15 children of 'Karens' share the most embarrassing thing their parent did.

We all know the term 'Karen' by now.

It doesn't refer to a nice lady named Karen, but rather, a specific strain of person (usually white) who yells at waitstaff, hurls racist slurs, and generally makes scenes in public borne out of entitlement.

If you search 'Karen' on any social media platform you'll be bombarded with videos of Karens throwing adult tantrums in public, ruining people's day, and even physically endangering others.

For every person who fits the stereotype of 'Karen,' there's a spouse, sibling, or child of theirs that has witnessed this behavior throughout their life.

In a popular Reddit thread, children of Karens shared the most embarrassing thing their parent did, and it runs the full gamut.

1. From HighburyClockEnd:

My dad once got into a screaming match with someone because of the express check-in lane at an airport, he couldn’t use it but insisted he could. He then started screaming at me because I told him I don’t think he can use it.

2. From houseofreturn:

My mom almost got us arrested for domestic terrorism once. We were at the Mexico City airport flying to Juarez and we were bringing back a bunch of plates and sh*t she got while we were there in this huge box.

We get to check in counter, guy says she needs to have the box wrapped. My mother is deeply offended by this. “WELL I'VE NEVER HAD TO DO THAT BEFORE! I BRING STUFF FROM MEXICO CITY ALL THE TIME, I'VE NEVER HAD TO DO THAT!”

She yells, causing some bewildered stares in her direction. Keep in mind, this is a very white woman arguing angrily in absolutely flawless Spanish, so that’s already intriguing enough as it is.

Guy again demands she needs to go get the box tape wrapped, and that’ll be an extra charge of about 200 pesos (around $10). Instead of doing that, she storms off, leaving a massive, unidentified box, fully unattended.

Y'know, that thing the airport announcements always tells you NEVER TO DO?! My dad and I had already checked in and made it through security while this was unfolding. Mom joins us at the gate in a huff, regaling to us this slight against her.

Just as she finishes, 5 security officers walk up to her, AR-15’s at their sides, and asks her is she’s [my moms name]. She says she is, they yank her up and start dragging her away.

Dad, a lawyer, has an “oh sh*t” moment, and we go running after her. To sum up, dad does lawyer things, she doesn’t get arrested for terroristic threats, we somehow make our flight, and we did get that damn box of f**king plates back home.

I make fun of her every time we use them.

3. From mejok:

Nephew of a Karen. Was visiting her and she needed to stop by Walgreens. She had a newspaper ad that stated that some candles were 50% off so she bought like 10 of them. She got charged full price and flipped out.

We're talking like paying a dollar per candle instead of 50 cents. The cashier and I both showed her that she was holding an old newspaper and the ad even said that the offer expired a week ago.

Then she shifted to 'well you could have told me more nicely' and kept b**ching. I just kept telling her we needed to leave. Once I finally got her out into the car I said I had forgotten to grab a pack of gum and went back in and apologized to the poor guy.

4. From extrobe:

My dad isn’t usually a Karen/Kevin, but we’re from the UK, and my parents are really into country music. So one of our summer holidays when I was probably around 13 was 3 weeks driving around Tennessee.

Memphis - Pigeon Forge - Chattanooga - Nashville. This would have been around ‘98/‘99 I think. Did all the usual tourist s**t; Graceland, Sun Studio, Tooties, Grand Ole Opry, stalking Garth Brooks etc.

We visited this one place - it was a museum with some sort of backlot studio tour, and my dad was really excited about visiting it. Except the backlot tour part was closed (think the roads were closed for roadworks).

My dad was not happy about this, especially as he only found out after we’d paid and been around the main museum. So we went to discuss it with the ticket desk.

Both sides made some reasonable points (there was a sign on the ticket desk, albeit it was a little small to have spotted etc). My dad was not getting far, and exclaimed “I’ve come all the way from England to visit this god damn place.”

Oh dear…using blasphemy against an employee of a country music museum in Memphis (or Nashville; forget which city we were in) absolutely did not have the desired effect.

“Well y’know what sir? I was thinking about giving y’all a refund, but I don’t think I want to do that anymore “

At that point my siblings and I all noped out of that one and headed outside. Never did find out if dad got his refund.

5. From P0ster_Nutbag:

We were having a family dinner where we just decided to order in Chinese food. With around 15 people eating, it was quite a large order. One of the things we ordered was honey garlic chicken balls, which we got 2 orders of.

This restaurant delivers these as an order of breaded chicken balls and a side of honey garlic sauce.

My dad went to pick up the food, brought it back home, and we unpacked everything, and we saw that we got two orders of the breaded chicken balls, but only one order of the honey garlic sauce.

Now, I get it, this is mildly annoying, but hey, it happens and we still have tons and tons of food, plus a single order of sauce is likely enough for two orders of chicken anyways. My mom was essentially sent into a bloodlust because of this.

She was very annoyed we didn’t get the second sauce, and while people were starting to sit down and help themselves to the food, she got on the phone with the restaurant.

While I’m sure the restaurant staff was apologizing, she kept insisting that this was bullsh*t and that she expects to get everything she paid for, and that the restaurant had to rectify this.

She argued back and forth (while everyone else ate), but eventually got the restaurant to send a delivery driver with just the order or sauce. She of course sat down to eat after this, and just about everyone was already done.

Of course, by the time the sauce got there, everyone had finished eating, and it wasn’t really missed. She felt so proud of herself for getting the restaurant to go to ridiculous lengths over such a trivial thing.

My mom is usually pretty level-headed, but when it comes to slight mixups like this on food orders, she needs to go to irrational lengths to make sure she feels complete.

