I won’t be traveling again until February, when I go to Singapore and Hong Kong. Instead of leaving you with old blog posts from last winter, I have decided to share a story with you.
I travel domestically for my job during the summer. This July I was in Cincinnati. It’s a nice city with a lot to see. My favorite thing about the city was my first experience with sushi burritos. However, this post is not about that. It’s about the little Asian market down the street.
Asian markets are probably my favorite place to grocery shop. There are quite a few where I live and I have visited them often, getting to know the shop owners. They are always so friendly. Unfortunately, the shop in Cincinnati was different. Before visiting the shop, I looked up the reviews on Google Maps. It had a pretty low score with many guides writing that the store was often closed when it should be open. I feared I would be met with the same experience. In accord with Murphy’s law, I had just that. The store was supposed to open several hours prior to my visit, yet the lights were off and the door was locked. There was no note. As I felt this was no way to run a business and they had a track record, I rated them with one star.
Fast forward three months. I received a message request on Facebook. Not to my personal account, but to one of my pages for a business I run on the side. It was the owner of the shop. He asked me to remove my review. I didn’t have time to respond just then so I closed Facebook to return to it later. The same day, the shop owner started commenting on every post my business page had and rated my business with one star in retaliation. He then proceeded to message and comment to me on another page I have. That was followed by me receiving messages on LinkedIn and two other sites.
I had gained a stalker. In response to this, I had to block and ban him from my Facebook pages and I updated my Google review to share that he had been harassing me. He did not take this well. The messages changed from “remove your review” to “I am going to sue you.” Of course, I know that no court in its right mind would accept such a case. However, it was becoming quite a task to block him on all the sites of which I am a user. So, I decided to remove my review to relieve myself of this stalker.
Yet, it still didn’t end there. Another reviewer had given him one star. As to why, I’ll never know. Unfortunately, he commented on the review, blaming me and naming my company. He won’t remove it.
People are crazy. Anyways, I am going to put my review back up and see what happens. Peace out!