We’re Suddenly Very Glad Our Customers Are All Online

I work at a video game store. We had a teenage boy who would come in and hang around for thirty minutes to an hour, staring at me until I acknowledged him. When I did, he would pitch me his entire Assassin’s Creed spinoff trilogy.

At first, I tried to rationalize it away; he was probably neurodivergent and excited about Assassin’s Creed but perhaps lacking in social skills. However, if I told him I had to pause on listening to him — he would talk for over thirty minutes, and I had a job to do — I could feel his eyes boring into me. The second I looked at him again, he’d move closer and talk louder. Sometimes he’d stare me down in total silence while I was facing the opposite wall.

My district manager wouldn’t let me kick him out, so whenever another manager was working with me, they’d pretend the store needed something from the dollar store and send me over there. The first time, he waited a full hour inside of [Video Game Store] for me to come back, so after that, I had to stay in the dollar store until one of them texted me that he was gone.

The last time I ever saw him, he followed me around demanding my phone number or email address.

And the worst part is, I know other women at the company had it much worse. There was an unofficially blacklisted customer at another store who didn’t get any phone calls about preorders or anything because he would sit in his car and attempt to follow the store manager home after memorizing which car was hers.