There’s a thread in Cafe Society on people who’ve quit or never shopped at a store due to the bad music they play. Let’s extend it to any reasons besides being too expensive/poor selection/poor service. The only time I remember doing this is when I was looking for lunch in Seattle’s U-District and walked into a middle eastern takeaway place. It had a couple of articles in the hallway decrying Israeli policies towards the Palestinians…and that sent me walking up the stairway to Jimmy Johns. What are your experiences?
Yes, I have.
Yup. I smoke. I once went into a smoke shop to buy cigarets. I’d been biking. It was a hot day and I didn’t have a shirt on. The man behind the counter gave me a look of disdain. He sold me the cirgarets but then said, basically, “Don’t come into my shop without a shirt on.” I stopped going.
If I go somewhere, if the people seem judgmental or arrogant I avoid going again.
Yep; I don’t shop at Walmart due to the myriad of dreadful things they stand for in terms of employment and overall sketchy behavior; I stopped using the food court at an Atlanta-area Costco b/c the workers used bare hands to put a straw in my drink and it always stunk of hand lotion. yuck
I stopped going to a hair place that lets their employees smoke out front, then work on customers. Have you ever tried to hold your breath while someone waxes your eyebrows, their hands inches from your face? Or while they do your hair, the odor of cigarettes coming off their person and clothes and breath?
Yep. Chik-fil-A is on my forever shit-list, and I love their food.
There’s plenty of pet shops I won’t go to because of the way they (don’t) look after their animals.
walmart is just dreadful. And I stay away from places that push the customer cards too much.
“No shoes, no shirt, no service” is not exactly uncommon.
Yeah, I avoid shopping any place that only has sales for those with customer cards.
That’s a good one. The only places I really go grocery shopping are Thriftway and Top Foods (neither of one which have cards) and Safeway (where you can just enter the phone number of someone with a card, and I just use my uncle’s).
I have never been inside a Walmart. With reason. Until recently, the nearest was 3 or 4 miles away, but now they have taken over a Zellers under 2 miles away and that is a shame, but I won’t go it there now.
I mostly, but not entirely, avoid Canadian Tire because their stores are laid out like prisons. You go in through a turnstile and the only way to go out is to pass by a cash station and they are laid out so you almost cannot get out without waiting your turn at the cash.
For groceries and instant discounts, I have cards with fake phone numbers.
…but realize all that data is collected from multiple sources. The more places you use one number, the more ‘they’ know about you.
It’s not even a creepy conspiracy, just good data mining.
@Hari Seldon: go inside, walk around. Let your jaw drop open, it’s ok. 
I quit going to one store because the clerk always talks my ear off about his beliefs and opinions of whatever news article he read lately and how people are stupid. Now, whether or not I agree with him, I don’t need to hear his version of how bad the world is and how nuts the folks in it are. I just want to get my stuff and get on with my life.
So I stopped going there. It’s not like they have a corner on the market.
The OP asks about not patronizing a place doe non-price/service reasons.
I don’t patronize a local toy store, not because of their service, but their LACK of service, so maybe my reason is ok.
I went in there after work, it was a small place. I was in my work clothes and looked a bit scruffy. The clerk out front absolutely ignored me, although she went up to greet another two customers that came in after me, and were well dressed. I was shopping for my nephew’s birthday.
I wrote to the store about it and got a letter in return, from the owner/manager, apologizing for my experience, and stating my letter would be used for further employee training in customer service. She asked me to give them another chance. So I did. I dressed just the same as I’d been on the first visit, went in the same time of day and on the same day of the week. I got exactly the same treatment as the first time.
I didn’t write a letter, but after I got home I called the store and left a message for the manager. I got an extremely apologetic call, but I never went back.
My co-workers and I (a foursome) regularly go to lunch together. We’ve abandoned our third restaurant now purely for noise reasons. In each case, the music is too loud for us to talk.
In one instance (an Arby’s sandwich restaurant), the manager told us he was unable to change the volume because it was controlled at corporate headquarters. :eek:
We are literally being driven out of eateries because we cannot comfortably talk to one another. Best we can figure is that modern cafes assume patrons spend the meal playing with their iToys, and the louder music isn’t bothersome. (This certainly seems to be the case, looking around us)
I haven’t stopped shopping at Target, but I’ll never buy wine or write a check there, as they require a drivers’ license card swipe in order to do those things. They don’t need that information.
Also, I moved seven times in two years; does that count? I left a lot of stores in the dust…
Same here.
I can’t remember actually hearing music at an Arby’s, definitely not loud enough to be distracting.
Arby’s are mostly run by independents and small group owners and have relatively weak franchise control - unlike Taco Bell, f’rex, which is about half company stores and 49% large group franchisees who have to conform to three shelf feet of rules.
We stopped patronizing Denny’s when the third or fourth confirmation of their ingrained corporate racism came out. Too bad, as no one else does good, cheap and fast breakfasts as well as they do. Must be the slave labor. 
Absolutely. Conversely, I seek out stores for reasons other than price/service (though if service or price was really rediculous I wouldn’t keep going. )
There is a local restaurant that has very good food and decent prices. The owner is a sometimes drunk. He was rude to me while in one of the drunk phases. We no longer spend our money there.