I’ve turned into that lady that yells at teenagers.  The other week I was at Panera and there were some teenagers talking very loudly and cursing up a storm not bothered by the fact that there were families with young kids all around.  I’m surprised that these parents didn’t say anything before I did- finally I looked at them and told them they needed to watch their language.

A few days later I was leaving the mall after seeing The Descendants with a friend and obviously in a bad mood as you would understand if you saw the movie (good movie, just sad).  When you walk out of the doors at my mall inevitably you are enveloped by a cloud of cigarette smoke as there are at any given moment at least two people smoking right by the door.  This is a huge pet peeve of mine- if you want to smoke fine, just do it somewhere else where I don’t have to breathe it in.  I even started harassing the mall’s facebook page a year or two ago saying stuff like “I love Tysons but I hate walking through a cloud of cigarette smoke every time I go to the mall.”  I’d like to take personal responsibility for them installing “NO SMOKING WITHIN 50 FEET OF THE ENTRANCE” signs right outside the doors.

So on this particular night after seeing The Descendants my friend and I were leaving the mall and what do you know, there were a handful of teenagers smoking directly underneath the no smoking sign.  Being in a not so great mood I was not going to tolerate their shenanigans so to my friend’s horror I stopped, looked at them, pointed at the no smoking sign and said “There’s no smoking within 50 feet of the building” to which the one teenager responded with something like “yeah whatever lady.”  Don’t mess with me.  I wanted to say “DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND- A WOMAN HAS JUST DIED.  A WOMAN.  HAS DIED.  OK?”  They don’t need to know it was in a movie.  So I just said to the kid “Some people have severe smoke allergies ok?” to which he rolled his eyes at me.  I don’t have severe smoke allergies, but that’s another thing he doesn’t need to know.

Still not feeling like I’d done my work for the evening, I decided to take it one step further.  I noticed one of the teenagers was wearing an AMC uniform (the movie theater in the mall).  I looked up the number for the theater and made my friend wait in the car before we left so I could call and rat out the smoking employees.  It took a good 10 minutes till I finally was able to get a live person on the phone but when I did she was very apologetic and told me the employees would be dealt with.

WATCH OUT TEENAGERS!