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I hope that somewhere along the line it made a difference or someone learned, or a policy changed, because otherwise that's heinously tragic and pointless.

Tying into gamers and kindness, and going back to saying about Bronies being charitable earlier in the thread, I ran a stall at a brony and biard game convention, and we had a charity box there for one of the community members who had suffered a stroke, and couldn't pay his medical bills.
It was a "give what you feel" thing with a small sign explaining his trouble. They filled and jammed the donation box by mid afternoon, and we had to get a second.

I feel in disaffected groups such as gaming, there's acute social awareness.

 jreilly89 wrote:

What store in the Springs? If it's what I'm thinking it is, I've been going there for about a year and a half. The staff is (mostly) really fun and nice, and the community is (mostly) fun and good guys, playing everything from 40k to Magic, DnD and Flames of War.

The bad one was Lace and something or other, or Faeries and fantasy, I don't remember...

The "good" store was probably the one you go to... room with the majority of tables have roll up garage doors from when it used to be an auto store, and when I went in there (for some reason, I never gamed there) they had pretty much every game I could have thought people play, but the biggest sections of the store were 40k/WHFB, Flames and DnD/PnP books. Back in 09, i basically shared a parking lot with an Arby's, and was very close to a Taco Bell as well (things may have changed since then)

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Thats not really fair to the employees. They might not have known if he was telling the truth, and could have been worried about losing their jobs. Was he already known to them and the local community? Did they have reason to believe or disbelieve his claims?

However, the right thing to do however would have been to call the Police and allowed the guy to remain in the shops where it was warm until they arrived. It was the Police's responsibility to deal with it - determining if he was telling the truth, and then contacting social services to arrange emergency accommodation.

He WAS known in the area though not to us at the gaming store. There were instructions in several of the stores to be nice and let him stay there for a reasonable amount of time to be warm. And it was VERY obvious that he was challenged by both his actions AND his identifications. He was distraught this day not because he was cold, but because he was hungry and needed money for food. He could take care of himself well enough in some ways. He knew he needed food and shelter. He knew how to get food and cook for himself. He just lacked the means to do so, and he needed help shopping so as to get things he needed. From the way I understand things his caregivers were pocketing the money that was supposed to go to taking care of him. The landlord kept him as long as he could, but the rent hadn't been paid for 6 months.

I honestly wouldn't trust the police to do right by the man. The local police have a spotty record on such things. Throwing the man in jail for the day/overnight would not have helped things. We did not learn about these other issues he was having until after he passed and it was in the paper. When he was finally forced to leave his residence the landlord tried to contact authorities and the caregivers, but the man ran off.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
I hope that somewhere along the line it made a difference or someone learned, or a policy changed, because otherwise that's heinously tragic and pointless.

Tying into gamers and kindness, and going back to saying about Bronies being charitable earlier in the thread, I ran a stall at a brony and biard game convention, and we had a charity box there for one of the community members who had suffered a stroke, and couldn't pay his medical bills.
It was a "give what you feel" thing with a small sign explaining his trouble. They filled and jammed the donation box by mid afternoon, and we had to get a second.

I feel in disaffected groups such as gaming, there's acute social awareness.

There have been some policy changes to where the notification system is MUCH better now. And the places people can go is much better advertised, although sometimes tragedies still happen due to the person in trouble just being to proud to get help. Like my mother's former co-worker who passed in a similar fashion.

Individual gamers can be quite abrassive and repugnant and they often give the rest of us a bad name; but I think the gaming community at large is quite accepting and generous although often socially awkward. I think your observation about the gaming community at large is correct.

OK then, thanks for clarifying that. That is indeed disgusting.

This happened to me some years ago.

The story starts off with a store vs. store tournament. Our shop agreed to go to their shop and play the first round. It was 2 players on a team, 2,000 point list per team, standard brackets. We show up at the appointed time to start the tourney and the owner's wife is freaking out. All she would say was "This is not going to work, this is not going to work!" The tourney was on a Friday night and that was the usual night for MTG. She kept going on about it. "This is Magic night, you can't displace the Magic players!" She was saying other things that I can not repeat on here, but she did not know that I could hear her. It was really starting to annoy me. BADLY.

