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Over they years I have witnessed a few times that really frightened me in the sanctum of the friendly game store.

First was the time back years ago when magic was crazy popular; I had a booster box of unlimited on pre-order from a shop I frequented. The order came in on
Thursday and the owner was very clear with everyone that he allowed a small amount to pre-orders for magic and if you did not pick it up by Saturday evening, the order went
on the shelf on first thing on Sunday morning. I went in at closing time on Friday night and was greeted by the owner and a long time clerk, Normally I look a around a little and they placed
"my pile" on the counter top. Comics, GW stuff and the box of magic. I was just shopping around, talking to everyone and then a guy no one had seen before walked in.
Asked if they had stock of Magic, the owner told him about having a few boxes not sold but if not picked up to check back Sunday Morning. The guy saw my box on
the counter and pulled it out my stack and told the clerk "check me out". The owner explained the hold system and requirements and that box was already spoken for. The
customer was very adamant about buying the box. After a long while of trying to reason with the guy, finally the owner told him to "GET OUT!" The guy threw a fit, pushing
things around and slamming the door closed. No one had a clue who the guy was and he never came back.

Next was a FLGS a few years ago that dabbled in Vintage Video games, I went in to sale them a old copy of N64 Mario Party; I was talking to the clerk and the
shop a bunch of people in it. Suddenly a very dirty guy walked in with a PS3 console, no games, no controllers, no plug ins.. just the "brick". He pushed pasted everyone
in line and slammed it down on the counter-top asking how much he could get for it. The clerk calmly explained he was with another customer and when he was finished
he would need to check the condition and other things before offering any price for it. Clearly the guy was on some type of drugs and was very twitchy stood there for a second,
grabbed up the console and left. Everyone went back to what they were doing. Minutes later he came back in and did it again.. This time demanding "Are you going to buy
this or not??" Someone from the back came out and said he would look at the console, as he was hooking it up to check it, A woman walked in being the same condition as
the drug guy.. clearly his mate.. Yelling "Is he going to buy it or not!!" Ends up the system was fried and clerk couldn't get it to do anything.. They got really mad and left..But it was really
weird to witness. Clearly heavy drugs were involved but never been that close to anyone like that.

I guess this is some of the reasons I don't think I could ever run a game store.. But I am sure this is nothing compared to what others have seen.

I had a teenager walk over to the counter where my miniature stuff was sitting, tear a brick out of my pluckfoam tray, then the little bell end had the audacity to look me dead in the eyes, go 'huh,' and put it back.

Every other FLGS I've gone to has had a sign stating that odor will not be tolerated and those with excess body odor will be asked to leave. Always thought that was a little weird.

I worked at a store years ago in the Midwest. We had a nice girl that came in every wednesday night for a comic pull list. She was a local college art student, kept to herself mostly. She was always on time about picking up her pulls, and she would easily spend 50-75$ a week on comics.

We also had a 35 year old manchild magic player in our store, that no one liked.

One night when I was working, winter of 2007 she came in around 8 pm and was browsing the wall. This guy I mentioned was in the store hanging out, mostly not buying anything and being a real tool. He walked over to her, and said

"Hello! You're very beautiful, if you'd like to come home with me tonight, I'll wreck your pussy, harder than your ancestors wrecked Pearl Harbor."

The look of shear horror on her face, I can still clearly recall every detail to this day. She screamed at him to get away from her, put the books down and left.

We never saw her again.

By the way, she was Korean, not Japanese.

To compound it, the store owner did nothing. He thought it was funny and gave the annoying one a high five. I just sat there in shock, completely unsure of how to handle any of this. Needless to say, that store went out of business, and I'm quite happy it did. There were other incidents with girls in the store that were far worse than the story I just related.

Well, my stories are quite tame, but these are the two I remember from the FLGS I go to occasionally.

The first is that the owner wants to keep the store a friendly atmosphere for all ages, so after some (admittedly from the offenders themselves) very fruity back and forth chat during a few magic games, the staff started to crack down somewhat on bad language. One player who became the target of this (and if I'm honest needed to be dealt with as he was constantly swearing) took offense when told to leave during his 40k game, got pissy and then copped a 3 month ban for destroying shop property. He hasn't been back since.

The second was during one of the big magic release weekenders, and in the Saturday a kid (think he was around 12-13yrs old) had one of his cards stolen from his binder. Now, the staff and owner are pretty clued up on who has what, and this kid was lucky to pull a card that was both rare and useful, and worth £50 on trade sites. So, the owner puts out a call on every social media platform to all groups: Annonymously return the card within 3 days or the police are involved, and the cctv will be kept safe until then. On the Monday when opening up, a brown envelope was in the postbox with the card inside. We all never found out who did it, but no thefts have happened since.

