Creep Factor

We joke around on here about being creeps, but when it comes down to it, sometimes you run into people that just make your skin crawl.

For example, a story from work:

I've had my fair share of creepy customers, but this was tops. I had a lower end of middle aged woman (maybe 45?) at CS who was well dressed and very polite. I was setting up a ship to home for her, and she stood on my right across the CS counter. While I used the mouse to click around the screen, she reached over and stroked my finger while complimenting my nail polish. First major creep feel. I thanked her, but was internally freaking out. After I finished up her order, I handed her the printout and wished her a good afternoon. While she grabbed the paper from my hand, she leaned in until she was about 6 inches from my face and whispered, "You have beautiful skin" and walked away.



I had no idea how to respond, and my first thought was "ARE YOU PLANNING ON WEARING IT???"

On their own, nothing she said was explicitly inappropriate. Complimenting nail polish or skin can be nice, but the way it was said and the movements/touching that went along with them were terrifying. For me, anything with uninvited touching is creepy.

What major creeps have you run into? What do you think sets off that response in your head?

 

Spending most of my time out in the open air on two wheels invites plenty of interaction with strangers, both welcome and unwelcome. In terms of inappropriate behavior, I encounter rudeness with far more frequency than creepiness, but the ick factor has also been known to happen.

On a day long group ride last summer, one of the participants came up alongside me after a short climb to chat. This was my first—and only–interaction with this guy all day long.

"Do you have a stationary trainer at home?"
"Well, I have one, but I don't really use it."
"Oh. Well you have a beautiful pedal stroke."

Um, thanks? Don't know the guy, and he struck me as kind of a weirdo in general but seemed pretty harmless. Since I can be pretty clueless as to when people are flirting with me, maybe that's what it was. He's following me on Strava and Instagram now, too. Still harmless as far as I'm concerned.

My ex posted of a much more disturbing encounter she had on a ride yesterday afternoon, in which some guy in an SUV—older, she said—came up alongside her and, leering, said, "Look at that ass!" Not complimentary, not cool, totally creepy and 100% inappropriate. She said she would've countered with something were it not for the fear that he might pose a threat to her safety.

Probably one of the creepiest things I've witnessed but wasn't directly involved in was my elementary school art teacher (1st to 2nd grade), in his 60s at the time, having the boys in our class climb up to sit on his lap during class. Yeah, gross.

 

There's a New Yorker cartoon showing two women at lunch, and one of them is saying, "He's a creep, but in the best sense of the word."

I used to be very active on another online forum, which had a function to send anonymous messages (called "greets"). Over several years, I got a bunch of greets calling me a creep or creepy.

The last one (three months ago), was just this:

I thought, either those hostile greets are all from one person, or they are from multiple people. If they're all from the same person, then it's someone who has been participating in the forum for years, and probably somebody I know and like. If they're from multiple people, then I must unknowingly be giving off creepy vibes.

I dropped out of active participation there as a result.

I think "creep" mostly means someone remarkably unskilled at social interaction.

 

I agree that some "creepy" interactions are just exaggerations of unskilled social interactions.

But to go along with @damnitall and @snowy, if I get leered at and something physical about me gets commented on, that's creepy, and they know exactly what they're doing.
--- merged: Jun 2, 2014 at 12:37 PM ---

A million times yes. I've had my hair stroked at work as well. That sets me off.

First, I'm picturing you as a vacuum salesman and it's fucking adorable.

And that is terrifying. Did he at least buy a vacuum?

 

I don't know what I did to deserve getting messages calling me creepy, but it is extremely unlikely the sender or senders ever met me in person.

 

No I understand, I'm just saying that not all creepiness can be excused by poor social skills and using an example.

If it helps, I've never seen you as creepy, and I think whoever the sender is just blew something out of proportion and freaked out for no reason.

