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So last weekend I dropped by the red dot to pick up some booze the hostess of a party I was headed to requested and there was some sort of weirdo in there, running his mouth arguing with the guy running the store.
Here's the bad bit: it took me a few beats to figure out which one of them was the weirdo and which one of them worked there.
Now, this is not an upscale establishment. I'm not expecting valet service and a personal shopper in a place like this. These stores, for those of you who do not live in an Alcoholic Beverage Control state, are where one buys hard liquor. The larger ones sell beer and wine, but beer and wine can be bought in any grocery or drug store, so the smaller ones don't. They vary wildly in upkeep, size, and order. Some are so squalid and nasty I won't go in there.
I'll go in a squalid one, but I have the locations of which ones do not reek of tobacco smoke memorized. Hence my presence in said store.
So here's this guy ranting and raving and the storekeeper is engaging him and both are using some pretty nasty language.
Now, look. I have a nasty mouth myself. And it was in the afternoon, the shopkeeper was probably bored out of his mind and allowed the nutjob to stick around for entertainment purposes. It's a freaking liquor store and I'm buying an armload of hard liquor. I'm clearly not Baptist sunday school teacher on my way to a pray with orphans. But come on, still. I'm a woman alone, two guys aggressively bickering and cursing each other is not exactly making me feel safe.
Okay, so I make it to the counter and weirdo starts trying to engage me in the conversation while the guy is ringing me up and the shop guy is going "Step away from her, don't talk to her" etc. Had the guy touched me he would have got a bottle in his face from me, although I feel fairly sure the shopkeep would not have let him escalate to that point. Shopkeep was a friendly enough guy, and actually apologized for the annoyance (to which I said, "Well, I used to work at the Downtown Kinko's" and he laughed and said, correctly, "Then you've heard it all!"). But damn, y'all, I was in there alone and it was kind of iffy, you know? Seriously, I'm not terribly offended...it was a rough place with a couple of rough guys and I'm not exactly smooth on the edges myself. But if the guy's letting aggressive weirdos hang out in there, I'm not going in there. I'm going to go on someplace else where I don't have to worry about attracting the attention of unbalanced people.
Here's the bad bit: it took me a few beats to figure out which one of them was the weirdo and which one of them worked there.
Now, this is not an upscale establishment. I'm not expecting valet service and a personal shopper in a place like this. These stores, for those of you who do not live in an Alcoholic Beverage Control state, are where one buys hard liquor. The larger ones sell beer and wine, but beer and wine can be bought in any grocery or drug store, so the smaller ones don't. They vary wildly in upkeep, size, and order. Some are so squalid and nasty I won't go in there.
I'll go in a squalid one, but I have the locations of which ones do not reek of tobacco smoke memorized. Hence my presence in said store.
So here's this guy ranting and raving and the storekeeper is engaging him and both are using some pretty nasty language.
Now, look. I have a nasty mouth myself. And it was in the afternoon, the shopkeeper was probably bored out of his mind and allowed the nutjob to stick around for entertainment purposes. It's a freaking liquor store and I'm buying an armload of hard liquor. I'm clearly not Baptist sunday school teacher on my way to a pray with orphans. But come on, still. I'm a woman alone, two guys aggressively bickering and cursing each other is not exactly making me feel safe.
Okay, so I make it to the counter and weirdo starts trying to engage me in the conversation while the guy is ringing me up and the shop guy is going "Step away from her, don't talk to her" etc. Had the guy touched me he would have got a bottle in his face from me, although I feel fairly sure the shopkeep would not have let him escalate to that point. Shopkeep was a friendly enough guy, and actually apologized for the annoyance (to which I said, "Well, I used to work at the Downtown Kinko's" and he laughed and said, correctly, "Then you've heard it all!"). But damn, y'all, I was in there alone and it was kind of iffy, you know? Seriously, I'm not terribly offended...it was a rough place with a couple of rough guys and I'm not exactly smooth on the edges myself. But if the guy's letting aggressive weirdos hang out in there, I'm not going in there. I'm going to go on someplace else where I don't have to worry about attracting the attention of unbalanced people.
Glad you're okay!
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