look like a crazy idiot in front of others. I admire people who remain calm. I've seen people flip out in stores, restaurants, airports, hotels, hell even at Disneyland and I don't think it does them any favors. Most people stare at them and feel sorry for the poor person receiving their "attack". Just my opinion....Maybe fliiping out works for some....

As someone with Asperger Syndrome (A High Functioning Type of Autism) and having a type of Colitis syndrome, I've had my fair share of "flipping out" in public in the past...And I can't remember all of them....but I remember I wasn't feeling good after the Back to the Future ride.....I was going into almost a panic attack....my head had image overload...sometimes I see flashbacks....and after the ride my head was having so many flashbacks and trying to process the images that my mind sorta went into a reboot mode.....

[Disney's Divinity]

My mother flips out in public all the time. I'm the child who has to make apologetic faces to cashiers, booksellers, and so on.

[ajmrowland]

When I take purchase merchandise or personal items into the bathroom, I actually leave it in the corner inside the stall I'm using just for security.

[Goliath]

Well, there was that one time in Prague.

I was on an excursion to Prague with my then-girlfriend. We had been sitting in a bus for the entire day. We arrived at our hotel far past dinner time, but they assured us we could still use the buffet. Now, I had specifically stated I'm a vegetarian and they had said that was no problem. But, by the time we got to the buffet, all the trays that were supposed to be filled with the vegetables were all empty. The only vegetarian food left was rice. Just that. So I went to ask somebody if I could have some vegetables. I was still very calm at the point, because I understand these things can happen. As long as people are willing to solve them, I'm willing to wait a little while.

I couldn't find anybody who could speak proper English and nobody who spoke German either! Okay, this is Prague we're talking about, in 2009! So when I had finally made myself clear, I was being send from one person to another, to another, to another. And finally they told me there wouldn't be any more vegetables and I should just eat some rice.

And then I flipped. I raised my voice, began to slam on the counters, telling other guests the service was atrocious, telling all personell (from the bellboy to the cleaning lady) that I wanted to see whomever was running this pathetic excuse of a hotel... and then finally, finally... I got to speak to the manager who made sure I got something decent to eat.

You may not think it, based on my posts on the forum, but I'm usually very, very calm and I don't easily raise my voice. But sometimes you have to, in order to get just what you paid for. I'm not an unreasonable or difficult guest, but I am big on good service.

[Jack Skellington]

^^^Lol I wish I could see you on Mtv boiling points one day !

[Mayhem]

There's only really one that springs to mind for me...

Las Vegas airport, 2003, after the Classic Gaming Expo. My companion and I are flying home to different locations, but as we had to check out of the hotel and her flight isn't for another two hours after mine, she joins me at the airport anyhow, and waits in line so we can chat while we slowly get to the front of check-in.

Now check-in for Delta on this day was fricking huge. I'd rarely seen a queue like this before, and have not since, although the automated terminals obviously speed things up a lot more now. This thing was long. Even though we had arrived at McCarran over two hours before my flight was due to leave, it had already taken more than an hour in line before I was close (roughly seven or eight people) to the front.

So I'm looking at my watch, it's just over an hour before my flight is due to go and I'm hoping that I can still check in fine. At that moment a Delta rep asks who in line is waiting for the flight I'm on (the first leg of my trip to get back to the UK). Quite a few people put their hands up, one guy in front of me does, there are a few not that far back from me, and then there's oddly enough a spread group of hands right near the back. In roughly the same sort of spot where I had started queueing more than an hour previous.

What the Delta rep does then is open up a new line specifically just for people who are on my flight. Sounds good, right? No. She then proceeds to tell me and the other guy in front of me to stay put because "we're pretty much near the front anyhow", and essentially shuffles the lazy, fat arse stupids from the extreme back who couldn't be bothered to get to the airport on time to the front of this new line first.

It's baking hot, I'd been waiting for ages, time is pressure, I had to get up early as well... now, I'm a pretty patient guy. As the Canadian comedian Craig Campbell once commented in a routine of his "when you see a British person fly off the handle, you know something must be really, really wrong!". So I went off on one at the rep basically explaining my argument from the previous paragraph using... slightly greater than PG-13 language. I could hear a few people mutter and comment about agreeing with me, I guess I was the only one to have had the balls to actually raise my voice about it.

Perhaps embarrassed into submission, I was shuffled out of the main line into this subsidiary line right near the front. Whereupon I found out I was going to have my flights changed anyhow to slightly later ones as the connecting flight I would have taken across the Atlantic was going to be massively delayed (it was late leaving London due to mechanical problems). So I got rebooked so I still arrived in London around the same time as I would have previous. I don't know if the lass on the desk had seen my rant (probably, she was only sitting about 10 yards from it) but she booked me into business class as well to boot!

Still, after that point, it took me six years to decide to fly Delta again...