Who is banned at your store? STORY TIME!

[workerbee222]

Most of the bans I heard about were colleagues.

One woman wrote a love letter to her manager, young enough to be her son. She'd been stealing from the company, too, sliding extra merch into her friends' and relatives' bags that wasn't paid for.

The head of the cleaning crew was fired. Technically, not our employee, he was employed by the cleaning company. He spent his shift tossing the itms he desired into the rolling bin that was supposed to hold trash. During his shift he hid it above the suspended ceiling in the bathroom, and sneaked it out of the store.

"Jeff" hasn't been banned, the boss just won't sell him anything, anymore. Jeff purchased a hooded jacket, and had us tinker with modifying the hood for about two weeks before he was happy with it. Then there was a linen shirt that had to be taken in with darts...then let out...then back in before he was happy. The $500 jacket was returned when his wife didn't like the way it looked on him, and the jeans were returned after he wore them to the beach because they had *sand* in the pockets.

[bhskittykatt]

I worked for 8 years at a cheap motel in a sketchy part of town, and banning people on a weekly basis was not unheard of.

Sleazy people check in and start dealing heroin out of the rooms, banhammer.
Next week, someone comes in and rents a room and passes the keys off to the people we banned a week before. Banhammer.
They never seemed to run out of people to rent for them.

There were occasional prostitutes, and sometimes just asswipes who would trash a room so badly that we'd ban them. But it was mostly drug problems.

I remember one creep in particular who tried to lock me in a room with him when I was a housekeeper. Surprisingly that did not get him banned; what got him banned was when he was asked to stop dumping rotten food out in our parking lot and he told our GM to "get f**ked". He sent us harassing letters for months afterward (he used envelopes with our return address and stuck them in the mail w/o postage so they'd bounce back to us, so we couldn't figure out where he was sending them from). Yeah, he was a winner.

[Mikkel]

I know of at least two. One bartender from a really sleazy bar, who once attacked a driver (I never go when they call, they let people get too drunk. People will naturally get drunk in a bar, but when their friends carry them out unconscious, I won't drive them anywhere. They can call an ambulance).
The other one is a guy who always complain to dispatch about everything he can and invent lies if he can't find anything. He is not officially banned, but drivers can request not to get certain customers and so many drivers have banned him that he often have to wait for hours or walk out to find a taxi on the street.
There are probably more, taxi customers aren't all nice and dispatch tries to weed the worst out.

[wolfie]

a creep who sexually harassed two of my female coworkers. He actually might have had charges pressed against him too

Infantry, cavalry, satchel, or shaped?

we actually DO have a couple of people "trespass warned" from the property (law enforcement agency). Two for terroristic threats (never funny, kids... no matter how much you hate "the man")

I've heard that one famous Canadian author wound up on a list of undesirables because he threatened to shoot down any B-52s that flew over his backyard with his .22 rifle. Note that a .22 fired straight up would run out of speed and fall back to earth after reaching roughly 1/10 of the altitude at which the B-52s were flying.

one woman that falsely accused every tech that has come to her house of rape.

What do you mean "every tech"? I'm surprised that after the first incident, all the techs didn't refuse to go to her house.

[Ironclad Alibi]

Infantry, cavalry, satchel, or shaped?

High voltage.

I've heard that one famous Canadian author wound up on a list of undesirables because he threatened to shoot down any B-52s that flew over his backyard with his .22 rifle. Note that a .22 fired straight up would run out of speed and fall back to earth after reaching roughly 1/10 of the altitude at which the B-52s were flying.

He could hit them at my house. I've seen two B-52s, and heard others, flying over my house at a couple of hundred feet altitude. I live under the flight path for fly overs at Arlington cemetery. Various military planes do fly overs for funerals and invariably fly over my house afterwards.

[reimero]

At the library I used to work at, one specimen earned himself a permaban for taking certain "liberties" with someone on an elevator who was clearly, overtly, unquestionably under the age of 18. Said specimen also won the grand prize of a pair of silver bracelets (connected for his convenience) and a visit of indeterminate length at the Concertina Wire Hotel and Resort.

[Dreamstalker]

When I was selling on Ebay, I had a list of users that I would not sell to. Usually this was compiled from a 'do not sell' list other sellers in my main arena had, but a few became assholes after the sale.

One guy I remember was extremely picky about how he wanted his manga books shipped (wrapped in 3 different materials in a certain order, using Priority boxes but wrapping in paper bags and sending it media mail). That by itself would have been manageable (the first request will incur an extra handling charge, HELL NO to the second) but he escalated with demanding I end open auctions and sell to him with combined free shipping, and feedback extortion among other things. He finally got kicked off after a handful of us victimized sellers banded together and gave Ebay about 50 pages of evidence.

[flyonthewall]

I've heard many a tale about online retail horror stories. The worst was someone who "returned" the item they found unsatisfactory. Only the item they returned wasn't the one sent out. >.<

BANNED.

[XCashier]

When I was selling on Ebay, I had a list of users that I would not sell to.