We finish the tourney and I took first (5th ed Blood Angels), got my prize and went outside to get away from her. Now the vast majority of us are 21 or older but there was like 2 of us that were underage. We decided to go to BW3's and BS about what happened instead of the bar that was right next door. I started it off by saying that that woman needed to calm down as she was treating us like garbage because we were playing 40k on a MTG night. HER HUSBAND SET IT ALL UP. We were all fairly PO'd by her actions and treatment of us. We decided that none of us would ever go there to play again.

About a year and a half later, my buddy gets into RC Cars. He wants to upgrade the bushings to bearings in the wheels and gears. We do a little calling around and find out that THAT shop had said bearings. I told him that the owners wife was a bit of a PITA but rather than order them online and have to wait 2 weeks ... lets just go there and get them. We go to the store and peruse the parts ( they sell models, RC Cars, boardgames, etc) and get what we need. Get to the register and he puts the bearings on the counter. The wife is running the register.

Now this part ... you just cannot make this gak up, she looks my buddy in the eye and says "Do you do magic?" He looks at her and I can see what he is thinking, 'Is she having a go at me? WTF is she on about? Is she serious? She IS serious.' His reply: I have no magical ability whatsoever.

I lose it ... I am doubled over laughing and I can't explain to him why this is so funny. There are MTG cards right in front of him, and he had never heard of the game. After explaining what she is asking about, she goes on a tirade about those "Magically Odorous Kids" Then it dawns on me ... she was mad because when we had our 40k tourney we took the basement and that put the MTG crowd upstairs in her general area... she didn't want to smell them all night. She told us that on Friday night she gets 3 of those battery air fresheners turned up to 11 for a room that is about 12x14 foot and that makes it bearable.

 JamesY wrote:

Deadnight wrote:

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
peer at the tiny kitten.

Spoiler:

Except for the fact that all cats are evil and need to be exorcised, crucified, and have holy water, silver bullets and a stake through the heart applied to them without remorse, that is a seriously cute little kitten. Nice pic!

But I'm a dog person, and dogs are so much cooler.

I'll never forget the wise words of a former colleague (who greeted the end of each working day with "another day closer to the box.") on owning a dog;

"the problem with a dog is that you can kick it to death and it will forgive you with its dying look."

Love that line, for the truth in it, and because it always makes me chuckle.

Hey, some people want to have a pet, others evidently want to be a pet - because at the end of the day that's the reality, the cat owns you.

Deadnight wrote:

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
peer at the tiny kitten.

Spoiler:

Except for the fact that all cats are evil and need to be exorcised, crucified, and have holy water, silver bullets and a stake through the heart applied to them without remorse, that is a seriously cute little kitten. Nice pic!

But I'm a dog person, and dogs are so much cooler.

Because I hand reared her, she never got the memo about being a jerk. The worst thing she does is race up the stairs to sit on the closed toilet lid, and headbutt you in the leg if you're using the bathroom sink. I have dropped my toothbrush many many times.

How many cats do you have, Buttery? I've seen them mentioned a lot of times here!

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 jreilly89 wrote:

What store in the Springs? If it's what I'm thinking it is, I've been going there for about a year and a half. The staff is (mostly) really fun and nice, and the community is (mostly) fun and good guys, playing everything from 40k to Magic, DnD and Flames of War.

The bad one was Lace and something or other, or Faeries and fantasy, I don't remember...

The "good" store was probably the one you go to... room with the majority of tables have roll up garage doors from when it used to be an auto store, and when I went in there (for some reason, I never gamed there) they had pretty much every game I could have thought people play, but the biggest sections of the store were 40k/WHFB, Flames and DnD/PnP books. Back in 09, i basically shared a parking lot with an Arby's, and was very close to a Taco Bell as well (things may have changed since then)

Ah yep, that's the one I go to it's not perfect, but 80% of the time it's great

 NorseSig wrote:

 Matthew wrote:

Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:Was the guy a gamer, or did he enter the store at any point?

