General question about bans

[Cutlery Cat]

The Machine Gun Kelly incident was in a Microsoft store, so that might explain the absence of PS3. If I recall correctly this tit had been hired to perform at the store and suddely leapt on the displays, trampled the computers and badmouthed the staff. A quick Google search bring up the story and a vid shot during it.
Small wonder he's banned.

Pretty much this. I avoid saying outright where I work on this forum, but yeah. You can connect the dots and figure out why we don't sell PS3 or Nintendo.

Damn, should have been a bit more tactful there - sorry about that!

 

[Anchuent Christory]

Going by the Lucas and Mimms Q&A, Chris banning from the Gameplace was really from an overall wearing down of Mike's patience over time.
I'd say that his bans happen due to his complete inability to take a telling, and then subsequent ability to escalate matters to ridiculous levels.

I foresee the average banning coming from somebody politely asking him not to do something, and him then tard-raging, and leaving them no choice but to refuse him access from that point on.

 

[Seahorses]

I imagine if a ban is ignored by the bannee, he/she can be charged with trespassing. Do banns tend to be respected? If they are not, are the police brought in?

For the veteran Christorians: Has Chris always respected his banns?

Crap. We talked about trespassing in law school not too long ago. I need to study it again. The way you asked this sounds like an exam question.

Edit: Screw you... I had to look it up again.

Basically...

Every unlawful entry onto another's property is trespass, even if no harm is done to the property. A person who has a right to come onto the land may become a trespasser by committing wrongful acts after entry. Injury to the property is not necessary for the defendant to be guilty of trespass.

So, to answer your question. Yes.

Annd I better pass this exam.

 

[Shadow Fox]

So how many places has Chris been banned from, and how many of those are actual "escorted off the property by police if you come back" bans and which are bans of the "don't come back until you can stop acting like a dumbfuck"* variety?

The GAme PLace - permaban, natch
Target where he was wrestled to the ground by jerkops - probably a temp ban
Wal-Mart McDonald's where he was kicked out for loitering with his attraction sign and pixelblocks - probably a temp ban
Fashion Square Mall - numerous temp bans; however he hasn't mentioned going there in a while, so has he been permabanned now?
McDonald's where an employee scolded him for cursing - not sure if he was actually kicked out or if he was just bitching about the employee being mean to him
Burger King(?) where he photographed that black lady - ibid.
Wal-Mart where he defaced the XBox sign - I would guess a temp ban. And is this the same Wal-Mart as the one whose McD's booted him for loitering?

*which, as someone has already pointed out, is essentially a permaban for Chris, and he undoubtedly interpreted those incidents as permanent bans, but we're assuming the store issuing the ban is giving him the benefit of the doubt.

 

[Blue Max]

It seems like Chris has accumulated several bans from stores and restaurant.

Forgive my naivete, but I haven't banned from anything since I was 15 and my friend and I got busted screwing with for sale stickers.

If any one has worked in retail I am curious:

How common is it to ban someone from a store?

Does it tend to be an official procedure that the manager will have been trained for and have forms to fill out for, or is it just a thing to say to get rid of a situation?

Will other employees be aware of it, so they can enforce it if the manager who issued it is not on duty?

I imagine if a ban is ignored by the bannee, he/she can be charged with trespassing. Do banns tend to be respected? If they are not, are the police brought in?

For the veteran Christorians: Has Chris always respected his banns?

I've been in the retail industry for around 7 years, so I've got a lot of firsthand knowledge about this.

Banning people from stores in very uncommon, by the percentages or by the days in which it happens. Our store quite possibly has over 1,000 transactions daily, yet we go two weeks or longer between any kind of bannable incident.

By and large, bans generally occur after someone steals/attempts to return fraud/does something like harass other customers. At our store, bans lead to a notice to the banned party. If they are arrested, that takes priority and a ban is likely forgotten. However, having witnessed a customer being thrown out and then noting his return a year later--most managers would probably forget or ignore a ban after a few months if the formerly banned customer didn't attempt to cause trouble.

Charging someone with trespassing is a legitimate choice but reflects a deliberate decision to seek legal help to remove someone from the property; we did have someone last week busted for it after ignoring a ban, but before that we've gone years without that happening. Frankly, the concern is the trespasser's behavior--if they don't cause problems enforcing a ban may very well not be worth the effort.

As for Manager Training: The decision to ban someone from the store is generally made conservatively. Some customers are assholes, but if they pay for product it's probably worth tolerating. Most bans are no-brainer situations where the banned party is clearly more trouble than they're worth; CWC racking up a bancount reflects a common belief amongst stores that he's not worth dealing with; they could very well be right.

Bans aren't empty threats, but in my experience any sort of patience in letting tensions cool and then avoiding any further trouble is generally sufficient to address a ban.

Disseminating information about a banned customer to employees likely follows the determination that this customer is likely to violate his ban and needs to be busted for trespass. That happened in the situation last week, but unless the manager expects that a customer will try that he wouldn't tell everyone.

