At about 9:30 p.m. my boss calls to let us know that there’s been a string of robberies in the past few days. The perpetrator was a Caucasian male in black clothes who told the clerks he had a bomb hidden under his clothes; alternately, he would show them a butcher knife.
Good plan.
Now, I don’t actually tell my co-worker about this, because I don’t want to worry her, and what are the chances this goon is going to pick our store? Right? We’re as prepared as we always are. We have a selection of panic buttons, two phones, state-of-the-art security cameras, and we’re double-staffed.
Half of an hour later, this clown shuffles in wearing an outfit his big brother must not have wanted and insists he has a bomb hidden…somewhere. He flails around on an explosive Easter egg hunt inside his own pants, and while to us this just looks like public masturbation, he clearly thinks this indicates he has a Looney Tunes-sized case of TNT in his jockstrap.
The way he walks and talks sounds like he really hopes he’s the bad guy in a low-budget blaxploitation flick. If you’re going to use the M.F. word as punctuation, and you want me to be threatened by it, you better sound like you mean it at least as much as Samuel L. Jackson does. Especially when you have sweaty withdrawal skin, googly Cookie Monster eyes, and you’re hiding half of your face like an Old West bandit.
I think the poor robber was just trying to hide his messed up meth teeth.
Him: “I have a bomb! Give me all the money!”
Me: “No. You don’t. We already got a call about you.”
(This is the point where I suddenly realize my coworker ‘Tasha actually thinks there might be a bomb strapped to this nervous wreck’s genitals. Oops. Prooobably should have told her.)
He isn’t stunned for long, but his next brilliant move is to pull out his butcher knife… Which is still in the sheath, with two snaps holding it there. If I was the kind of idiot who refuses to give money to an armed robber (I’m only the kind of idiot who tells them they’re a liar), I could have made it to Miami and been sitting in a wicker chair sipping a freaking maitai by the time his shaky hands got that thing loose, and even if he tried to chase me, he would have tripped over his floppy pants and stabbed himself in his penis. (I don’t know how his junk managed to get out of our store in one piece.)
Also good plan.
Me, as I reach toward the button that opens the register: “Okay, I’ll give it to you. But the police are already on their way here. We hit the buttons.”
Him: “You’re [Redacted]suckers. [Redacted] this!”
He throws a plastic bag on the counter and storms out just as awkwardly as you’d expect from someone who is trying to walk inside of a camping tent. He was a two-second wait from getting several hundred dollars. And he left.
Robber: 0. Me and 'Tasha: Plastic bag.
In conclusion,
1. My retired police officer father is going to kill me when he finds out I sassed a robber after the stories he’s told me and
2. This guy is just lucky he didn’t spill anything on ‘Tasha: