IHOP Customer Who Bullied Waitress Now Begging Internet to Spare His Business

We've all our fair share of bad days where we've had to let out some steam. But hopefully we were either taught or learned early on that taking those feelings of frustration, insecurity, anger, depression, or whatever the heck it is we're dealing with out on something or someone in a constructive manner and not just picking an unsuspecting victim or a loved one who you've turned into a verbal punching bag.

It's been said that if you want to know the judge of someone's character, all you need to do is see how they treat the wait staff at a restaurant and honestly, I think that's probably one of the truest statements ever uttered by a member of our species.

But maybe Adam Huerta didn't get the memo early on in life, because the way he treated an IHOP waitress while out dining with his family is getting a lot of folks angry on the internet.

In the video clip uploaded by a fellow diner who happened to be in the eating establishment at the same time as Adam, viewers can see the man screaming at the young woman and repeatedly calling her "b***h" and using a litany of profane words and phrases. What's worse is that he's in front of his young children, and many commenters online feared his kids would grow up to emulate his behavior.

A woman who is presumably his partner, Veronica, sat across the table from him and asked for a box to pack up their food so they could leave with their meals and extricate themselves from the uncomfortable situation. In the video, he seems to turn his ire on the woman who appears to be his wife saying, "You could shut your f*****g mouth too."

The incident occurred at a Tucson, Ariz. IHOP and was picked up by a local TMZ affiliate. It didn't take long for the internet to track down who the man in the video was and discover the finer details about his life: that he was not only married with children and shared a Facebook page with his wife (hence his full name, Adam Veronica Huerta) but that he was a small business owner who operates Viking Car Wash in Tucson.

Webizens flooded to the business' social media pages to decry Adam's actions and spam it with one-star reviews. It wasn't until after his tirade went viral that Adam decided to issue an apology online.

However, many people called the video a "rambling" mess and didn't believe that his "sorry" was sincere.

Adam also alleges that there were several other instances that occurred leading up to the video that were unbeknownst to his critics, like the fact that his family was served "raw" meat and that the waitress spoke rudely to his son.

The "rudeness" boiled down to how Adam didn't appreciate the way in which she asked the young man to wear a mask.

Adam says that the combination of events is what ultimately led him to tee off on the IHOP's staff the way he did. In his apology he does concede he was acting like an "a**hole" and is urging people to not judge him based on the video footage alone, "I am definitely not the person this video is making me out to be. This video definitely doesn't show the whole story for the people that are watching...[the waitress] literally gave [me] raw meat."

For the most part, it doesn't seem like Twitter is really buying his apology, and the majority of comments are highlighting how problematic his behavior is, especially in front of his children.

While many are conflating this incident with other "anti-mask wearing" behavior in similar incidents that saw consumer freakouts in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, others think that this instance is unique.

Many are pointing to Adam's repeated usage of insults against women and how he transitioned his rage from the female wait-staff to his own wife as indicative of a greater problem. The fact that his two children, who appear to be male in the video are learning from his behavior, is concerning a lot of folks on social media.

Do you think that Adam's behavior is a case of "toxic masculinity" occurring before our very eyes, and that his children are doomed to perpetuate the same despicable cycle of abuse? Or was his outburst understandable?