Caught on Camera

San Francisco Grandmother, Restaurant Owner, Confronts Angry Customer

NBC Universal, Inc.

You won’t want to mess with this San Francisco Mission District grandma.

It started with a customer at her restaurant upset about the service and it ended with a bag of food flying and the grandma picking up a table to defend her grandson. 

It began last Friday night at Panchitas restaurant on 16th Street.

Video shows a woman at the counter, upset that her food was not yet ready for pickup. 

“She was just throwing profanity at me and at that point my son was getting dropped off he naturally climbed onto me,” said manager Doris Vargas.

The boy's grandmother, Doris Campos, heard the ruckus and came out of the kitchen to be a peacemaker. 

“I still doing with my hands relax, relax and she say ‘I just want to kill your daughter blah blah blah,’” said Campos, Panchita’s owner.

A bottle turned out to be the customer's weapon of choice – a 5 pound bottle of hand sanitizer – that’s still dented. And in the video, you see the customer grabbing the bottle off the table and flinging it in the direction of the mother holding her child.

“I’m thinking, if it hit my grandson, I mean, I do whatever I have to do,” said Campos. “That’s all. I wasn’t thinking at that moment.”

The grandmother throws a bag of food, and then pushes the table towards the customer. The customer pushes it back. That’s when grandma decided to put an end to it right there in then.

“She push the table and I got on the table and I try to push her with the table because I don’t want to be close to her,” said Campos. “That’s all. And by accident she fall down I don’t think I pushed her to fall down. But it happened.”

A replay shows the woman hitting the floor, before a customer gets her out of the restaurant, and out of harm's way.

The boy's mother and grandmother would like at the very minimum an apology from the customer. As it turned out, nobody was injured but this story could’ve easily had a very different outcome. 

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