As it applies to Chris: Repeated Bans reflect a common belief amongst Stores that Chris isn't worth the trouble he causes. In the case of Michael Snyder, its also clear that the whole store was informed about the situation, and CWC went to extraordinary lengths to violate that ban. It would seem that Walmart and Fashion Square Plaza have gone through multiple rounds of banning our Lolcow, although FSP's situation as a landlord instead of a store might well make that ban harder to enforce. These locations were formerly the place he spent his time away from home, so they've probably become a party to some particularly bizarre tardraging or attraction signage.

Chris is also, for what it's worth, a paying customer who generally doesn't engage in criminal acts. Banning him means that he's freaked people out or otherwise disrupted business badly enough to lose his $$$. Each time he is banned, there is some sort of incident that is worth losing him as a customer. Those incidents are going to be 98%+ his fault and each one potentially as ugly as the Crazy Pacer or the Hexbox Vandalism story.

It is clear that Christory is still being made by other means.

 

[timtommy]

A temp ban is quite different for Chris, since the reason he was banned is often associated with the sweetheart search, which is the reason he wants to go back.

If I wander drunkenly into Walmart one night and am asked to leave, I can go back later sober, because the reason I am going is to buy stuff for my horde, not to wander drunkenly. If Chris gets told never to do a sweetheart search in Fashion Square again, it is a bigger problem.

 

[Holdek]

So how many places has Chris been banned from, and how many of those are actual "escorted off the property by police if you come back" bans and which are bans of the "don't come back until you can stop acting like a dumbfuck"* variety?

The GAme PLace - permaban, natch
Target where he was wrestled to the ground by jerkops - probably a temp ban
Wal-Mart McDonald's where he was kicked out for loitering with his attraction sign and pixelblocks - probably a temp ban
Fashion Square Mall - numerous temp bans; however he hasn't mentioned going there in a while, so has he been permabanned now?
McDonald's where an employee scolded him for cursing - not sure if he was actually kicked out or if he was just bitching about the employee being mean to him
Burger King(?) where he photographed that black lady - ibid.
Wal-Mart where he defaced the XBox sign - I would guess a temp ban. And is this the same Wal-Mart as the one whose McD's booted him for loitering?

*which, as someone has already pointed out, is essentially a permaban for Chris, and he undoubtedly interpreted those incidents as permanent bans, but we're assuming the store issuing the ban is giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Multiple temp. bans can culminate in a permaban. Also if you are arrested and taken to county jail (like he was at Target) that will probably earn you a permaban.

 

[Grand Number of Pounds]

If I got arrested because I was raising a ruckus somewhere, I wouldn't need to be permabanned. I'd be too ashamed to ever show my face there again.

But of course we know Chris has no shame.

 

[Tubular Monkey]

But of course we know Chris has no shame.

The only thing I can recall Chris being ashamed of was his meaty breasts, which he now seems to have fetishized.

 

[Gravedancer]

When I worked in retail in the UK, we used to get a sheet from the local Police with photos and details of people who had been banned from entering the local shops in the area b the magistrates court. Do you have anything similar in the States?

 

[The Knife]

When I worked in retail in the UK, we used to get a sheet from the local Police with photos and details of people who had been banned from entering the local shops in the area b the magistrates court. Do you have anything similar in the States?

Never in my experience. It might be legally iffy here because of our privacy laws.

 

[DV 259]

When I worked in retail in the UK, we used to get a sheet from the local Police with photos and details of people who had been banned from entering the local shops in the area b the magistrates court. Do you have anything similar in the States?

The cops don't do that here, no, but it's not uncommon for specific retailers to pass around information about banned people/known shoplifters to their sister stores in the area, mainly for asset protection and professional courtesy within their company.

When I worked at GameStop, there were two stores in the mall, one across the street from the mall, a fourth on the other side of town, three more within a 20-minute drive and 4 more within a 30-minute drive, so if one of those 11 stores had a problematic customer, they called all the other stores to let them know. At my job now, we do the same with the next closest store in our market.

Like I said in my previous wall of text, sometimes the mall will pass out a memo with a person's description after the fact, but I found out at work yesterday that before a person is banned from the mall, if they're in the building, the rent-a-cops will go to certain retailers and warn them that the person is in the mall and to be on the lookout.

 

[PCA]

Well I can tell you...I used to be a Jerkop. How it worked with us is if somebody committed a crime, they were automatically banned. If somebody was messing around and they refused to stop after being asked a number of times, they were banned. Chris drawing Sports bra's on a DVD of Magic Mike would have constituted vandalism and he should have been charged. Same with the vandalism of the X-Box display stand.

 

[shoopdawoop6]

I work at a pizza place and we've had some run ins with some people that almost reached the point of a ban. The closest event was a guy who continuously calls in asking for a refund on his pizza, the same pizza each time, and the manager reported him to the district manager. Since this place is a chain sometimes we report "strange customers" to our other pizza huts in the area to prevent these crazy people from scamming us for money.