Take care with obsessive customer

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This article was published 07/01/2020 (2424 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: I met a beautiful, but weird, creature at a pre-new year party and she made like she was reading my palm, when all she wanted to do was make circles on it and try to turn me on and then predict that we’d be in bed together within 24 hours. I played along for a bit as it was jacking up my male ego. Then a buddy of me tapped me on the shoulder to indicate trouble on the horizon. 

He was so right. My jealous slightly inebriated girlfriend on the other side of the room was making gestures like she was ready to pour some hot liquid over this girl’s head. She had the coffee pot in her hand! I informed my “palm reader” and she skedaddled.

Not a big deal — one party — except this crazy woman has found out where I work at a bar downtown. She has come round the place alone and sits in the bar watching me bartend, and stares. She doesn’t say “hi” or come over — she just sits there and watches everything I do. I can’t throw her out for doing nothing, can I? What do you suggest?

— Feeling Stalked, Downtown

Dear Feeling Stalked: Go over and talk to her, but don’t sit down. Lean on the table from above and tell her with a very serious face you are “heavily involved” with the woman from the party who almost poured hot coffee over her head! 

Suggest you will not be moving on from this woman you already care about, and that it’s a waste of the stalker’s money to come to bar to stare.

Don’t actually use the word “stalking” unless she keeps coming back, after you’ve strongly warned her to move on. Your manager should be notified if she shows up again to stalk you and brought in to take care of it. After all, she’s not listening to you. 

And don’t serve her any more liquor. She’s not a real customer, but someone who has come to harass you. Just ring for the boss.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: I think your advice to Nervous Mom not to bring “any new man into your home who raises the Spidey senses of your children” should have read: “Don’t bring any man around your children until you feel certain there is a future together — a future beyond being hot and sexy in bed.”

She’s only been single a year… he’s the sexiest man she’s met. How many men have her children met? With a recent separation, they probably struggle with many changes and uncertainty already.

What mom does for fun and satisfaction is her business and decision, but there’s no reason her children need to know about any of it.

— Another Dating Single Mom, Winnipeg

Dear Dating Single Mom: You make an excellent point. In all the years my boys were young at home, and I was a dating single mom, they only met two men — both good guys — and only the long-term boyfriend stayed overnight with us on weekends, over a year or so. He didn’t just tolerate them. They’d run and get a stack of books and he’d read to them in the mornings, and we took a few weekend ski trips all together. It didn’t do them any harm and they still speak of him fondly. I think it was harder on the poor guy than on the kids when we broke up.

I heartily agree with you that the relationship has to be long-term and stable and show great promise before you introduce a man you are dating to the children.

Please send your questions and comments to lovecoach@hotmail.com or Miss Lonelyhearts c/o the Winnipeg Free Press, 1355 Mountain Ave., Winnipeg, MB, R2X 3B6.

Miss Lonelyhearts
Advice Columnist

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