Footage caught the moment an enraged customer allegedly tossed a container of soup into a restaurant manager’s face in Temple, Texas.
The incident allegedly occurred on November 7, shortly before 1:30 p.m, according to KCENTV. Police say the dissatisfied customer showed up at the Mexican restaurant Sol de Jalisco to complain that her soup was so hot the plastic lid on the to-go container had melted.
Video of the alleged incident displays a back and forth between employee Jannelle Broland and the upset patron. Suddenly, the customer allegedly hurled the soup into Broland’s face and fled the establishment.
The Daily Mail reports that Broland is a restaurant manager.
Broland said in a TikTok video the incident began with a phone call from the customer.
“Basically, this woman had called saying that her soup was so hot that it had melted the plastic lid into the soup. I told her I was so sorry; that was so embarrassing because that had never happened to us before,” Broland said in the video. “I, of course, was offering her refunds and trying to get her an alternate meal, a free meal, something.”
She added that the patron “did not want to hear it at all.”
“All she wanted to do was yell and cuss, and she called me names and the kitchen staff names,” the restaurant manager continued.
Broland said she told the patron that she could help her remedy the situation but requested the guest “do not yell and curse” at her. According to Broland, the patron responded by saying, “Oh no, honey, you haven’t heard attitude yet, and I will talk to you any which way I fucking want.”
“I said ‘No ma’am, you will not,’ and I hung up the phone,” Broland recalled.
The customer called back a second time before she made her way to the establishment, according to Broland. After a heated discussion captured on surveillance video, the patron allegedly hurled the soup in Broland’s face.
“My first thought was what just happened, why, like why is this happening, and I realized I couldn’t open my eyes, and I wiped away, and I realized – I was like wow, she really just she threw that at me,” Broland said, according to KCENTV. “She really threw that right at me.”
“The spices from it are what hit me the most,” Broland recalled, per KCENTV. “I remember feeling the warmth of the soup, but my eyes burned so bad. My nose was burning. It kind of, kind of took my breath away for a second because just the burning I was really in shock from it all.”
“It really felt like I had just been pepper-sprayed,” she said in her TikTok video.
The guest has been banned from the restaurant, according to KCENTV, and police say that criminal charges are pending.
“We do not condone this type of behavior and hold our citizens to the highest standard,” said Allen Teston, Temple police deputy chief, per KCENTV. “If a citizen believes they have received poor service we advise them to remain civil until the problem is resolved.”
“The experience itself was traumatizing and heartbreaking,” Broland told the Daily Mail. “[I] felt my spirit had been broken just knowing someone could do something so awful and then laugh about it.”