Which type of business gets the most wierdos.

[Mark Healey]

For the greatest variety, It's book stores, hands down. But, I have no feeling for simply the greatest number, be it a percentage or raw numbers.

[Slow-Jo]

porn shop. my poor friend was bothered by a week straight by this guy that would beg her to sneeze into his hanky. and every time she would toss his ass out.

[Brentos]

I've heard that porn shops are actually incredibly fun places to work.
You get to look at new toys all day and see what gets people off....


....I wonder if they let you "test" the product out so you have a good knowledge of it...

[marty]

I'm agreeing with the porn shop deal. I was dragged into one a few times because one of the cashiers there used to be my best friend's manager, so they'd want to go visit him. Saw some fun looking people in there...

[king4aday]

porn shop. my poor friend was bothered by a week straight by this guy that would beg her to sneeze into his hanky. and every time she would toss his ass out.

wait a minute.....uhm.......wha? this has got to be one of the wierdest things I have EVER heard

[Slow-Jo]

I've heard that porn shops are actually incredibly fun places to work.
You get to look at new toys all day and see what gets people off....


....I wonder if they let you "test" the product out so you have a good knowledge of it...

oh it is fun! they had this one thing there that was a butt! if you smacked it, it would jiggle!

but for some reason the person who put it out shoved the security tag IN the hole. so when my friend finally sold it she had to shove her hand into the hole. she got some weird looks from the people that walked in while her hand was inside the butt!

as for the testing, er not really. if they wanted that could buy some of the new stuff and try it out at home! though their distributer gave them lots of info on the product usually.

[Slow-Jo]

wait a minute.....uhm.......wha? this has got to be one of the wierdest things I have EVER heard

each to their own. just dont force it on others!

[Record Store Tough Guy]

Record stores get some odd birds. Sometimes it's the regulars who aren't all there, but are mostly harmless, and just want to talk to you about music and artists (and who only become a problem when there are other people that need helping), and sometimes it's the dude that comes in drunk off his ass at 10:30AM on a Wednesday during the holidays and has to tell you, in excruciating detail, about every Motorhead show he's been to; the downside being that you'd actually like to hear about it, but the customers piling up in line behind him aren't having any of it. And he's talking right over every attempt to cut him off and move him along.

The worst though, are the regulars that you like, and trust, and then you find out they've been stealing from you the whole time they've been patronizing your store.

We'd get a lot of special needs kids from area schools coming in with their teachers. I don't by any stretch classify them as "wierdos", but sometimes they could be a bit of handful. We didn't mind though. I always enjoyed interacting with them, and talking about movies they liked. They were all really sweet kids. I remember one girl who got "separated" from her group (they were really just around the corner) and she started to panic, just a little, but she was trying so hard to be brave. She was almost in tears by the time I realized what was going on and showed her where her friends were. It was slightly heart-breaking.

Yeah, I'm a sap. You wanna fight about it?

Scavenger hunts were the worst. It seemed one season, the big thing for youth groups was to go to the mall on the Saturday before Christmas and participate in a scavenger hunt without actually buying anything at the store they were pestering. At one point we were so fed up ("What song is Number one on the Billboard Chart?") that we just started making up song titles instead of actually going to the trouble of looking it up. Our way of thinking was if we gave them all consistently wrong answers, they'd leave us out next time.

But those aren't really weird, I guess. Out of the ordinary, maybe, but not weird. I'll have to really think about that now...

[Misanthropical]

I thought call centers got the most weirdos, since the people never see us face to face, they feel free to tell the weirdest stuff.

However, one could argue that the people manning the phones are the weirdos.

[Boozy]

My brother works in a music store (guitars, drums, sound systems, mixing equipment etc.) and he has some amazing stories. The 70's and 80's were not kind to many of his customers.

I work in a wine store and get a fair number of drunks, but they aren't overly weird or entertaining - just sad.

[Record Store Tough Guy]

^^^ Yeah, I think we got some of their overflow customers.

There were a few burnouts that were frequent customers.

[OhHerro]

I actually disagree with the bookstore comment. Sure there are some doozies, but by and large, I think places like wal-mart, target, k-mart have crazier customers as far as retail stores go. Mainly due to the fact that they cater to a larger customer base.

Doesn't stop old men from pooping on our floor, though.

[Dreamstalker]

The gaming store clientele is nice for the most part, but every so often we'll get an embodiment of the worst possible geek/nerd/general outcast stereotype--vaguely smelly, personality of a splintery two-by-four and social skills of a cheese grater (these are always non-locals for some reason). When I was actually working register, half of those seemed to latch on to me Now that I'm down in the basement, it's largely safe (only the regulars know where my abode is).

[Captain Kidd]

Storm shelters, hands down storm shelters.

Why you ask? What could be so wrong about buying a storm shelter? After all, people want to protect their families from storms. Right?

Wrong!

Storm shelters attract the absolutely weirdest mix of survivalist freaks and alien-are-going-to-get-us whack-jobs. A friend was helping sell/build them for awhile.

The survivalists were understandable to a point. Air intake radiation scrubbers. Blast-proof doors. Don't tell anybody where you installed it or I'll hunt you down and kill you. Did I mention that most of them were also massively anti-government/establishment too? Man, I've got about a dozen "copies" of V for Vendetta my buddy gave me that these kooks kept handing out, "you need to watch it, it'll change your world, it's all true!"

The aliens ... well, back in 2001 (2003 maybe) a surprisingly large fringe group believed that a plant on an odd orbit was going to sweep by earth, flipping the magnetic poles, causing earthquakes, death, destruction, cats and mice living in peace, etc. These people were very weird birds. One lady had every room in her house full of food, batteries, and other supplies. OK, understandable if it wasn't that most of that stuff were perishables, not long-storage dry or canned goods. Her loading plan for the shelter, which was nowhere large enough for all that stuff, was to fill it until there was just enough room for her and a couple others to lie down between the pile and the ceiling. the rest of the food would take it's chances in the house. This was suppose to last for months with them lying flat in a crawlspace slowly eating their way to standing room until it was safe to exit.

Of course that all came to a grinding, nearly exploding, halt when the backhoe found the city gas main the hard way. Seems she didn't get a dig permit like she claimed she did. The gas company was not happy.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

I would think it would be grocery stores . . . everybody's got to eat, right?

I mean, I see not only the ones drunk/stoned/off their meds, but also the ones who feel compelled to share their life story/talk about their yeast infections/hemrhoids/foot fungus/why they need a birthday cake or pantyhose at 8 p.m. at night

Need I go on?