Attention All Shoppers

Attention All Shoppers!

I’m going to post this here for one reason, and one reason only: because I am NOT a bad person. Yes, I had a few issues with family members growing up- nothing traumatic, and I’ve taken my fair share of teasing and bullying in high school but there is absolutely nothing mentally wrong with me other than I have had ENOUGH. I know the media nowadays likes to take stories like mine and try to find some sort of illness or something to blame…but rest assured: all my eggs are in the right basket, whether you agree with me or not.
Let me explain a little bit better. My name? Don’t worry about it. Where do I live? Don’t worry about that either. The only details I will give you about myself are the following: 1.) I work in a retail store that I am 99.9% certain all of you have heard of, been to, and shopped at at least once in your lives. I’ve worked there for several years now having held various positions from cashier to backroom to shelf stocking to my most recent position, the customer service desk. And 2.) Up until very recently, I would have never dreamed of harming another person. I was raised to be well mannered, sensitive, sympathetic, empathetic, caring and helpful, and I continue to be most of the time…
Multiple years in retail have given me the incredible skill of bottling up my emotions and hiding them super well. I could be boiling angry on the inside and still smiling and remaining cool as a cucumber on the outside. That said, it’d probably be good to give you some info on what exactly I do at my job: I know this is a lot of prefacing, but trust me, this is important for later. At the service desk where I work, we handle returns and refunds, process money transfers, cash checks, and sell and print money orders for customers. Sounds easy, right? Phff. Well, while the tasks themselves are not complicated in the slightest, the stupidity and attitudes of the customers make it quite the challenge sometimes.
Now, do you remember the “golden rule” from pre-school? If not, the golden rule simply says: “Treat others the way you’d like to be treated.” Sounds fair, right? Well, maybe it’s due to my upbringing in a mostly loving family combined with my strong desire as a child and even still in adulthood to make people happy, but I have always lived as if this wasn’t just a rule. To me, it was always the golden law; the “North” on my moral compass if you will. And here, I believe, I can begin my story.
Almost every Friday since I’ve been employed at that store, a particular woman has come in with whom I have had many, many issues. I believe the first time I had the misfortune of meeting her, she threw her DVD case at me because I, as store policy and my manager dictated, refused her return of an open copy of “Old Yeller”. The only reason I remember this is because I was thinking to myself what a coincidence it was that an older lady was yelling at me about a movie called “Old Yeller”. I know- I’m corny. Whatever. Anyway, she insisted she wanted to return it because she’d never watch it again because it was too sappy for her. Fair enough, but not permitted at our store. I smiled sympathetically and said “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do. If you really want to get your money back for it, I’d suggest trying to sell it on eBay or something. It’s easy and you may even end up getting more than you paid for it here!” She snorted indignantly and told my manager that I was “just trying to shut her up and get her to leave” to which my manager did nothing to reprimand me but still! The nerve of this lady! I was just trying to help! Since then, she’s been nothing but nasty to me. One time when I wasn’t looking, she stole my pen that I got while at my favorite vacation spot. Another time, she yelled at me in front of a whole line of customers because “I was going too slow, and if I can’t do my job quick enough then I shouldn’t be working here!” to which everyone in line behind her agreed, making me feel so humiliated and angry inside. You have to understand: to this day, our registers are not that fast! They’re old, outdated, and corporate refuses to upgrade. I can only work with what I’ve got, and I can only go as fast as my register can. I’m HUMAN!
I mentioned that I’ve been working there for several years now, though, and as they’ve gone by, they’ve only made her more belligerent, rude, and ignorant. She was already over the hill in the early years of my career there, and over the last few years, she’s been allegedly developing some “medical issues” which, if you ask me, are bullshit. I honestly think she’s just looking for attention because nowadays, she’ll come into the store with no cane, no limp, and virtually no signs of physical decline whatsoever, but then she’ll take one of the electric scooter carts that our store has as a courtesy to those who really are disabled. I am not even lying- this bitch once told a young lady who had only ONE LEG that she’d have to wait if she wanted to use it because, as she said, “I got here first!” I know! What kind of raging fucking lunatic!?
So, now that I’ve painted you a hopefully sufficient picture of how horrible this woman is to me, and to many other associates with whom I share retail tales, let me digress again to explain to you another key piece of information. I mentioned earlier that I had some issues with people in my family while I was growing up, however, this does not include my grandmother. She and I were incredibly close ever since I can remember, and I loved her more than just about everyone else in the world- with the exception of maybe my parents. Sadly, about 3 years ago, she was diagnosed with cancer, and was given about 6 months tops to live. Fortunately for me, my grandmother was one of the most stubborn people to ever walk this Earth and walked out of that doctor’s office and didn’t come back for almost 2 years. After that, her health really took a turn for the worse and I tried to spend as much time as possible with her because any second could’ve been her last, and I needed to be there for her. Of course, however, I still had bills to pay. College was expensive, car insurance and gas were expensive, and I had a maxed-out credit card with a boat load of money due in minimum payments every month. So, while I was at work, another family member would go up to my grandma’s house to keep an eye on her and tend to her needs, with specific instructions to call my cell if ANYTHING were to give them reason to believe that her end was near.
One night, the night that stains my memory like red wine on white carpet, I was working from 1pm until 10pm. It was a Friday, around 6:00, and as usual, the rude bitch I described earlier walked in and sat her ass down in one of the electric scooters, as always. She parked it in front of my register at the service desk and stood up, demanding that I, for the umpteenth time, process a money transfer for her to send $500 to her daughter in Florida. I was just in the middle of counting the monster lady’s money, when I heard my phone ring loudly in my pocket. Panicked, and fully shifting my focus from this miserable old bat to my phone hoping that it wasn’t bad news about my grandma, I dropped her money onto the counter and whipped out my phone. I looked at the caller ID to recognize the number as my aunt’s, who was currently looking after my grandma. I instantly pressed “Answer” and my mouth went dry as cotton. I’ll never forget how much my legs were shaking or how my stomach dropped as I put the phone to my ear.
