'She gave the stereotypical 'my child is an angel and can do no wrong speech'': Bowling alley employee disqualifies a Karen's family from a tournament after her 10-year-old steals and breaks the company iPad

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Jesse Kessenheimer • Writer and Editor
Apr 27, 2025 1:00 PM EDT

iPad kids are insatiable. We've seen their ravenous, grubby little fingers poking around on their own hand-held device, while they stare greedily at the phone in our hands. You can almost hear it before they eek out a question in their small voice, 'You got any games?'

For those of us without children, we understand the allure of silencing a kid with a quick mobile game. But as any adult can see, it makes the children feral. Whatever it is—the music, the clicking, the gameplay—that makes them cuckoo, if a kid goes for long without their game, they'll soon be insufferable... But not as insufferable as the Karenish mom in this next story.

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  • As an employee of a bowling all this teenage cashier had thought they'd seen it all. You have nacho cheese in the bowling ball holes, kids getting stuck in the pin machine, and bad parents demanding their kid be granted a strike despite throwing a gutterball. But this employee had gracefully thwarted the efforts of their latest child's tantrum, or so they thought, before all-out disaster ensued. Funnily enough, this resulted in a Karen mom getting put in her place and a kid's obsession with iPad's getting aired out in the open. 

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    迷
    via Pavel Danyluk

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

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    "Karen demands we pay for the iPad her child broke"

    I work at a bowling alley and today we had a large tournament, roughly 6 people on all 40 lanes. At the start of the day it was nice and quiet until about 2-3 hours in the kid who was maybe 10-12
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    that was sat directly in front of the front counter iPad ran out of battery. The kid lost at it this point practically screaming at his mother to charge it or to play on
    via lickmnut
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    Cheezburger Image 10497919488
    via Leung Cho Pan

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

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    her phone. She clearly didn't care she basically told him to sit down and shut up. The kid only did half that, he started walking around the counter. Then he noticed the
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    iPad we have behind the counter to help keep track of reservations and parties ETC. His face lit up like it was Christmas morning, as I always do when a kid runs
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    behind the counter I stop them and say "woah little buddy can't be back here" the kid then looked up at me, pointed to the iPad and said "but I want it" "sorry little
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    dude but that's our important iPad I can't let you have it" the kid said oh and walked away. Me thinking that was the end of it went back to tending to lane calls
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    score corrections and all the usual stuff that happens when a tournament is going on. Then about maybe 5 minutes later I see out of the corner of my eye the
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    kid sneaking around the side of the counter and reaching out to the iPad. Once again I told him he can't have it this time with a bit more of a strict tone to tell him
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    I'm serious. With me still looking at him he reached out more and more until he grabbed it and ran. Luckily he didn't get far as he tripped over one of the many ball bags strewn across the floor from
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    the bowlers, however unfortunately he landed on the tiled off eating area smashing the tablet on the ground naturally the kid started balling I rush over grabbed the iPad off the ground
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    only for some of the glass to fall out. The mother was none too pleased at this. She looked beet red as she hurried over and shouted "How could you hurt my little pumpkin" I explained to her
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    the situation and how her child tripped and smashed the iPad and she gave the stereotypical "my child is an angel and can do no wrong speech" and demanded
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    that we pay her for a new iPad for her son. I told her that's not how this works and she started to cause a scene, the tournament head came over noticing the commotion and asked what was
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    going on obviously we both gave out sides of the story. He then said that since the damage happened during his tournament he would reimburse us for the damaged iPad but the mother,
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    son, and her bowler where all kicked out and the bowler disqualified, honestly I feel bad for the bowler he was doing pretty good in the tournament
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    but thanks to a crappy parent it was all null and void. I talked with the official later and he said that she's been a problem at other places before for similar issues such as being too rowdy and not
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    watching her kid apparently she was warned at their last tournament that if it happened again her son would be disqualified from the tournament. I feel bad for him but oh well.
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    ccourter1970 If my son acted like that we'd have gone outside. My choice to have a child shouldn't negatively impact others. He learned early on that if he acted out he lost privileges and we left where we were.
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    oiseaufeux The disqualified bowler must be angry about this. And how is this mother not banned from any bowling alley if she's not watching her younger kid?
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    tbonimaroni A ten-year-old acting like a 4- year-old. Horrible family dynamics there. This family is messed up. I can't believe that parents like this exist. My kid would have been grounded for months if he acted like this. Wow. Blows my mind.
    via tbonimaroni
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    emr830 I can't wait for the temper tantrum she throws when her kid gets jail time for robbery and the judge puts her in lock up for the night as well. Or fines her. Whatever actually happens there. But whatever happens, I hope it's video taped and put on YouTube.
    via emr830

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employee bad parenting moms parenting bowling bowling alley karens in the wild entitled mom karen entitled people
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