Vacate the Premises
I work at a business location that easily rhymes with Buck Free Keys’s. It is/was my first job, and I worked my butt off to keep it. It’s the easiest job to have where I live, and I wouldn’t trade it in for the world. Ours isn’t the prettiest Buck’s, nor the largest, but all of the staff I work with are great and so are most of the managers. I even became a manager after three years of dedication at Buck’s, and I am proud of myself for it.
With Buck’s, a lot of people in my area come in and are usually surprised and/or upset with how pricey and yet cheap we are with our games. This usually changes when they realize, after our explaining, that our Buck’s is the only Buck’s in a good two or three hundred miles. Our corporate sucks, no lies, and as such our prices jump around like an angry toddler chasing a balloon. We have a lot of mothers-in-law, fathers-in-law, and moms come in.
It’s a kid’s place, unsurprising right? Well…a week or two ago was my area’s spring break. And this is where we met the most stubborn, evil, old hag I’ve ever thought one could meet. And working where I work, I’ve met a lot of these kinds of people. We’re busy throughout the day, and as one of only two managers on duty, I’m helping the front of the house stay afloat. Between helping fix some of our more difficult machines, and soothing the complaints of some of our more difficult patrons, everything has been going well!
One might have even thought too well. Well, in walks the world’s Depository of Witchitude, right after I had just finished telling my co-worker that “today was going to be a fun one!” This woman could’ve pickled a live elephant with the sheer amount of witchiness resting on her face. I had been walking over to another staff member at our kid check station. This is essentially where we…now get this…check your kids in with you! (Gasp! Horror of horrors! Safety for children!). What that means is we literally give you a stamp, and your kids a matching stamp, in invisible ink so that they leave with YOU and not SOMEONE ELSE.
Anyhow. This woman has come in with her grandkids, though soon the husband (her apparent son), who is now my favorite action hero, will arrive. She enters first and immediately turns her nose up at my staff member, who politely asks to see their hands so that they can get a stamp. “Why are you stamping us?! We don’t need a STAMP.” “Ma’am, the stamps are so that no one leaves with any of your kids. They’re only supposed to leave with y’all.” “Well, my [granddaughter’s name] and [grandson’s name] are too little to get a stamp!”
During all of this, my staff member and I are getting treated to the extremest form of stink eye I have ever seen from a grown human. This woman is glaring at us in a way I thought only possible by demons, and perhaps very, very irate cats. She’s gone back and forth with my staff member, and still has yet to even raise her hand for the stamp. Now, my co-worker and I are both the darkest people in our entire store, skin-wise (an important thing to note, I promise), and neither of us is very shy about letting our accents change depending on the people we talk to. Someone from the ‘hood? “Hey, we hood too!” Someone from the nicer parts of town?
“Yes ma’am! No ma’am! We hope you have an absolutely blessed day ma’am!” This too, is also important. We had been nothing but pleasant as can be. This whole time, my staff member has been using his nicest “white people” voice. He’s already a generally soft-spoken dude, but this is the nicest and most panicked I’ve ever seen him get. This woman, this fiend, is getting increasingly louder while the two children standing behind her are looking more and more embarrassed.
The granddaughter is the older of the two, and the grandson is clinging to her hand with the most nervous stare possible. And all the while, she is just growing louder and more unruly. I quickly step in, taking over and letting my staff member turn and begin checking people OUT of “kid-check.” This apparently was the wrong move. Clearly, loudly, and with him still standing right next to me, this fiend in the shape of a woman goes: “Oh good. Another one. Y’all must breed like roaches.” In what is such a casual tone, she might have been talking about the weather.
I’m sorry…What. I’m so caught off guard by sheer nonchalance of her statement, I can’t do anything but stare. But, then was not the time, and I simply hold out my hands and look the woman in her eyes. They are furious. So I speak, using my own “white-people” voice. “Ma’am. If your kids cannot be stamped, we have stickers for them. But we cannot let you in otherwise.” I say this as coolly as I can. “G’ammy—“ Is begun to be said, a sentence in its infancy immediately ceased by this hellspawn of a human, who turns and immediately hisses, “Shush! Gammy is talking.”
