The State Of Things

Police And Thieves

Over the course of the last two weekends, four of our other area stores were the targets of armed robbers. In one case, the opening shift supervisor and a cashier were handcuffed in the office after the suspect forced the supervisor to open the safe. And although the description of the guy matched the one Latasha and I gave the cops back in January, the use of the cuffs seemed like blatant deceleration of escalation. Sure enough, three stores were hit the next weekend (although the one where the suspect came in while there were still customers in the store doesn’t seem to be the same guy–our guy only took money, no booze). For me, this is terrorism, plain and simple. I remember when the detective from the robbery division arrived on our scene and the patrolman told him, “Seems like a simple armed robbery here.” I felt like screaming back, “There is nothing simple about this, motherfucker! He was waving a fucking gun!” But I didn’t. What the patrolman was saying at the time was nobody got hurt. Which doesn’t make me feel any better about the situation. The guy is learning as he goes. He’s getting smarter. And sooner or later someone will get hurt.

For the most part, I don’t have the dizzying anxiety that I did for the first few weeks after the robbery any more. Part of that has been replaced by anger. This recent string of robberies occurred about twenty minutes to the north of us, in well to do communities. One of these stores is right down the street from my father in-law’s house. It was only after these recent incidents that our company decided to send out an e-mail telling everyone what to do in case of a robbery. By then there were more than a half dozen incidents on the books, spread out over two counties. I also learned that the police in the Fishers/Carmel districts picked up a surveillance tape that the Metro police never obtained from the robbery that happened before ours. That particular robbery happened on the 23rd of December and was at a store fifteen minutes down the road from ours. I’m talking on the very same street, here. And nobody even looked at that tape until another district came to fetch it earlier this week. It’s mind-boggling how little the safety of the workers are valued in all of this. It just pisses me off.

I’m still get a little antsy on the weekends I have to work, though. Especially during the last hour of my shift. You know…right around the time I was robbed at gunpoint. But with the recent rash of incidents on this side of town, I feel I’m justified when I say let’s lock the doors when the customer traffic is light and let the people in one at a time. Company policy can suck it. I just want to live…

Q: How long have you had a weak back?

A: Oh, ’bout a week back.

The back is doing much better and I thank everybody for their concern. It’s amazing what five days of drugs will do for you when you’re experiencing the worst pain you’ve ever felt in your life. And I was also amazed that I got paid better for the four days I was out sick than when I worked straight time. I tell ya, this company never ceases to amaze me. So I plan on being sick a whole lot more in the months to come.

Actually, I can’t really do that. On the day I arrived back in the store, I had a whole liquor order waiting for me to be put up. Mind you, the freight comes in on Wednesdays. I got back to work on Friday that particular week. And despite me putting a doctor’s note on the manager’s desk stating I could not lift more that twenty pounds, they still made me put up that order. Alone. So if I take any more time off, I’m certain nothing will get done. Luckily, I feel pretty good. Sometimes I wake up stiff and achy, but the sciatic nerve doesn’t seem to be bugging me as much. Whenever I put in a day of heavy lifting, I make sure to just come home and sprawl out instead of sitting in this computer chair and aggravating things even more. I guess I have to face the music that I’m forty years old and am starting to pay for all the heavy lifting I’ve done since I entered the retail world at eighteen.

“Well, you might lose some hair.”

My dad called me the other night to fill me in on what’s going on with his diagnosis. He put it out there rather calmly. “I’ve got throat cancer.” Just like that. He could’ve just as easily said, “I’ve got some nice squash in the fridge.” And I can’t say that I acted really surprised, either. He gave up smoking a few years ago, but up until then he’d been a pack a day kinda guy since his teen years. So some sort of cancer was a big possibility. I was just hoping that after the whole skin cancer thing, we’d be done for a while. But it is what it is. The doctor is confident that chemo and radiation will take care of it. But my dad is in his seventies now and a little more frail than before. So anything can happen. But when he called, he seemed in high spirits which always puts me more at ease. Since Lynn just had an aunt go through this very thing, I told him what kind of side effects to expect from the treatment. “Well, you might lose some hair,” I told him, which made him laugh like crazy. All the men on my father’s side of the family went bald prematurely, myself included. It was just one of those moments that made me wish I lived closer to my family, my dad especially. On that last visit out, I felt we weren’t just father and son then. We were friends and I think we realized we missed each other more than we’ll ever admit, although we never said it. We didn’t have to, really.

What A Wicked Game To Play…

Speaking of people I wish I lived closer to, my iPod seems to be stuck in “Beth” mode lately. I turn it on, it plays some old Tom Petty song from back in the day. Then Norah Jones, which reminds me of back in the day for some strange reason. Then Chris Isaak, which definitely reminds me of back in the day. Chris Isaak was our guy back then. “Wicked Game” and all that. So for kicks, I decided to put new music on the thing just to see if I could shake the aural lust, and the first song to come on was “All You Can Eat (And You Can Eat It All Night Long)” by Candye Kane. Stop fucking with my head, iPod!

Crush On You

I’m also crushing on Kat Dennings a lot these days. That chick cracks me up. I mean, when most people think of Hollywood actresses, they think of glamour and endless parties. I’ve never seen an actress like Kat who loves to sit home in her pajamas and make video blogs. I think I’m in love.

I Covet Thee

I’m also coveting one of these sweet, little cuties.

I know what you’re thinking. Those specs look awful. But that’s a solid state hard drive with 4 GB of storage. We’re talking flash storage! We’re talking RAMdrive storage, baby. And running Linux, which I’m now almost fully fluent in. Unfortunately, these seven inch wonders are $399.00 a pop. That’s money I don’t have. But I’m willing to work it off in trade if one of you fine people want to buy it for me. Seriously. I’d whore myself for one of these things. Unfortunately, the closest I can come to it right now is installing Puppy Linux on my old 1996 Pentium 1 laptop. Surprisingly, this 96 MB operating system works wonders on that old machine. Hell, it automatically detects my USB drive and even Windows 98 couldn’t do that! Should my Ubuntu partition ever go downon this desktop machine, I might replace the whole thing with Puppy just for kicks. I’m beginning to think that the smaller distributions of Linux are the way to go. Why take up fifteen gigs of space with just an operating system when all you’re going to do is surf the web and write some e-mails? I can always keep my Windows XP partition to synch my iPod and watch my Kat Dennings videos with. Suck it, Microsoft!