I do too. Usually people who did not pay, or made ridiculous demands, or were generally jerks. (I've said it before: you insist on showing your ass, sooner or later it's going to get kicked.) I don't have the time or the inclination to cater to assholes. And the great thing about running your own business is, you don't have to do business with someone you don't want to do business with.

[Dreamstalker]

flyonthewall, that happened to me a few times (if I sell anything with a serial number, I photograph/document the number and mark the item with a blacklight pen if feasible). One jerk claimed something was not as described...he 'tested' the item by scraping/nicking with some sort of blade, rendering it unsellable (I forget what it was made of, but it was genuine and this guy ruined it). Paypal of course forced a refund and docked me $10 extra for daring to question a buyer. Nevermind that my return policy stated "item must be in original condition" and this had been damaged as my photos showed.

[Limescale]

Eons ago when I was but a humble comic book store employee we had one guy who apparently was sent to terrorize the store as part of an initiation into a local street gang (least that was his excuse).

The store had a requirement that any manner of attire that concealed one's face had to be removed while inside. This guy came in wearing a hood and a kerchief around his mouth and nose (major no-no) and when asked to remove them said he would only if an employee faced him in a knife fight in the alley beside the store, with the demand that he "didn't want no pussy-ass who couldn't take at least five stab wounds and lose at least a pint of blood" before dying. (Yes he actually said that to the staff, on camera).

Naturally cops were called, he got the cuffs put on him and was searched, and yes he did in fact have two knives on him (pathetic little three inch pen knives, but still knives).

Funniest part was he demanded a copy of the security camera footage as he was being dragged out, and when we told him that wasn't going to happen his entire attitude changed. He stopped being abusive and started begging us for proof that he'd 'shown up the man' saying he'd never be accepted by the local street gang without camera footage. When we again denied him he started tearing up, apologizing for his behavior and saying he didn't actually mean to hurt anyone.

No one bought it and naturally he was never allowed back in. We kept a photo of him and a transcript of his dialogue in the security office for when we needed something to lighten the mood.

Good but weird times.

[catcul]

The store had a requirement that any manner of attire that concealed one's face had to be removed while inside. This guy came in wearing a hood and a kerchief around his mouth and nose (major no-no) and when asked to remove them said he would only if an employee faced him in a knife fight in the alley beside the store, with the demand that he "didn't want no pussy-ass who couldn't take at least five stab wounds and lose at least a pint of blood" before dying. (Yes he actually said that to the staff, on camera).

It's too bad you probably weren't allowed to keep a machete or gun behind the line.

[Jay 2K Winger]

It's too bad you probably weren't allowed to keep a machete or gun behind the line.

Ah, pull a Mick Dundee on him? "'At's not a knoife."

[catcul]

I remember a surveillance video of a guy who tried to rob a convenience store with a knife. The two clerks pulled out machetes and hit him with the non-sharpened edges. That robber should have considered himself lucky.

[wordgirl]

Hope this doesn't count as necro-posting, esp. since these are tales from the crypt, but I do have a few.

At Famous Lingerie Store, there was a considerable list of people who were banned. One stands out. We'd been finding shredded garments - it seemed pretty obvious that someone was trying to force them to fit but they were too small. This happens from time to time in the normal course of business, but we noticed a definite spike, and all the garments were nightgowns and teddies, really frou-frou stuff made of silk and satin that didn't stretch. We'd always find them stuffed under the cushions on the dressing-room benches right after times when the store was incredibly busy.

Suspicion settled on someone who worked at a record store (remember those?) in the shopping center - he was actually a rather good-looking guy, quite fit and tall. But it was quite a while before we could catch him, because of the way the store was laid out (today, there would be cameras, but at the time we didn't have them) and the fact that he was an absolute ninja.

Finally someone was able to catch him. I wasn't there when he was banned but the manager said he started crying when she was in the process of telling him he was busted. .. but she had the strong impression that being told off was a turnon for him as as well. Turned out she was right - there was a picture of him up in the breakroom with strict instructions to run him off if he tried to come in the store, and for a few weeks he made a practice of getting "caught" by the prettiest sales clerks and told to leave.*

Finally our manager had had enough. She went to the store where he worked, told the manager there, and the upshot was he was fired and banned from the entire center.

One other was a guy who was a very grandfatherly type. He would come in and chat with the clerks, and try to get us to meet him for drinks/coffee after work. It was uncomfortable but not really ban-worthy, even though he never bought anything, until one day he was apparently just fed up with being consistently (but politely) refused. He went off on a young assistant manager, calling her a whore, asserting that the store was a front for prostitution and saying he'd "pay for it," so we needed to stop being "stuck up bitches."

The scary thing was that a few of us had actually gotten kind of fond of him and had considered meeting him at the coffee place. The extra-scary thing was that during his rant he accurately described the cars of several of us - including me (gulp). Banned - and we made a point of walking each other to our cars for quite a while.

*this was not uncommon, but he was particularly persistent and blatant about it - he went from silent ninja to "OH HAI look at me I'm in the store I was banned from - aren't you going to scold me?"