AncientSkarbrand wrote:For doing what exactly?

He never entered the store, he came running down the street, got tackled and hit by a police.

I vote that if it has a chance of making people uncomfortable inside the game store it counts.

At our game store that closed it's doors we had a distraught special needs person come up and ask for money for food because he hadn't eaten in several days. All the other businesses in the area ran him off because they were afraid he would hurt their business. Myself and another person gave him the money we had which wasn't much and invited him into the store. Everyone in the store chipped in and the manager gave him some snacks to eat while we pooled our money for the man. We managed to scrape together around 400 dollars for him, and then several of us went with him to help him shop for groceries. It was truly horrific to see a community of otherwise good business owners let the issue of mental health impair their judgement in helping someone in need out.

The man unfortunately was kicked out of his home 4 weeks later because his caregivers didn't pay his rent as they were supposed to. He broke into a vehicle to stay warm during the cold winter night and froze to death. Kind of threw everyone in the store for a shock. He was a nice man who didn't get the care he deserved. So I guess the fact he was in the store sort of makes it a FLGS horror story.

gak, that one hit me hard.
Whilst it does go to show that we gamers are an accepting and kind bunch the fate of that poor young man is terrible.

 Yodhrin wrote:
Hey, some people want to have a pet, others evidently want to be a pet - because at the end of the day that's the reality, the cat owns you.

John Wayne said it best in the movie True Grit: "No one can ever own a cat. The best you can do is room with 'em."

 Matthew wrote:
How many cats do you have, Buttery? I've seen them mentioned a lot of times here!

I've coincidentally mentioned them 2-3 times this week, but usually I'm not a crazy pet owner.
I have two, and a third (pictured) lives here because I'm too soft to say no, and the alternative is she lives alone in an empty house.
I'll say this, I'm glad we discovered a good litter that truly contains the smell. I get my back exercise doing the boxes twice a day.

Wait, you don't let them poop outside?

methebest wrote:
Wait, you don't let them poop outside?

I don't know what its like in Aus, but I've literally never heard of not having a box for your cat. Mine is an outdoor cat; he comes and goes and probably poops outside, but we still have a box for him and he definitely uses it when he comes home.

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
[
Because I hand reared her, she never got the memo about being a jerk. The worst thing she does is race up the stairs to sit on the closed toilet lid, and headbutt you in the leg if you're using the bathroom sink. I have dropped my toothbrush many many times.

Nope - all this means is she is a cunning evil cat, who excels in infiltration. (even if she is pretty)

Stake through the heart I say. Have some silver bullets handy. Just in case.

Yours sincerely,

The dog

How about less cats, more FLGS horror stories?

methebest wrote:
Wait, you don't let them poop outside?

Most people here have litter boxes in a corner of the home. That's not exactly unusual.
Mine are covered boxes that look like cat carriers, so I just pick the box up by the handle, and take it outside, dump the contents.

 stanman wrote:
How about less cats, more FLGS horror stories?

But a cat in a gaming store IS a horror story for some people.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 stanman wrote:
How about less cats, more FLGS horror stories?

But a cat in a gaming store IS a horror story for some people.

Does a cat jumping up on the gaming table in middle of an apocalypse game knocking a Thunderhawk, Warhound, Fellblade, and several other models off the table breaking them before jumping down count?

 NorseSig wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 stanman wrote:
How about less cats, more FLGS horror stories?

But a cat in a gaming store IS a horror story for some people.

Does a cat jumping up on the gaming table in middle of an apocalypse game knocking a Thunderhawk, Warhound, Fellblade, and several other models off the table breaking them before jumping down count?

Unless this story ends with a deceased cat, I'd rather not hear it.

Obviously the cat was a heretic.

