Cry-Baby #1: Clown Town Children's Center
The incident: Some people sang "Happy Birthday."
The appropriate reprsponse: Singing along/Moving your lips as though you're singing along if you're shy.
The actual response: A woman called the police.
Last week, a guy named Colm Doherty attempted to book a birthday party at an indoor play center called Clown Town in London.
He was told that there weren't any birthday packages available on the date he wanted, but he decided to take his daughter Cara, as well as 26 other people, to Clown Town anyway and pay the more expensive, non-birthday-package entry rate.
Once inside, they realized that two of the center's "party booths" were not in use, and asked a female staff member if they could use one. They were told it was fine.
Later, the female staff member came back and told the group that she was "in fairly big trouble" for allowing them to use the party booth, and told them that, as they hadn't booked a birthday package, they would not be allowed to "produce a cake or sing 'Happy Birthday.'"
Colm ignored her and brought out his daughter's birthday cake anyway. As he did so, people sang "Happy Birthday."
Then, Colm says, "you could sense a bit of nervous tension among the staff, and one particular lady came storming down and told us that we could not sing and to put the cake away."
Colm stood in front of her, to stop her from interrupting the song and upsetting the children. At which point she called the police.
Police officers came to Clown Town, but decided not to take any action against Colm.
Cry-Baby #2: Erin Mulcahy and Shawn Duncan
(story via Reddit/images via Salisbury Police)
The incident: A lifeguard blew his whistle.
The appropriate response: Nothing. Unless you're breaking beach rules, in which case he's probably blowing the whistle because of you and you should stop doing whatever it is that you're doing.
The actual response: Two people beat the lifeguard up.
Last weekend, Erin Mulcahy (pictured above, simultaneously laughing and crying) was at Salisbury Beach in Massachusetts with her boyfriend Shawn Duncan (also pictured above, with the exact facial hair/expression, hair/sunglasses combo you would expect the kind of guy who beats up lifeguards to have).
While they were relaxing on the sand, a lifeguard saw some swimmers who were too far out in the water and blew his whistle. Shawn asked the lifeguard to stop doing this, as it was aggravating his hangover.
The lifeguard, obviously, told him that he was just doing his job.
Police say this is when Erin dumped a bucket of water on the lifeguard's head, before Shawn punched him in the face, and knocked him to the ground.