A US restaurateur has made international headlines and split public opinion after she yelled at a two-year-old child crying incessantly in her busy diner as the child's parents sat idle.
Marcy's Diner in the tourist town of Portland, Maine has become the latest eatery-turned-battleground, with parents and foodies butting heads over the right to a peaceful weekend brunch.
Diner owner Darla Neugebauer's decision to slam her hands on the counter and scream "shut the hell up" at the toddler in the heat of frustration (and industrial-sized grills), followed 40 minutes of incessant crying and repeated pleas to the child's parents to take the girl outside.
The toddler's mother Tara Carson described the encounter in a post on the Diner's Facebook page, calling the owner an "absolute lunatic" who "screamed in the face of my almost two year old".
Neugebauer responded to the Facebook post with a profanity-filled comment.
@TODAYshow here are the original two posts that began the @MarcysDiner controversy. pic.twitter.com/n6MfvEVLkq— TVTEDDY (@TVTEDDY) July 21, 2015
"You are lucky I didn't get really f---ing nuts because being physical is not something I cower from," the diner owner wrote in the post, which has now been removed.
The Diner's Facebook page and news sites that carried the story have been flooded with messages of support for the owner, and the parents.
An unapologetic Neugebauer told local media: "Life's full of choices and you've got to live with all of them. I chose to yell at a kid, it made her shut-up, which made me happy, it made my staff happy, it made the 75 other people dining here happy, and they left, they may never come back, other people may not come in. Their loss really."
Carson responded by penning a comment piece in the Washington Post, saying she was shocked that her family's "quiet summer getaway" had caused such a furore.
According to Carson she and her husband were told that there would be a 30-minute wait for a table and waited a further 40 minutes for their food.
Their two-year-old daughter wasn't having a "meltdown" but was understandably "antsy" after waiting so long, she wrote in the Washington Post.
"Out of nowhere, [Neugebauer] threw to-go containers at my husband and yelled, "Either she goes or you go!", Carson wrote.
The couple thought her behaviour was so unprofessional they didn't take it seriously and continued to feed their daughter.
A few minutes later, Neugebauer, now behind the grill, slammed her hands on the counter. She pointed at my baby's face and screamed, "You need to shut the hell up!", Carson said.
"My husband replied, 'Are you serious? Are you really yelling at a toddler right now?'
"I'll never forget the look of fear on my baby's face," she wrote.
On Thursday night Neugebauer responded to online trolls who claimed she spat in food, writing "person(s) starting the smear campaign you'll get to meet my lawyer, Bill, & if you think I'm nuts. Boy oh boy!
"Please stop with the phone calls and nasty posts," she wrote and thanked her customers for their support.
"I am here to run marcy's diner! I will run it as I choose! My diner my rules! Have a little courtesy of others," she continued, before listing the day's specials, which included a chocolate cream pie and a "Wafflewich".
The scene is reminiscent of public outrage over cafe policies regarding young children in Australian eateries.
The owner of a French cafe in Newcastle sparked fierce debate last year after her response to a snarky one-star customer review that criticised the venue for not being child-friendly.
But Sydney cafe managers say there is no excuse for yelling at a child.
"We don't have any written protocol, but we would never yell at children. It's a pretty irresponsible way to act," the manager of Maisy's Cafe in Neutral Bay, who did not want to be named, said.
"If there's ever any trouble we'd quietly ask the parents to look after their kids."
The management of the Leichhardt restaurant Bar Italia pulls out all the stops to accommodate families with young children.
"We love 'em. We're a very kid friendly place. We've got ice cream and bubble gum up the front [of the restaurant] and kids can run amuck in the backyard," Bar Italia owner Con Damouras said.
He described a recent incident involving a family with a crying child.
"A couple of regular customer had a go at them and my partner went up and told them to 'leave them alone, the kids are just kids' and managed to calm the situation," he said.
"It happens, but there's usually a way to fix the problem. We're all adults."
