Have you ever had an issue with a store or restaurant using your information in an abusive way?

I have never had an issue with my personal information being abused in any way! Your SO's experience sounds horrific! If you haven't already, you definitely should report the waiter to both the Restaurant management and the police. Abusing personal information in such a way will get him punished and the police would definitely open an investigation and prosecute the person. I strongly suggest you do something about it if you haven't already and get the person fired!

 

I haven't personally had this happen but I came close to it. I avoided a near disaster by paying cash. I was buying a fish for my fish tank at a pet store. I paid in cash. Later that weekend, I saw on the news that they had fired/arrested the cashier from the pet store because he had been stealing people's credit card numbers. If I hadn't paid for my fish with a $5 bill, that dude would have stolen my credit card number. The customer who turned him in was a female off duty police officer who bought some pet supplies and noticed a weird charge on her card.

 

I knew of a reverse situation with an extended family member. She used to work for a department store chain that was downsizing their stores (I think Macy's eventually bought them) as a cashier. A customer was giving her a hard time and she fired back (obviously a no-no but she does have a temper). Normally, folks will cool off or swear to never return but the customer went on to harass my "aunt" at her job. Not long after the store finally closed its doors (or she left, I can't remember exactly), the customer got her home number and continued to harass her until she got her number changed.

 

I had a really weird experience once at a Taco Bell. I rarely go there, maybe a handful of times per year. The last time I had been at a Taco Bell had been about 6 months prior. This particular location I was at I hadn't been to in literally over a decade. The previous time I was at the other Taco Bell, they had some survey contest, if you filled it out with your smart phone you could win an XBox or something like that, so I filled it out for the hell of it. Anyhow, fast forward a few months later, I'm at this other Taco Bell I hadn't been to in forever, and right after I finished placing my order, the cashier was like "Ok Tom, that will be $X.XX, please pull up to the window". I was totally freaked out, how in the hell did she know my name? The only thing I could think of was perhaps they were testing out some sort of order personalization, maybe they were keeping a database of all the people who entered that contest and tracking them as customers when they were in the vicinity of one of their restaurants. There might be some way they can track return customers via their cell phones or something. It never happened again though, so I am still unsure of what was going down.

 

I would have gone to the restaurant when he was working and smashed the life out of him, the creepy pervy bitch!

I hope your girlfriend was OK.

Luckily that hasn't happened to any girlfriend I've had!