Yesterday definitely merited a return to posting:
Around 7:45 p.m., my "partner" and I were leaving an address where we had attempted an initial home visit on her newest case. Nobody was home, and we crossed the - one-way - street and got back into my car, which was a bit tightly parallel parked. I got the front of the car partly out, and we heard popping sounds and saw men running around in the intersection ahead of us. We thought it was firecrackers, and I continued to work the car out of the spot, slightly puzzled that all these people were running around. Then, in perfect side view, we saw the gun. A handgun held out in front at arms' length by one of the men. More popping sounds. I was mostly out of the spot and decided to reverse to the intersection behind us, but the rear of my car had not completely cleared the spot, and I couldn't free it without moving significantly forward, as the car behind me was a minivan parked some distance from the curb, and I was afraid to move any closer to the gunfire than we already were. C-- grabbed her cell phone and called our manager, who was still at the office, to tell her where we were and what was going on. She was telling C-- to tell me to reverse, C-- was telling her that I couldn't. I was realizing that a couple of the men were running up the next block and the popping had stopped. We gave it a couple more minutes, and I left the parking space and sped through the intersection and down the next several blocks, turned down a street, up another one, and pulled over. C-- had told our manager that we were through the intersection, that we were okay, and we had both started cursing like none of our clients would ever imagine we could.
It was the first time either of us had actually seen a handgun used. We'd heard popping sounds around places we'd lived, we knew shootings had happened near where we worked, but we had never actually seen a shootout. It didn't look like anyone was hurt, none of the men running were limping, and the shooter we saw seemed to be firing either randomly or sloppily, but it was kind of terrifying being only about half a block away from at least one guy firing away with a gun, blocking our path.
Then we went to my new case. C-- had already reacted with anger, yelling, "What the f--- is this f-ing job we have? How the f--- do they expect us to do it? What if I had been alone? What if we hadn't been in a car? They f-ing send us out here and we're f-ing ending up in the middle of f-ing shootouts and they f-ing want us to go out ALONE?" I wanted to giggle at everything. We somehow got through the visit on my new case, then went home. Since I didn't have any hard liquor at home, I got some of my favorite Chinese food, a vegetable roll and cold sesame noodles.
Oh, and the rest of the week had been stressful, too. One way or another, it's never boring at ACS. Fortunately, I don't have high blood pressure.
It was the first time either of us had actually seen a handgun used. We'd heard popping sounds around places we'd lived, we knew shootings had happened near where we worked, but we had never actually seen a shootout. It didn't look like anyone was hurt, none of the men running were limping, and the shooter we saw seemed to be firing either randomly or sloppily, but it was kind of terrifying being only about half a block away from at least one guy firing away with a gun, blocking our path.
Then we went to my new case. C-- had already reacted with anger, yelling, "What the f--- is this f-ing job we have? How the f--- do they expect us to do it? What if I had been alone? What if we hadn't been in a car? They f-ing send us out here and we're f-ing ending up in the middle of f-ing shootouts and they f-ing want us to go out ALONE?" I wanted to giggle at everything. We somehow got through the visit on my new case, then went home. Since I didn't have any hard liquor at home, I got some of my favorite Chinese food, a vegetable roll and cold sesame noodles.
Oh, and the rest of the week had been stressful, too. One way or another, it's never boring at ACS. Fortunately, I don't have high blood pressure.