It does happen. There are some people who generate more static electricity more than others. It also depends on the environment that a person is in.
For instance, there was a furniture store near here that I used to go to with my parents when I was a kid. I don't create static electricity that easily, but in that store... I definitely could! While my parents were walking around looking at furniture, I would simply walk around the whole store and touch my little brother or some lamps just to see the little blue bolt of electricity shoot from my fingertips.
There's not really any fool-proof way to prevent build-up of static electricity. I learned this at a company that I worked for. During one workshop, the presenter had a device that measure build-up of static electricity. He demonstrated it on several devices such as a clear-tape dispenser, a stapler, a stack of paper, etc.
Just from pulling out an inch of clear-tape, there was enough static electricity created to damage a circuit board. Just from pulling out a sheet of paper, the result were the same. To reduce (not eliminate) the amount of static electricity created, they had to use special kinds of clear-tape, shoes, hand lotion, and wear specific clothes. They also had to handle things differently such as picking up a piece of paper upwards instead of pulling it sideways from the top of a stack.
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