Not specifically work-related and may belong in a different sub.
Since I was in middle school, there has been a cute little family-owned ice cream shop in my hometown with adorable branding and delicious flavors. I have always loved this shop, though it's a bit pricey, and always took people there if they were visiting town or had just never been.
I have since moved away, but an old coworker of mine apparently has had multiple bad experiences with the shop. I'm not sure if the bad experiences were due to cross-contamination as she is very intolerant to dairy, or if it was bad customer service, etc. Whatever it was, she and her boyfriend left 1-star reviews. He left one, and a month later supposedly after their second poor experience, she left a second one. You are absolutely allowed to leave bad reviews if you have a bad experience. That's the whole point.
The owner of this business did not take this well, despite not being the first business owner to ever receive a 1-star review. For context, from what he said in the beginning of the video I will discuss shortly, it seems as if he posts vlogs on the ice cream shop's Instagram story that consist of him sitting in his car and just talking about stuff. Not sure, never watch the story.
However, yesterday he posted a story bashing my former coworker and her boyfriend, to include their full names and screenshots of their faces. He explained how he had stalked the boyfriend's Instagram or Facebook or something to find out if they knew each other. He tagged their Instagram accounts in his story as well.
Fast forward to today, I had nothing better to do so I went to check out their other reviews. To clarify, this shop has two locations, roughly 30 minutes away from each other. A few friends of my coworker left 1-star reviews due to the wildly inappropriate story he posted, but it also appears as if he had his own friends post 5-star reviews on the same day. The same 3-4 people posted 5-star reviews for both locations to “save the score,” which he was very upset about my former coworker's 1-star review ruining.
It also appears as if he is one of those business owners that argues with every bad review by leaving multiple paragraphs in response. Even without posting a weirdly personal and unnecessary vlog, it's not something a respectable business would (or should) do.
This may seem silly, but this man is acting as if he is the first person to ever own a business through which another person had a bad experience. The whole situation feels unhinged, and my coworker definitely felt very uncomfortable with a grown man stalking her social media for clout.