'He changed everything that made the business successful': New game store owner prevents regulars from renting gaming room, resulting in massive customer loss

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Bar Mor Hazut • Senior Editor
Apr 28, 2024 7:00 AM EDT

Many people who take over a business like to make drastic changes to it in order to assert their new ownership over it. Mostly those changes come with the claim that they want customers to notice that the ownership has changed and that 'there is a new sheriff in town'. The main problem occurs when they make massive changes to an already successful business, without taking into account the thoughts and feelings of all the regular customers who already loved the business as it was. Then those owners are surprised when those loyal customers feel like there is nothing left for them in light of the changes and simply walk away from it. This is exactly what happened with the new owner of the gaming store in this Reddit story, who lost some loyal and highly profitable customers due to his own pride.

Scroll down to read the full story from the perspective of one of those loyal customers. After you are done, click here for a story of a family who dined and dashed at a restaurant, and then foolishly came back.

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  • 01
    "He changed everything that made the business successful"
    via Canva
  • 02
    New Store Owner loses upwards a dozen customers by being and greedy
    via u/Delachruz
  • 03
    So this is a relatively recent development and despite the hazzle one I'll remember fondly. Story posted with permission of all involved. I'm part of a group of friends who have been meeting nearly
    via u/Delachruz
  • 04
    playing Tabletop games at a local gaming store, for about 4- 6 years. Generally everyone is between 30-60 and since most of us are very limited on when and where we can meet (Work, family, life in general) this has
    via u/Delachruz
  • 05
    been a sort of relaxation ritual to just get out of life for around 4 hours a week. In 2022 one of our lot had a workplace accident that severly limited his mobility, and for the
    via u/Delachruz
  • 06
    first time we realized how the building we meet at is an absolute nightmare when it comes to accessing it with a wheelchair or similar. If you just go there for shopping its fine, the front entrance is at ground
    via u/Delachruz
  • 07
    level. But the actual gaming rooms are 2-4 flights of stairs apart. We made do by helping our buddy get upstairs, but as you can imagine he felt awkward and self-concious about it. There was little chance
    via u/Delachruz
  • 08
    of this changing since the actual game store owner didn't own the building, and since its a hobbyspace you couldn't legally argue an urgent need to get an elevator or other solution.
    via u/Delachruz
  • 09
    Eventually we found a solution: There was an old office in the very back of the place that is technically part of the storerooms the gaming store had rented, still on ground level. The owner just used it as
    via u/Delachruz
  • 10
    storage for unimportant stuff since it was in disrepair. We spent roughly a month on and off getting the room renovated, new carpet, replacing furniture, even replacing the AC (One of our lot has the knowhow). The
    via u/Delachruz
  • 11
    owner was happy to have another gameroom that was useable and to accomodate a person in need, so he reserved it for us when it went online on the website (Every Thursday afternoon). There was a slight bit of awkwardness when one
    via u/Delachruz
  • 12
    of our group asked for a written agreement that the furniture inside was legally ours (Which turned out to be a wise move in hindsight), but we got a signature and easy access, so whats to complain? The local
    via u/Delachruz
  • 13
    group of DnD players (Most of them a lot younger than us) dubbed the new room the boomer basement. This used to work fine for about a year, until december 2022, when the previous owner announced he had sold the store off to focus on his family.
    via u/Delachruz
  • 14
    His replacement gave us the sideeye when the 3rd gaming room came up, but didn't raise a fuss until he was officially in charge. Suddenly our reservation was canceled, and new policies put in place. You couldn't reserve the same room two weeks in a row unless you
    via u/Delachruz
  • 15
    paid a surcharge, you weren't allowed to close the doors while playing (Which meant the double combo of tremendous noise and random people walking in, especially kids who have a tendency to grab figures without asking) and finally,
    via u/Delachruz
  • 16
    there was prefferential treatment for reservations both based on whether the owner liked you and how much stuff you bought (Just to make it clear, we did purchase things every time we were there to support the store, just not in constant bulk).
    via u/Delachruz
  • 17
    Any attempt at talking about any of this like adults was futile, the new owner would just shrug and unironically say that somebody being mobility impaired wasn't really his problem and the whole room reservation thing was for "fairness". We dealth with it,
    via u/Delachruz
  • 18
    until about february last year, which marked the first month our friend showed up to the meet without crutches, and announced that he was done with all this We scouted for an alternate place to meet up, found a store more out of the way but with a good rep,
    via u/Delachruz
  • 19
    and then completely emptied out the renovated room (Yes, including the carpet AND the AC unit) amid the owner protesting and genuinely being surprised this was happening.
    via u/Delachruz
  • 20
    In addition to our lot basically the entire Fridanight Magic group had also bounced shortly after us, since they had used "our" room on the regular and were about equally tired of the owner haunting them with sales offers like the ghost of the
    via u/Delachruz
  • 21
    worlds most obnoxious salesman. An assorted number of other people have followed in the weeks afterward, since the amount of available players for a LOT of TT games has dropped so sharply.
    via u/Delachruz
  • 22
    The owner didn't understand that we left for other reasons than just the access, "Your friend can walk again, so whats the fing problem?" was the general tone. We had blindsided him, he claimed later, and he still tells anyone who goes to the store that we "stole" all the furniture and
    via u/Delachruz
  • 23
    thats why even a year later the room downstairs is empty and unuseable. I have no idea how well or bad hes doing these days, but frankly speaking I'd probably get a kick out of it if the place closes down in the future.
    via u/Delachruz
  • 24
    we_belong_ded. 20 hr. ago I've been around my fair share of hobby shops and for some reason, the owners always seem to be either great guys or pieces of, one or the other.
    via u/we_belong_d**d
  • 25
    Zugnutz. 19 hr. ago I don't know why people buy a thriving business, change everything that made it successful, and are then surprised when the business goes down.
    via u/Zugnutz
  • 26
    EdgeMiserable4381 - 19 hr. ago Good for you guys! What an awesome group of friends!! I would have loved to have seen the look on the guys face when even the carpet started coming up. I hope someone took a video
    via u/EdgeMiserable4381
  • 27
    SnooRadishes5305 18 hr. ago Aside from the odious store owner, it's so lovely that OP and co have built such an incredible friend group out of their coworkers Every week for years - that's just really wonderful And building a whole room for their coworker Good on OP's friend circle
    via u/SnooRadishes5305

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consequences loyalty store owner entitlement owner revenge gaming customers reddit story workplace Reddit business store karma entitled people
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