Tales from the cons: The .com incident

I was involved with Anime Detour for a decade, starting in 2006. Over the years, I...uh...experienced a lot of things. This will likely be the first of several posts, because it's probably better that I split these things up.

Conventions in the US were a bit crazy back in the early 2000's. They were frequently chaotic, unregulated, and more than a wee bit crazy. It wasn't unheard of for random attendees to be pressed into staff roles, simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I remember a couple kids having an airsoft war in the hallway, right next to con suite. I told them to cut that shit out, and thankfully, I had the authority to put them in their place. But the kick in the teeth was a kid who went by .com (pronounced "dot-com")

.com had earned a bit of a reputation by the time I joined staff. The con was only in year three, and the staff already knew this guy would try and drink. He was 17 by year 3, and he'd already been kicked out the prior two years for the same stuff. Real charmer, you know? So the security staff felt like this guy, pretty much every year:

So this year, he gets smart. On the Friday of con, right around noon, he tracks down the subhead of security (who happened to be dating the head at the time, don't ask) and told her that he was likely gonna be drinking this weekend.

She told him that if she or any security staff saw him visibly intoxicated, they would revoke his badge and escort him off the premises. As well we should! He's underage, he's drunk, it's a lawsuit waiting to happen for us. We told him not to, he did it anyway. And what does he do?

He gets sloshed.

By 2PM.

And now he wants to go do stuff! Well, that's gonna go over like a fart in church, isn't it?

Sure enough, when .com gets drunk, .com gets stupid. He tried sliding down one of the banisters in the hotel, loses his balance, and dislocates his thumb. At least, that's what he said happened when he came into ops, holding his hand and looking for this:

Because apparently our first aid kit can help him build a splint for his thumb. Did I mention this guy is completely sloshed?

At this point, we're letting him rummage through our first aid kit. Security told us to not help him in any way, shape, or form, as it could render us liable for any injury. And we're watching him try and take gauze bandage, some popsicle sticks, and fabric tape, and somehow make a splint out of it. With one hand. While completely wasted. And we're over here like:

And we're not helping him in the slightest. Finally, security calls the chairman, because it's time to pull his badge. .com storms out, and security follows him. You know those scooby doo scenes where everyone runs through different doors? It was kind of like that. .com is trying to evade everyone, and the groups a splitting off to corner him. Sure enough, they trap him. Right in operations. Where the chairman and the head of registration are waiting. And they're not happy. At all.

With a whole legion of security blocking him from leaving, the chairman asks, calmly, for .com's badge. It took a bit of "you will comply" from the bald, 6'5" head of security to get him to finally hand it over. And then, security called the police, asked them to pick him up, and escorted him out of the hotel.

You'd think this would be the end of him, but .com had other plans. He storms off in a huff, heads to the exit, and puts his foot through the glass next to the exit door.

Great. Now we get to invoke the hotel! And they, in their infinite wisdom, decide to press charges for vandalism and destruction of property. So instead of the cops taking him to detox and then remanding him to his mother, now he's getting locked up in juvie!

After his removal, we banned him from the convention until he turned 21. We can't do much once he's of drinking age, but I don't think I ever saw him after that. He probably got salty enough that he had no interest in ever coming back. Then again, he was breaking the law. We couldn't have that.

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