6. From Cryptic_Spren97:

When I was about 9, my dad took my sister and I to McDonald's one evening. At this point he and my mum were separated, so he only saw us once a week (and those visits gradually petered out to my relief).

He ordered a quarter pounder with cheese for himself, took one bite, and spat it out into the box.

He then stormed up to the counter, ignored the line of people waiting to order and started loudly berating the woman at the check out (who hadn't even served him in the first place).

'I asked for a god d*mn quarter pounder without cheese, why the hell have you put cheese on my burger? You clearly don't know how to do the most simple of tasks, I want to speak to your manager.'

And on and on it went.

I felt such shame and humiliation, and I couldn't even finish my meal. If that wasn't bad enough, when he finally came back with a fresh meal, I told him in a timid voice that he had in fact ordered one with cheese and he started screaming at me.

Yeah...I wasn't exactly gutted when those little outings with dad ended.

7. From OneMorePotion:

My mother paid me a visit shortly after I moved to Switzerland. We went shopping for groceries together. Everything in CH is at least twice as expensive.

And my mother did let the entire shop know, how overpriced each and every item I put in the cart was. While also insisting that we need to buy bottled water because she couldn't drink tapwater.

(She does it at home and Switzerland has the better water quality. So I have really no idea why that was a thing in the first place.) After everything she complained about, the 12 bucks for 4 bottles of non-sparkly water was somehow completely fine.

I never went shopping with her ever again after this.

8. From britishgoldfish:

So one time in the summer (I was about 10-11 years old) my mom, aunt, and I all went to this beach that had a restaurant right next to it. After we finished swimming, we got a little hungry so we decided to go to this restaurant.

The place was incredibly packed, people sitting at tables everywhere and there were only a few members of staff who were serving. There was even another section at the back with more tables.

We waited for about 20-30 mins before we ordered. My aunt wasn't with us when we ordered so I was the one listening to her bs the entire time. When we eventually order my mother started shouting at the wait staff.

'Do you know how long we've been waiting for? It's been 30 minutes!'

The poor staff had to explain that they were (obviously) very packed but my mother wasn't having it.

'I don't care! You should hire more staff then!'

At this point, I was off to the side, red in the face because I felt so bad for the employees. We order and walk back. I tell my mother that I was very upset with her behavior and that there were many people in the restaurant.

She kept on shouting at me, saying 'it's not my place to comment' but I just ignored her.

When I went to pick up our food, I immediately said 'Hey I'm really sorry about my mum shouting at you, you guys have so many tables to serve and your doing the best you can.'

The guy who took our order was really nice and said something along the lines of 'Don't worry kid, thanks for apologizing.'

So yeah, my mum's a Karen.

9. From lessmiserables:

This is decades ago, but my mother used to sneak back to our table and 'adjust' whatever tip my dad/myself would leave. Hint: It was never adjusted upwards.

10. From bool_idiot_is_true:

My mother only gets like that when she's stressed. But one time I was at the pharmacy. There were two people in line in front of me and one person at the register.

The woman right in front of me shrieked as loudly as possible that they needed to open a second register. I thought maybe she was in a rush; but when I went to check out next to her I overheard her going over coupons or whatever.

It's one of the few times I've run into a dyed-in-the-wool Karen in the wild. She even had the hair cut. Of course, this has nothing to do with my mother.

Except that a couple of months later my mother did the exact same thing while I stood there contemplating if I should have pretended not to know her.

11. From the_poorest_pluto:

Yelling at the taxi driver for the price he was asking for.

12. From Revolutionary_Blake:

We went to a Thai Restaurant and they were severely understaffed because of COVID, and the food took around 30 minutes to come out.

My food didn't come out for another 10 minutes, during those 10 minutes he kept calling over waiters and asking when the food will come and if it doesn't come soon ill give you a 1-star rating.

It was pretty funny for me but I also felt bad for the people working there.

13. From FairyDustSpectacular:

My dad is a bit of a Karen, but he never gets loud or obnoxious. Just really, really pedantic. He once called Walmart and went into this whole thing about the strawberries being one dollar more expensive than what was advertised.

I couldn't believe he went so far over one dollar.

14. From tenpercentofnothing:

When I was wedding dress shopping, I invited my mom only because I knew she’d be hurt if I didn’t. My friends still recall almost ten years later how rude and obnoxious she was to the poor staff.

Keep in mind, my parents didn’t give us a penny for the wedding so it’s not like she was the one paying for the dress and had a say in anything.

She kept talking over me and giving wrong information every time a staff member asked me a question and then she was just horribly negative about everything.

The sizes that the store had, dress details (as if something low-cut can’t be altered…if I had minded a low-cut dress which I didn’t), etc. All this was loudly in front of the staff and the few other people in the shop.

She even tried telling them not to bring dresses I had specifically arranged to try on ahead of time. My aunt (her SIL) started distracting her as much as possible because it was so uncomfortable while my friends tried to lighten things up.

I did find my dress and when I went to order it at the cash register, the employee asked if I wanted to open a store credit card and my mom goes, “YES, she does!”

I did, but 1) it was not her choice to make and 2) I hadn’t discussed it with her anyway so she had no reason to think I wanted to do it. I think that’s when I finally snapped at her and later apologized to the staff.

15. From schnit123:

Back in the mid-nineties my mom rented Clerks for the family at the rental store in the Kroger's we used to shop at while having no idea how raunchy the movie is.

She was so offended by it that the next day she went back in to scream at the manager at how outrageous it was that they would carry such an offensive movie at a family rental store.

She demanded that they permanently take it off the shelf, and the goddamned thing of it is they actually obliged her.

They never carried Clerks at that location again, so if you ever tried to rent the movie from a Kroger's in Lewisville, Texas back in the mid-nineties and weren't able to, I apologize. It is entirely my mom's fault.