I was playing in an Apoc. game once. The guys on my side had a ton of titans, and we had agreed to group our Eldar revenants together as one large group. A guy from the other side needed to come to our side to move his models, leaning WAY over the side of the board. As he did his shirt caught a couple of the Revenants, causing a domino effect. Two Armorcast Revenants tipped back, tipping over a friend's Forgeworld Revenant and my scratch built Revenant, both of which slid off the side of the table. I had enough time to save one, and I chose my friend's Forgeworld piece do to the cost. My scratchbuilt one broke into 4 or 5 pieces. The only response from the guy that did it was "looks like you'll need some glue".

 cuda1179 wrote:
I was playing in an Apoc. game once. The guys on my side had a ton of titans, and we had agreed to group our Eldar revenants together as one large group. A guy from the other side needed to come to our side to move his models, leaning WAY over the side of the board. As he did his shirt caught a couple of the Revenants, causing a domino effect. Two Armorcast Revenants tipped back, tipping over a friend's Forgeworld Revenant and my scratch built Revenant, both of which slid off the side of the table. I had enough time to save one, and I chose my friend's Forgeworld piece do to the cost. My scratchbuilt one broke into 4 or 5 pieces. The only response from the guy that did it was "looks like you'll need some glue".

That lack of empathy from the player who caused the mishap, is what makes another player want to vault over the table, punch the guy in the face with car keys using them like spiked knuckles, and choke him til he turns blue and soils himself.

 NorseSig wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
I was playing in an Apoc. game once. The guys on my side had a ton of titans, and we had agreed to group our Eldar revenants together as one large group. A guy from the other side needed to come to our side to move his models, leaning WAY over the side of the board. As he did his shirt caught a couple of the Revenants, causing a domino effect. Two Armorcast Revenants tipped back, tipping over a friend's Forgeworld Revenant and my scratch built Revenant, both of which slid off the side of the table. I had enough time to save one, and I chose my friend's Forgeworld piece do to the cost. My scratchbuilt one broke into 4 or 5 pieces. The only response from the guy that did it was "looks like you'll need some glue".

That lack of empathy from the player who caused the mishap, is what makes another player want to vault over the table, punch the guy in the face with car keys using them like spiked knuckles, and choke him til he turns blue and soils himself.

Totally. Any time there are tall, tipsy models near a board edge EXTREME caution is called for, which he didn't show. Even then I would have been relatively okay with it, as all he did was damage a scratch-build that cost me all of $20 and 10 hours of my time. That's easily fixed. The non-caring attitude is what made me pissed. If he had helped me gather the pieces, offered me some glue, and stated how sorry he was I'd have forgotten about it in seconds.

 cuda1179 wrote:

 NorseSig wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
I was playing in an Apoc. game once. The guys on my side had a ton of titans, and we had agreed to group our Eldar revenants together as one large group. A guy from the other side needed to come to our side to move his models, leaning WAY over the side of the board. As he did his shirt caught a couple of the Revenants, causing a domino effect. Two Armorcast Revenants tipped back, tipping over a friend's Forgeworld Revenant and my scratch built Revenant, both of which slid off the side of the table. I had enough time to save one, and I chose my friend's Forgeworld piece do to the cost. My scratchbuilt one broke into 4 or 5 pieces. The only response from the guy that did it was "looks like you'll need some glue".

That lack of empathy from the player who caused the mishap, is what makes another player want to vault over the table, punch the guy in the face with car keys using them like spiked knuckles, and choke him til he turns blue and soils himself.

Totally. Any time there are tall, tipsy models near a board edge EXTREME caution is called for, which he didn't show. Even then I would have been relatively okay with it, as all he did was damage a scratch-build that cost me all of $20 and 10 hours of my time. That's easily fixed. The non-caring attitude is what made me pissed. If he had helped me gather the pieces, offered me some glue, and stated how sorry he was I'd have forgotten about it in seconds.

I'm the same way, if it's an accident and they feel bad about it, I'm rarely upset. There has been plenty of times that one of my CSM rhinos or something got slid off the table accidently. Always breaking some spikes without fail. So far, any time that it was my opponent's fault, They have always been incredibly sorry. After which, I pick it up, pull some glue outta my case to fix any serious damage and just shrug and say "battle damage builds up over 10,000 years" and put it back where it was. I've only had to replace all the spikes on one of my rhinos once, which considering how many times that one has ate the floor, its getting off pretty easy. That being said, If my opponents were ever so unapologetic as your opponent, I'd probably be much less polite about it.

