Carpet Bag

Good Evening my Fellow Followers! Did you miss me? I missed you! I apologize for being AWOL for such a long time. If you haven’t checked in for a while, the first addition to the ‘Short but Not so Sweet’ story I explained that things at Love Lips have become hairy, and not in a vaginal kind of way. The story I explained before was that our very own (M) was robbed at knife point. Then, our other employee Katrina was robbed at knife point as well 2 hours after my shift ended on a Saturday. We were blessed that neither of them were hurt during either robbery and they are both still working for us. Due to two robberies back-to-back, our warehouse decided that we needed more protection. What kind of protection you ask? Sadly, it wasn’t a kick ass beef cake man with sun glasses acting as a bouncer at our front door named Hanz. Each cashier is now placed behind a giant plexi-glass barrier that I fondly call our “fish bowl”. All we need is an obelisk that explains the eating habits, mating habits, and place of natural origin for each employee that is working and we’d be like a zoo display! All joking aside, it really is ghastly and quite unbecoming for our newly painted and nice looking store, but safety is priority after two of the employees of our store were threatened, I just wish it didn’t mean we were now very impersonal to regular customers. But listen to me babbling on, lately I’ve had so many new stories to write so let me not keep you from reading the main story. Keep an eye on us because I’m back and will be updating the rest of the week and on! Thank you for sticking with me so far!

Carpet Bag

That’s right I said it, carpet bag. Who thought people still carried such a bag, I thought only Mary Poppins did, but today a scruffy-looking man walked into the store with one. It looked like a very old carpet bag stuffed with as much as it could possibly hold as it was bulging out the sides and poking into his stomach. I said through the giant ‘fish bowl’, “Hi, how are you?” He didn’t respond and continued to power walk towards the back door where the warehouse guys were power-sawing pieces to finish the ‘fish bowl’ out in the back, so I yelled, “Sir! There is nothing back there!” Even if there were booths back there you would’ve had to pay to go back there, dude. I thought to myself as I frowned at him.

“Oh! You guys really changed things!” He said very quickly as he spun around on his heel and stormed out of the store.

I was a little steamed because he was the second whacko we had that morning but that was only the beginning of my story with him.

*~*~*~*An hour later*~*~*~*

Carpet bag man comes storming back into the store and walks over to where I am behind my plexi-glass bowl and says flustered, “I need to use your phone, right now”

Blink.

“I’m serious; I need to use your phone! Someone at my house is threatening my life and I need to talk to the police right now!”

I was feeling rather rebellious to allowing him to use our phone but I begrudgingly walked over to the phone and then handed it to him while he got sassier by the minute as I took my time.

I wish I could’ve heard the dispatcher on the other line because the conversation that followed was quite interesting:

“Hello yes I would like to report a—My name? My name is Harold Jenkins and I am trying to tell you that there is a woman at my house threatening my life and will not let me into the house I pay for and live in. Her name is Lakesha Adams. Yes. No I’m not there, are you crazy?!”

Maybe…?

“No I will NOT go back there! The woman is threatening my life! Are you nuts?! Where am I calling from? I don’t know! I walked down to the department center near my house because it’s a safe distance from the house! What’s the store called? I don’t think it really matters, what matters is can you help me?”

Fair point…I wouldn’t want to call the police with a crazy woman threatening me at a stab-able distance.

“Aren’t you listening to me???? She is threatening-MY-LIFE!!! I will NOT go back to that house while she’s inside of it, can you please send someone to the house to meet me there so I can at least get my things out of there safely??” He paused as the person on the other end talked and his voice went up two octaves, “Are you serious?! You wouldn’t help me last night and now you won’t help me today? Don’t my tax payers dollars pay for you people to help us?!?! I am NOT going back to that house while my personal safety is being threatened by a crazy person!!!”

They argued a little bit more and I lost a little respect for our system, unless this poor man called often for spousal abuse and it posed to be false I don’t see why they couldn’t send someone out to make sure the guy could gather some clean underwear safely without having scissors jabbed into his neck. I didn’t hear the last few words he spat into our phone before turning it off and throwing it down on the counter and leaving my store without a “thank you”. Now the question is; did anyone hear about a stabbing or shooting of a man in Dundalk this evening?