I spent 5 years straight in retail and never once saw anyone that crazy.

There was one guy that always came in and wanted to talk to you about absolutely nothing for your entire shift, and he always brought his kids along and let them totally destroy the store one section at a time while he hounded you about things that were in no way related to your work. He always latched onto the same couple of employees too. I'd swear the man had radar. If I was in the store the guy found me. Every damn time.

His daughter used to look up at us and say "WE'RE POOR" really enthusiastically.

It shouldn't have been funny but the way she said it combined with the way they tended to fill carts with merchandise I have a feeling it wasn't completely true. Unless he was spending all his money on his clothes and his car and toys instead of things his kids actually needed, which just makes me wish I'd punched him in the face that much more.

My favorite though was a Hot Wheels collector that we not so affectionately dubbed "Greaser". He had shoulder length black hair that looked like it hadn't been washed in ages. He always wore the same dirty and worn black trench coat and a really beat up black Nascar hat. He was the quintessential redneck. He always came in and wanted to look through our cases of Hot Wheels so he could pick out the rare ones for himself to sell at the local Flea Market. This was actually something our store manager at the time had declared very "not cool". What if some little kid likes collecting them too? Should he have to pay $20 for a Hot Wheels car at a flea market or should he get the chance at finding that one he wants digging through the pegs like the other normal people? The general attitude was "Little kid for the win" so we always told the guy no. This is on top of quite a few other valid reasons for not letting a customer open a case of merchandise and pick one or two pieces out of a hundred out of the box and then leave us with the rest.

The guy followed me around the store one night in the last few months I worked there (at this point we've been dealing with this guy for four years) giving me the same speech over and over again about how it was bad customer service and a thousand other things. The manager there at the time had already dealt with him once that day. I went and got him and explained that the guy hadn't left me alone for quite a while. He looked at the guy and said "I don't ever want to talk to you about this again. Either buy something or leave."

It was awesome. The guy continued to come in the store but he never once spoke to me again in the last few months I was around. I imagine he still goes in every day and digs through the pegs right after the store opens. Just before I left we'd actually gotten to where we'd wait until the afternoon after he left to stock the Hot Wheels pegs and then watch the next morning when he left frustrated and empty handed because the ones he wanted so badly had already been bought by the legions of soccer moms and dentists and whomever else was in to shop the night before. The thought of him glaring at the employees makes me chuckle.

Look, I explained this to you when I bought the caulk. I wanted to shower but couldn't because the water would have leaked through the pan until I caulked it.

Apparently EB employees have to deal with this, quite a bit. Having worked mostly in hardware stores, I got the old guys with a quasi-fetish for screw-talk. "What's the measurement on this nut? Yeah? Yeah, that's a good one. That's better for metal-work, you know? I used this kind on a job once..." God...

Then there was the woman who continually brought her little boy in, and told me that he had cancer, when that had nothing to do with what we were talking about. I found him in the bikes section one day, and I asked him if he was feeling ok. He looked puzzled and said "yeah, I feel fine." Then a he seemed to remember something, and said "Oh yeah! I have cancer!" with a HUGE grin on his face. He had a full head of hair, by the way.

People are odd.

I worked for EB Games for five years and we had our share of weird customers. My last year there, this new "customer" wandered into our store, and at this point I was the assistant manager. He'd come into our store in the morning as we opened and spend roughly five to six hours in there looking around for something to buy which he almost never did. Maybe bought three things the entire time he shopped there. He was in his late twenties, slightly overweight, extraordinarily pale, very small squinty eyes and heavily balding. He always wore this dirty beat up Xbox hat, jeans and a Pod Racer t-shirt. And I mean always, I never saw him in anything else ever. Oh yeah, and he really smelled bad. Very, very bad.

He was a hardcore Xbox fanboy, the scary type that game store employees have nightmares about. He would constantly ask us about upcoming Xbox games and if we couldn't relate every detail that had been released online or in magazines he would take it upon himself to educate us and any other customer in the store unlucky enough to be near him. And he would badmouth other systems and games. Particularly the Final Fantasy series and the Nintendo Gamecube. He had something against those two things. Our staff knew about him and he'd been warned about his behavior several times, the manager had even said he'd have to ban him if he got any more complaints.

A few days before Final Fantasy X came out, he was in the store and constantly talking bad about it while leafing through magazines. He was telling every customer that came near him how bad it was and not to buy it when it came out. The two employees that were there were trying to get him to leave because he wasn't buying anything and other customers were getting annoyed with him. I got there and was filled in about what was going on and went to work the register. He greeted me and I gave him my standard hello and helped the next customer in line who just happened to want to reserve FFX. He then zoomed in and started talking about FFX, ripping on it and saying it would be a waste to buy it. I put down the customer's reservation and handed him his slip and I snapped. A whole year's worth of frustration went out in one burst. I turned to him, yanked the magazine out of his hand and yelled "Unless you're going to buy something, get the f**k out of here and never come back!"

I swear the entire store stopped moving and the realization of what I had done set in and my cheeks burned with embarrassment. He stuttered out a reply. "But I have to come back Wednesday to pick up the copy of Final Fantasy X that I reserved."

I stared at him in complete shock for at least a full minute, turned to the register and found his pre-order. Canceled it and gave him his money back and told him he was banned from the store. His mom called that night and screamed at me over the phone because of it. She even called me a Nazi.

I loved that job. But I never, ever, want to work retail again.

This thread makes me glad I work at home. I feel for all of you. Please don't go crazy over the holidays.

Maybe Elysium's Black Friday article deserves a re-linking.

I used to be the chap that hung around the local games store. THis was when I was 16 and should have been out carousing with my college friends.

f*ck.

In defense of people who hang out in game stores, during my time at EB I met a lot of really cool people and made some good friends. If you're nice to them, don't pressure them to reserve every new game under the sun and try to sell them a strategy guide for that copy of Madden they're picking up you'll find they'll come back and will become your best customers and someone you're glad to see walk in.

I've been working at Gamestop part time, for a year, and I hate retail. I'm a "3rd Key" which means no power but I close the store three nights a week. Once I save up enough cash for the engagement ring, I'm quiting. At our store, we have our own smelly fanboy who doens't like Mario games and hates the PS2. He's a Xbox fanboy and does the same stuff. However, he'll leave the store and then come back. He will buy something, an hour later come back and return it, go over to the Toy's R Us buy something, come back and brag about what he got. I don't mind customers returning stuff but don't come back and brag about what you did buy with the money. It's rude.

We also get a lot of high school kids in (we're in a mall) who try to talk down to me becuase I'm a register jocky. Or people who come in and want to tell me how their life sucks, how the economy is going to hell, how America aint' the same. We also get a lot of white trash in who spend hours at the $10 or less bin, bring up a game that costs $1.99 and ask me if it is any good. The game is $2! Are you going to be that mad if it isn't very good?

I also hate the uber geeks who like to bitch at me for asking them to reserve something when they buy a game. They know it's company policy and it takes two seconds. We don't harp on you if you say no. But we just say "I notice you're buying Final Fantasy XII, would you like to reserve INSERT RPG for just $5?" We don't push the magazine unless the customer is buying a lot of used, or we have seen them buy a lot of used product.

Oh, I hate people who pay with checks. Who doesn't have a debit card today? It comes from the same account!!!