After which, she turns back around and then proceeds to holler for a manager. Over my shoulder. Directly in front of me. “Can I speak to a manager, please! Hello! I need some help!” Now, I had mentioned earlier that I myself am a manager, and we wear these nice red lanyards that clearly mark us out as managers. Like, they have MANAGER written all along the length of the lanyard, in bright white against a red background.
I raise my lanyard, continue to stare as calmly as I can at this woman, and state that I am—in fact—a manager! Wow! She sneered at me y’all, then told me, “Well someone like you ain’t no help to someone like me.” What? “Ma’am. I am a manager, and any other manager will tell—” “HELLO! AH, YOU! HEY! SWEETIE! CAN YOU GO GET YOUR MANAGER FOR ME?” She screams past me, waving her arms at my cashier…Who is a short walk away from kid-check.
My cashier, bless her soul, pauses in the middle of the order she’s taking, looks directly at me, and makes the most confused face ever. “He’s…right there ma’am?” She shouts across the way. I could have hugged her then and there, and she immediately went right back to her own work. This sends the woman right to the edge. Then she went overboard. She puts her finger under my nose and begins jabbing my chest to boot. “Where is YOUR manager then?” and “I want to speak to YOUR boss!” and “Why won’t you just let me and my babies go in!?”
Plus all other manner of complaints and shriek-whining. “Gammy, mommy and da—” speaks the little girl, who has stayed silent through most of this otherwise. “Gammy” turns around and screams at her to, and I quote, “Shush before gammy throws you in the trash like daddy should have!” My staff member next to me stops at hearing this. He looks at me, looks at the woman, and I can SEE his brain telling him that man-handling her is indeed the answer. He opens his mouth, his shoulders and spine are pulling back and straight, and he’s sucking in a breath…!
I nudge him with a foot and send him to go get another manager. Firmly, there are no chances for things to get worse. The little girl? Crying. Her brother? Crying too. Gammy? Turned right back around and screaming at me once more. Y’all, I felt like I was trapped in that conversation for eternity. This woman was going ‘round in circles, telling me to “get my boss” and “look what you made me do.”
Then, as my other manager is walking up, she hisses the winning statement in my face: “This is why people like you shouldn’t be getting jobs like this.” I’m not a very large guy by any means now, I’m just shy of 5’11”, I’m what is essentially a walking collection of sticks and skin, and I have a terrible habit of smiling when stressed or upset. Now would be a fair time to assume I would be upset, and as such, I’m smiling as I tell this woman: “Ma’am. I’m going to have to ask you to leave. If you do not vacate the premises, I will be calling the authorities.” “Are you threatening me?!”
Foolishly, I replied with a stinging comeback. “No ma’am. Promising.” This sends her on another spiel right as my fellow manager walks up and the front doors to our store open up. In comes my hero, who storms through those doors like a hurricane given life. Y’all, this was a man who was sun-tanned white, tall and broad, with tattoos running from shoulders to wrists. Enter the husband/son, whose expression shouts with the vitriol of the devil incarnate that he is displeased. “Mom. What are you doing here?” rumbles the mountain, as she turns about and immediately shifts tactics.
“Oh, finally you’re here! Would you please tell this nice young man that he can let us in now! I was telling him we needed to wait for you and we were just chatting!” “Why are my kids crying?” “Oh they got scared of the stamps, the young man right there didn’t listen when I told him they don’t like stamps—” “Stop. Just stop. I could hear you. I heard everything from when you started shrieking.” The woman looked absolutely floored. “You’re done.” He continued. “You don’t deserve to see these kids anymore, my kids, who you ‘love so much.’ Get out. Go home.”
Grumbles the mountain, with a tone that would have made me poop my pants were I the one being chastised. And so she did go, not without crocodile tears, not without shrieking that, “You can’t do that to your mother!” Not without her son turning around, handing his crying children to his wife who had just walked in, and then leaning into his mother’s face to, and I mean this quite literally, rumble the most intense parting words I’ve heard: “Leave, before I carry you out. I’ll throw you in the trash right here.”
She swiftly made her exit, sobbing and wailing all the way out. He then walks over to me, and I’m trying my darndest to not run for cover at the wrathful expression that turns my way. “I’m sorry about that.” Rumbles the voice of Zeus, God of thunder and massive size. “No problem! Would your kids like to have something off our prize wall?” Chirps my co-worker, the voice of an innocent, innocuous cherub. And thus, does our story end. Story credit: Reddit / StorminJericho