Oh, just remembered one more! The owner started to really clamp down on people smelling not to fresh in store, and put deodorant bottles in the toilets for anyone to use when needed, and the staff will remove people who are so ripe they stink out the place. This came about after the big British summer heatwave last year that really made certain players reek. A couple of people (the ones that have been told, repeatedly by the staff) tried to complain on Facebook but the owner stood firm and said its up to individuals to take responsibility for themselves. The store has been fresh for a long time since then!

Don't particularly frequent FLGS, as I've a local GW.

But, as a Till Monkey, we've had customers befoul and besmirch their pantaloons on occasion. Now fair enough, one of the kids was autistic. Shame the parents left him to it, and didn't inform staff of his special needs. If they had, we'd of course have insisted he have a responsible adult with him at all times. Because we're Nerds Getting Paid, not Child Minders.

I can relate to the drug-user issue in the OP. I used to work in Game, which (for those who are in the fortunate position of not knowing what that is) is a video games store that does trade-ins for old consoles and games. You'd barely have a week go by without some dodgy looking bloke walking in with a clearly broken console or a selection of games of dubious quality and provenance. I do remember one particular customer who, with a straight face, tried to trade in 8 copies of GTA San Andreas, all brand new and still sealed. When suspicions were raised about how he happened upon these he told the guy on the till, with a completely straight face, that he got them for his birthday. All 8 of them. Needless to say he didn't get his cash, despite his extremely loud protests that he wasn't a criminal.

Our LGS had to install a combination lock on the public bathroom door which gets changed every week. You have to ask for the combo to use the washroom.

The store is next to a train station and located just outside of the city center, so a lot of transients would use the washroom there.

After one of the homeless guys overdosed on Heroin while shooting up in the washroom died, it prompted them to change the bathroom privileges policy.

That's why the bathroom had a combination lock installed and why the bathroom is only for customer use.

So several years ago I was visiting the FLGS in the midwest and chatting up the guys behind the counter. The store is large, well-known and has a larger gaming area in the back for mini's and role-playing. It was a Saturday and the back room was packed. While I was talking with the staff two very attractive women come in, wander around the store a bit and then peek into the back room. After which they exit the store. Plenty of women come into the store to shop and game and we all figured they were new to the area and wanted to see what the store was about. No big deal. 5 minutes later both women come in sporting lots of Red Bull and other Red Bull related materials. They come up to the counter and politely ask if they can go into the back and offer the players some Red Bull and other free stuff. The guy behind the counter looks them over... and very politely says, "No, I don't think that would be a good idea." The ladies, confused, accept it and leave. We all laugh a little as the crowd in back that day was mainly gents over 50 and the ladies combined with the Red Bull would have caused a few heart attacks!

Oh where to begin...

At a GW I used to go to- the legend of the kid named Jordan. This was slightly before my time, but the evidence was right there on the street. Jordan one day was dared to drink a pot of enchanted blue paint (Teclis blue for those not old enough ) and it went as well as expected. The guy ran out of the store after saying "I don't feel so good!" and barfed up all over the pavement in bright blue. I was still there in the late nineties, not sure if it is 20 years later.

Same store also had a problem guy, a guy I also went to school with. Now this guy had a habit of blowing his top quite violently whenever he got into a rules dispute and/or lost a game (so, like 99% of the time). He would lob his models in his case (a toolbox with no padding) and generally cause a scene. The staff would ban him, but this guy was wilier than he looked. This GW was like the training centre for the area so had a fairly high staff turnover. As soon as he saw a new member of staff in the store he would come in and ask them about their gaming nights- to which they invited him to thus undoing the ban. Then the inevitable happens and the whole process started again.

GW I was local to (and still am. I never left...) when I went to uni had legends all of its own too. The characters such as "Dog gak Dave", whom the staffers actually asked him once if he'd been bathing in sewage. This guy was fething stinky, he even made other stinky nerds recoil.

Had a guy whom I seem to recall bragged about having a 14-15yo gf (he was like, early 20's at the time). No idea if it was true as the guy looked a bit like he wasn't playing with a full deck.

I recall an incident from there that I had the... um, privilege of witnessing. Two guys had just finished a game- Stressed John (dude really had a look like he's left the oven on or the front door unlocked or something) was playing Jor-El (yes, that's his name. Really) and Jor-El decides to absent-mindedly drop the lid of his big arse GW case on top of John's army, now there was no malice in it- Jor-El is a cool guy, but he was a bit of a dippy teenager back then and John saw red. Jor-El is like twice the size at least of John (this was skinny nerd v fat nerd fight) and John starts trying to beat the gak out him, although he's not fighting back as he could have flattened him in a second. John has to be pulled off and calmed down.