I recently got in to xwing, and went for a demo game with my wife to a local store that, until a few days prior to my going, I had no idea even existed. The thought of another haven of geekery to visit had me excited for how awesome this place would be!

So, when I get to the store, I was more than a little surprised to literally hear - gods honest truth - the store owner telling his regulars to "feth off". Not once, but repeatedly. When I looked at him as though to say "what the hell?!" he simply said "don't worry about it, that's what my customers like. They like to be spoken to like that".

Looking around, the average age of his clientele was 16. I doubt they'd even settled on which deodorant they liked, let alone going along with being spoken to like that.

So, we sit down for our demo game. Apart from they don't have any demo kits. So I buy one without ever having played it, confident on reviews alone that I'd like the game. We assemble the pieces and get off to a good start. I'm still with the owner, who like everyone in the store, is just wearing jeans and a tshirt. No name badge or staff identifier at all. It'll become apparent later why this is important.

Cutting a real long story short, but keeping the important details -

- A tie fighter broke with the stand pin still lodged inside
- The store owner had left, this random guy (plain clothes, like the owner) to help me. I figured he was staff
- couldn't fix it, so went home and sent a message to store owner by Facebook
- Went back in some days later with the broken piece (UK Consumer Law classed it as faulty, and liable for a replacement from the manufacturer, which the retailer takes care of)
- Owner got SERIOUSLY gakky with me, shouting, swearing, generally being aggressive, again in front of his customers

It ended up getting sorted, but only after a good - I dunno - 10 days or so, and all that attitude of his just because he didn't know UK retail law. After seeing how he spoke to the customers that he seemingly liked, and then receiving that sort of "customer service", I think it's safe to say that I won't be going back again!

And that folks, is why I much prefer GW stores to independents!

With all these horror stories, I'm finding myself cringing at the behavior of some of the people telling the stories. How about trying to be assertive or proactive, rather than being a passive participant? I'm all of 5'8" and I'm almost always smiling when speaking with people. I haven't been in a fistfight since I was maybe 8 years old. But I never find myself in the position of allowing someone to speak to me in a disrespectful manner, touch me, break my possessions, or make me feel like I'm less.

If some of you are kids, I get it: it takes maturity and wisdom to learn to stand up for yourself. But if you're an adult, don't allow others to get away with acting in this manner.

Being treated badly, unexpectedly, and thrown out of your comfort zone, is how donkey-caves get away with being donkey-caves. There's often a psychological reaction of "Did that just happen? No? Yes? Err, what?" and unless you are a trained professional or an extraordinarily forward person, the vast majority of the time people will get away with abusing your trust the first time.
Especially in a "safe" environment that you chose to visit like a hobby store, where you expect a social camaraderie from fellow gamers.

Instead of "Fool me once..." Consider, "Jerk me about once..."

Well, one could start by ditching the idea of there being "safe" environments, spaces and zones.

 Buttery Commissar wrote:

Being treated badly, unexpectedly, and thrown out of your comfort zone, is how donkey-caves get away with being donkey-caves. There's often a psychological reaction of "Did that just happen? No? Yes? Err, what?" and unless you are a trained professional or an extraordinarily forward person, the vast majority of the time people will get away with abusing your trust the first time.
Especially in a "safe" environment that you chose to visit like a hobby store, where you expect a social camaraderie from fellow gamers.

Instead of "Fool me once..." Consider, "Jerk me about once..."

And yet, I keep hearing the same victimhood stories overand over again from some posters in this thread. Someone's always making them uncomfortable, being creepy, or paying them unwanted attention. How about people take some responsibility for their own safety? This incessant need to feel safe and secure is the root of totalitarianism: the guarantee of security at the sacrifice of personal freedom.