Ice cream owners defended their teen. The internet cheered.

A 25-cent price difference set off an angry customer at Coldstuff Ice Cream in Blackstone, Massachusetts, and the 16-year-old behind the counter took the brunt of it. So the owners, Dave Forgit and his brother Kevin Miller, posted a blunt note on Facebook. "They are children," Forgit wrote. "This job, for most of them, is their first. They are going to make mistakes." He added that it could all be fixed with a smile. "It's ice cream for crying out loud. Grow up and act your age." The brothers braced for backlash. Instead the post drew hundreds of thousands of likes and thousands of shares, many from adults who remembered their own first jobs. One commenter wished they'd had a boss who had their back as a teenage screw-up. Customers started showing up just to buy a cone in support. Miller described a worker looking at him with puppy-dog eyes, asking if they'd really messed up that badly. His answer: "No, this is ice cream."