Another wonderful story was told to us by the (then) new manager of this GW. Simon used to manage GW Watford and once got an irate customer bring in a broken Nintendo Wii and as is ritual with many a GW till monkey they have to explain that despite the shop being called "Games Workshop", no; they do not in fact sell computer games and there is no possible way they could have bought it from them (side note, another manager told us how John Barnes came into his old store thinking it was a music shop then stood looking confused). Wii guy chucks in on the counter and storms off. This was the same year the Wii was released and they were as rare as rocking horse gak, so Simon now had a prop to troll every customer who came in his shop looking for Nintendo Wiis. Some didn't find it as funny as he did.


Not had many "incidents" at our FLGS (despite us only have it for near 5 years...). Only major incident was when the day's takings went "missing". Now, the owner strongly suspected which of his customers it was but had no proof other than a suspicion, but he had to ban him as all fingers pointed to him plus he'd been looking for an excuse as he kept trying to chat up every woman that came in the store.


Now, OP if you really want some excellent stories (Dakka, help me out here) there is (was) a former GW staffer on here who the store that she(?) worked at seemed to be cursed. Many of the tales are recounted there in their posts but for the life of me I cannot remember their username.

Haven't really had much in the way of weird or bad experiences that I've witnessed at the FLGS's beyond a few loud and irate customers.

About the worst thing I've seen was back in the early 00's. We had a terrain-making/paint Thursday night that I regularly went too. We'd often get into 40K lore discussions.

Well, one night two of the younger guys got into a verbal argument over some lore. One of the two, who had been cutting foam with an Xxacto slammed his fist into his leg to make his point ... while holding the downward-pointed knife in his hand.

Everyone got quiet for about five seconds as he sat there, holding the knife in his clenched fist. Being the young'uns we were, when he finally moved his hand away and the blade was still sticking upright with a bit of a "twang" motion, several of us momentarily burst out into laughter before recomposing ourselves to help him treat the wound.

He was rushed off to an urgent care office as soon as we had the wound bound, but he had a bit of a limp for a week or so. He later tried to tell everyone he'd done that on purpose, but none of us ever bought it.

 Ghool wrote:
Our LGS had to install a combination lock on the public bathroom door which gets changed every week. You have to ask for the combo to use the washroom.

The store is next to a train station and located just outside of the city center, so a lot of transients would use the washroom there.

After one of the homeless guys overdosed on Heroin while shooting up in the washroom died, it prompted them to change the bathroom privileges policy.

That's why the bathroom had a combination lock installed and why the bathroom is only for customer use.

Nah, he didn't die. The paramedics hit him with the Narcan and he was fine. Apparently he came back the next day to try and get his drugs back
He did freak out the customers and made an unholy mess in the bathroom, though.

 Jjohnso11 wrote:
Every other FLGS I've gone to has had a sign stating that odor will not be tolerated and those with excess body odor will be asked to leave. Always thought that was a little weird.

Wot? Do you even people, mate?

It always weirds me out that people have never encountered stinkers in their lives. I've been on enough outdoor work crews where guys worked all week in the summer sun and still only showered on Sundays, IF the SO nagged them over it. Or team mates who figured wiping off the sweat is as good as a shower, and they let their pads get mostly dry over the weekend, so what's the problem? Or kids who didn't think they smelled so bad, so what was the problem? It's bad enough outdoors, when you're inside and clustered around a table...

I guess the only story I can tell is... well, about myself. I was... 13 or 14 at that age and reaaaaaally fething lazy at school. Not a bad student per se, but I just did not do any homework.
It got so worse that it became blatantly obvious that everything would fall apart soon, but I wanted to spend my birthday in peace. So I decided to skip school two days.
On the second day (the day after my birthday) I decided to spend the time in my favorite gaming store. Well, turns out the school called my parents and asked about me skipping school and informed them about my laziness. And my parents drove to the store, expecting me to be there and started to yell at me and took me home.
The store sadly closed about a year later, but the clerk was totally cool about it and only brought it up when nobody else was in the store. But yeah, there it is. In hindsight i can appreciate the story as it is.

 Stormonu wrote:
Haven't really had much in the way of weird or bad experiences that I've witnessed at the FLGS's beyond a few loud and irate customers.

About the worst thing I've seen was back in the early 00's. We had a terrain-making/paint Thursday night that I regularly went too. We'd often get into 40K lore discussions.

