"We should have fucking shotguns."
Subject line is a quote from Pulp Fiction and it's how work has made me feel the last two days. Last night - less than 24 hours after my last post - I had to sell bullets to some shitty, self-satisfied old man who couldn't walk away from the register without whipping out his conceal & carry permit with so much pride you'd think it gave blowjobs and dispensed $1000 bills. And of course he then started to sermonize about how if somebody licensed to carry a concealed weapon had been concealing one in that theatre...
I couldn't do my normal customer service autopilot and just nod and go along with it. I cut him off and told him that such a person would have died like everyone else, that they wouldn't have stood a chance against a heavily armed and armored assailant with the element of surprise. From the look on grandpa's face you'd think he was a five year-old child who just had his macaroni picture criticized. "Well," he muttered, "not if you got a head shot."
I just said "Yeah, you might get lucky," and wished him a good night. I knew better than to keep arguing. There was no need anyway.
So today I get to work and I see a real live skinhead wearing an anti-Semitic shirt. If you're really curious what it looked like, go here to this NSFW Nazi punk rock record label who sells it. I had no interaction with the man, although I'm sure if I had it would have led to an interesting conversation about my Mjolnir pendant that I wear; a conversation that would have been unpleasant for everyone. What haunts me about it is that he had with him a wife and two beautiful, very young little girls. They were a normal family in every sense except for dad going around broadcasting bigotry on his chest. I can only imagine the kind of talk those girls are going to grow up thinking is normal.
Finally tonight I had a customer rush and tell me there was a man trying to force a child into a pickup truck. Long story short it turned out it was the guy's own kid, but it was pretty rough and suspicious-looking and I could see why the woman and her husband were alarmed. The woman at customer service wanted nothing to do with any of it and washed her hands of it, so I went outside to sort of keep an eye from a distance while the couple phoned the police. The cops came and I left it to them. Apparently the guy saw me snooping around because he assumed I called the cops and he came inside ranting at the aforementioned customer service woman, wanting to speak to my manager, etc. I'm not in any trouble, but she did make sure to stress to me that our company policy is "we don't get involved."
Yeah. I don't think so. I may know I can't win a firefight in a crowded movie theatre but I also know a LOT of the shit in the world that goes down is able to go down because people don't want to get involved. I did what was prudent in the situation and I don't apologize for that.
But yeah, we should have fucking shotguns.
I couldn't do my normal customer service autopilot and just nod and go along with it. I cut him off and told him that such a person would have died like everyone else, that they wouldn't have stood a chance against a heavily armed and armored assailant with the element of surprise. From the look on grandpa's face you'd think he was a five year-old child who just had his macaroni picture criticized. "Well," he muttered, "not if you got a head shot."
I just said "Yeah, you might get lucky," and wished him a good night. I knew better than to keep arguing. There was no need anyway.
So today I get to work and I see a real live skinhead wearing an anti-Semitic shirt. If you're really curious what it looked like, go here to this NSFW Nazi punk rock record label who sells it. I had no interaction with the man, although I'm sure if I had it would have led to an interesting conversation about my Mjolnir pendant that I wear; a conversation that would have been unpleasant for everyone. What haunts me about it is that he had with him a wife and two beautiful, very young little girls. They were a normal family in every sense except for dad going around broadcasting bigotry on his chest. I can only imagine the kind of talk those girls are going to grow up thinking is normal.
Finally tonight I had a customer rush and tell me there was a man trying to force a child into a pickup truck. Long story short it turned out it was the guy's own kid, but it was pretty rough and suspicious-looking and I could see why the woman and her husband were alarmed. The woman at customer service wanted nothing to do with any of it and washed her hands of it, so I went outside to sort of keep an eye from a distance while the couple phoned the police. The cops came and I left it to them. Apparently the guy saw me snooping around because he assumed I called the cops and he came inside ranting at the aforementioned customer service woman, wanting to speak to my manager, etc. I'm not in any trouble, but she did make sure to stress to me that our company policy is "we don't get involved."
Yeah. I don't think so. I may know I can't win a firefight in a crowded movie theatre but I also know a LOT of the shit in the world that goes down is able to go down because people don't want to get involved. I did what was prudent in the situation and I don't apologize for that.
But yeah, we should have fucking shotguns.