 

This incident would have ended here for me, because I would have slid my hand forward, grabbed the mouse by its cord and flipped it up and over and smacked her hand with it HARD while panic dialing the store intercom and screaming that I had a person TOUCHING me @ >my location<

I REALLY dont tolerate people touching me if I've not invited it, or for instance - accepted their offered hand to shake.

This is why I am typically in my office with the door closed dealing with people on the computer and the phone. God help us if someone had touched me like that.
I'm FAR worse than - if you've seen the program - "Monk" about being touched, germs, odd "things".

Side note. I'd probably have hosed her down with lysol and been smearing my hands and arms with sanitizer while I "waited to be rescued"

 

Obviously.

 

--- merged: Jun 2, 2014 at 1:18 PM ---
The official ruling of this thread:

 

I'm a big, furry guy who pretty much takes up a lot of space and I tend to be a bit of an obtuse goose so I don't think anyone's crept up on me.
Have been in a few situations where I was used as a blocker including one time when a sailor wouldn't take one of my waitresses no for an answer and I had to go out to the front door to tell him she had left already.
The thing is I'm sure he thought he was being persistent and endearing.

 

I had a woman about my age follow me around a store a few days ago. There was no staring, invasion of personal space, or conversation, but it struck me as odd. Of course it's entirely possible that she was working her way around the store in the same direction as me, but I ducked into the men's restroom (needed to go anyway) for a few minutes.

This ties into the "fashion trends" thread--she was wearing tights/leggings with nothing to cover her "bits." Maybe she was shopping in more ways than one; maybe not.

 

I think we have to acknowledge that women, in general, are exposed to creeps on an entirely different level that most men, both in terms of quality and quantity. I've heard stories from women that have left me slack-jawed.

 

I am sure we've all had creepers invading our space.

The most uncomfortable one I ever had was when I was a kid. I was working at the CNE (big annual fair in Toronto) with the Boy Scouts. We ran a wheelchair service. It was a volunteer gig.

There was this old guy who would come and ask for me. He would sit outside our shack and wait for me so he could talk to me. I was 13? And it was just his actions, it was the way he spoke. UGH.

I was a cute little blonde haired, blue-eyed boy. I got creeped on by guys way too often.

 

Late night boredom bump.

1. Junior year of high school, I was taking a drink at a water fountain when two boys a year behind me materialized out of nowhere to stand uncomfortably close to me. I'd been outed by that point for having a relationship with my bestfriend/first girlfriend who had since left the school on account of jacktards like these two.

Leaning in close, one of them complimented the shape and size of my lips as I drank from the fountain, lamenting "What a waste," just loud enough for me to hear. Clearly since they wouldn't be sucking his dick anytime soon.

2. My high school had two biology teachers who split the year up between classes, switching out halfway through the year. One of these two was highly respected, inspirational, and dearly beloved... by students who actually gave a shit about biology (I was one of them). The other was A. Fucking. Creep.

Mr. Greenfield was his name, but he went by "Geebo." His secondary responsibility was supervising afternoon detention for the high school. Thanks to my propensity for running late in the morning, I racked up enough tardy arrivals to spend my fair share of afternoons in detention with this asshole. He'd routinely egg on a room full of emotionally challenged, hormonally charged teenage boys—detention's most common denizens—with crass remarks about anatomical photos in our textbooks and the like. On more than one occasion, he shared wildly inappropriate compliments about his own teenage daughter's physiology. And no, his first name wasn't Donald.

I should have known what to expect from him, detention or no. Aforementioned bestfriend/girlfriend, a fellow science nerd like me, had recounted an afternoon the previous year taking notes at her desk in his class. He sidled over to her, sat his ass down on the corner of her desk, looked down first at her notebook and then at her, and remarked in the smarmiest voice imaginable, "Ooh... you're fast."

I heard about countless other incidents like these from fellow female students, and many verbal complaints were made against him. The school board refused to discipline or, better yet, terminate him, without these complaints being submitted in writing, and apparently nobody—myself included—was willing to put them on record. At least not for another twenty years, when they finally booted his nasty creeper ass out.

Good fucking riddance.