Well, one night two of the younger guys got into a verbal argument over some lore. One of the two, who had been cutting foam with an Xxacto slammed his fist into his leg to make his point ... while holding the downward-pointed knife in his hand.

Everyone got quiet for about five seconds as he sat there, holding the knife in his clenched fist. Being the young'uns we were, when he finally moved his hand away and the blade was still sticking upright with a bit of a "twang" motion, several of us momentarily burst out into laughter before recomposing ourselves to help him treat the wound.

He was rushed off to an urgent care office as soon as we had the wound bound, but he had a bit of a limp for a week or so. He later tried to tell everyone he'd done that on purpose, but none of us ever bought it.

I bet it makes Young Frankenstein even more hilarious for y'all!

One time at my FLGS, I encountered a hyperbolic caricature of a person who politically/ideologically opposes me, and they did a insanely extreme thing that absolutely no one with any understanding of social interaction would do (the sort of thing you would never see yourself, or would be recorded, but the kind of thing you read about on the internet from anonymous people posting on a website). So I did a thing that was funny and makes me a good person and everyone in the FLGS clapped.

(sorry, someone had to do it)

Since even before I started working at a FLGS, they've enforced the body odor rule- politely at first, but if it occurs again, it's a full ban until the store owner approves. A few of the local stinkies wanted to claim discrimination or outright lie about the reasons regarding their removal, but since we have audio recording equipment in the store now- it's hilarious to watch the owner correct them online and then ask if they'd like for him to link a digital recording of the confrontation to the comments section.

Had someone steal a guy's knights, then try and drive 5 miles to sell them to people playing another store. The shop owner made a call, there was a ban, and I wish I could see the look on these peoples' face when they realize that shop owners talk- all over the state. Must suck being banned from every FLGS for 300 miles.

We used to have a GW store in my town, situated in one of the larger and busier strip malls. It was mistaken for a video game store on a daily basis, usually from people calling, but sometimes from people wandering in too. In one case of the latter, a couple of black dudes were walking up to the store, but when dude A opened the door, dude B stopped him and said "Naw man, hold up. This is some g** a** s*** right here." They turned and left and the store got a good laugh out of it.

Did have a mom once loudly declare, after being told the store carried no video games of any sort, 'Why is it called GAMES workshop if you don't sell any games!?'

There was once a time when a visitor our shores confused Super Glue with a drink.

Poor old Till Monkey eventually struggled through the language barrier...and had to explain we don’t haggle in Britain.

Was an odd thing to spectate!

Let's see.... from various stores I've been in:

1. Woman watching her son at a Heroclix event was told to leave because she was both drunk, and drinking from a flask, openly.

2. Two doors down from the store there was a rowdy college bar. When game nights lasted too long we'd get heckled when leaving. A couple times they'd even come into the store to yell "NERDS!!!".

3. Having an ulta offended mom accuse the store of supporting Satanic cults

4. Guy throws a fit because he didn't get enough money for his used-model trade ins. Swears at the clerk, leaves, then comes back an hour later to get what he can.

5. Someone pretending to be a customer pooped in the sink as a joke.

 cuda1179 wrote:
3. Having an ulta offended mom accuse the store of supporting Satanic cults

We had some similar incidents over K47. Apparently someone told their mommy that everyone was playing "Nazis" and she had quite the tantrum, and demanded the store ban the game or put up a sign saying that we sold "Nazi Memorabilia". Odd, considering that the shop owner has already made a statement in print in the gaming area that there will be no "windmills of friendship" on models used in his store.

I think the most recent "problem" is that there was a group of guys that were bringing in their extremely disinterested girlfriends while they play, and the young ladies were extremely rude to anyone and everyone and had no qualms about making snarky comments about the people playing there. Pissed the owner off so bad, he loudly told the guys at that table "Gentlemen, if you want to continue playing in my store you will need to put these girls outside and back on the corners where you found them." None of them came back, but no big loss considering they were all running badly-recast armies and never bought more than a few drinks.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

Pissed the owner off so bad, he loudly told the guys at that table "Gentlemen, if you want to continue playing in my store you will need to put these girls outside and back on the corners where you found them." None of them came back, but no big loss considering they were all running badly-recast armies and never bought more than a few drinks.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
One time at my FLGS, I encountered a hyperbolic caricature of a person who politically/ideologically opposes me, and they did a insanely extreme thing that absolutely no one with any understanding of social interaction would do (the sort of thing you would never see yourself, or would be recorded, but the kind of thing you read about on the internet from anonymous people posting on a website). So I did a thing that was funny and makes me a good person and everyone in the FLGS clapped.

Happens all the time to me.