As if people in other countries didn’t already hate American tourists enough, a group of young tourists visiting London have just set American-English relations back a decade by harassing a member of the King’s Guard on duty at the Horse Guards building in Whitehall.


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In the video, a police officer can be seen talking sternly to the group, telling them that the guards serve their country, take their jobs seriously and shouldn’t be an object of ridicule. The cop continued, “I appreciate you’re having fun, but he’s not having fun,” adding that his job is tiring and exhausting. He then asks the group to leave the facility, which they do.


After that, the video cuts to clips showing how the tourists were hassling the guard, laughing and waving at him, getting incredibly close to him and pulling out their phones to take photos, and yelling at him and trying to guess his name. After a while, two cops walk over, with one of them talking to the guard. As soon as the tourists see the guard respond, they scream in delight, having finally forced him to break “character,” so to speak.



For the uninitiated, all of this is being done because guards aren’t permitted to smile, laugh or talk while on duty. This is also why the cop had to step in, because the guard wouldn’t be able to stand up for himself without potentially getting in trouble with his commanding officer.


The commenters on Reddit were baffled, with many wondering why and how these people possessed so little self-awareness that they thought this kind of behavior was okay. One person added that hecklers view the person as a zoo exhibit or character, which gives them free rein to taunt them. You see the same thing happen at Disneyland over and over with people harassing and sometimes even becoming physical with characters in an effort to see the people inside the costumes snap.


Others commented on how well the cop handled it — though it probably wasn’t his first time dealing with tourists taunting guards, considering how many movies and TV shows feature characters doing the exact same thing.


Anyway, if you didn’t know before, now you do: Don’t mock the guards. Because one of these days someone is going to find themselves thrown into the Tower of London.