“Hello?” I asked, waiting for the worst news of my life.
“Honey, I’m so sorry. I-it all happened so fast…” was all that I heard my aunt say before I flipped it closed. I heard a loud ringing in my ears, my mouth was as dry as a desert floor, and I began to feel my face turn bright, bright red as it began to feel 100 or more degrees hotter than usual. At last, the tears. The tears poured down my cheeks like summer rain and my legs, quaking like a shifting fault line, finally gave out. Right there, behind the service desk of the store…I began to cry like a baby. It had finally happened. I remember to this day how I used to lay awake at night as a 5 or 6-year-old, terrified that my grandma was going to die someday, and now, she had finally gone. It was the worst nightmare I could never wake up from, and I realized that my life was never going to be the same again.
Naturally, the girl that was working at the register next to me knew exactly why I was crying. I was very open to my coworkers about how much I loved and cared about my grandma, and they were all on edge, praying for her health and for my mental strength during these rough times. She didn’t even have to ask me. She just placed her hand on my shoulder, gently rubbed my back, and that’s when I heard it:
“UMM! EXCUSE ME! I’m still WAITING here! What the hell is this little jerk’s problem!? I’ve got a lot to do tonight!”
If I have to tell you who it was that said this, you haven’t been paying attention. Instantly, tears stopped coming out of my eyes. I swallowed every drop of sadness and forced myself to stand up. Everything- and I mean everything from the ceiling, to the floor, to register buttons, to the merchandise sitting on the shelves down the aisle across from the service desk- suddenly had a red tint to it. Standing face to face with this bitch, I stretched my sleeves down past my wrists, dried my eyes, and choked out “Nothing. I’m fine. I apologize.” That was all I could spit out. One more word and I would’ve lost it again, but I knew I had to finish this transaction.
Would you like to know something funny? When you come to a store like the one I work at where you can send money to other countries and states, or cash a paycheck, or even return an item without a receipt, usually, you’re required to show some form of identification. While this thoughtless, ungrateful, unsympathetic, arrogant, ignorant, self-important, unbelievable bitch was standing at my register, proverbially kicking me while I was more down than I have ever been in my entire life, after years and years of tormenting me over stupid, petty bullshit, there, propped up facing me in between a small crack in the lid of the receipt paper printer, sat this bitch’s driver’s license.
I cracked. I admit it. But you know what? I don’t regret what I did. Not in the least. I had the procedure for transferring money memorized to the point where I didn’t even have to look at the screen to know what I was doing, so while my fingers did the work, my eyes burned the image of this lady’s name and address- which duh, I’m not going to share and incriminate myself- into my memory bank.
After I was certain that I’d given myself enough time to remember the necessary information, under the guise that my register was “being slow”, I finally gave the unsuspecting old hag her ID back, printed the receipt, collected her signature at the bottom, and told her to have a very nice night, and apologized again for the inconvenience my register and my emotions had caused her. There was no way in Hell I was going to give her any actual excuse to get me in trouble at this job. At that point, one tiny negative comment toward her might have given anyone within earshot a reason to suspect me of committing the atrocious crimes that I was secretly plotting.
Once she had left, I removed my worker’s vest, threw on my jacket and clocked out, sputtering “I have to go…Grandma…” as I passed my manager on the walk out the door. I had driven to my grandma’s house every single Sunday and sometimes other days during the week too for the last 6 years. Usually, I would stop off at the food store and pick us up a carrot cake for dessert or pull into the flower shop’s parking lot and get her a dozen roses just to make her smile. This time however, it felt like I was driving an entire world away. Every car that I got stuck behind seemed to be going 50 miles per hour too slow. Every red light I had to stop at seemed to be red 10 times longer than they normally did. And when I finally arrived, and parked outside her house, it seemed like a complete stranger’s house. The house that I had come to feel more at home at than even the house I’d grown up in now felt so sorrowful, depressing and cold. I ascended the front porch steps, opened the front door, and shoved aside family members who were already there and trying to console me and brace me for the impact of the sight of the cold, shriveling corpse of the woman who was not only my grandmother, but my very best friend in the entire world. I walked into her bedroom, saw her lying there under her blankets, limply snuggling the stuffed dog that resembled her old puppy, Bella, and immediately broke down.
I felt like I had failed her by not being there. I felt like I’d betrayed her. And I promised myself that I would never forgive myself for not being able to say good bye. I should have done more. I don’t know exactly what I could’ve done, but I could’ve figured something out somehow that would’ve allowed me to be there the moment she decided that her cancer was finally too much to bear, and that it was time to depart from this world. I know that if it was her choice, she would’ve waited to see me too, but it was my responsibility to be there for her. Not the other way around.
The funeral was beautiful. I’ve never seen so many people in one small room. And I’ve never seen so many people crying in the same room. She touched so many lives in so many ways. That night, my family and I had a party in her honor that consisted of 3 cases of beer, and a pyramid of empty cans that reached the chandelier hanging above the kitchen table. We told stories and shared memories of her and did the best we could to help each other through this terrible, terrible tragedy.
Something was still nagging at me in the back of my mind though: that bitch. The way she had disrespected me the night my grandma passed away was unforgiveable. It was the very, very last straw. She needed to be taught a lesson, and at the funeral, I vowed in a prayer while kneeling before my grandma’s urn that that rude, selfish monster would regret the day she had ever been rude to me. So, I began planning. And planning. And one night, I went shopping for the equipment I needed to bring my swift, iron-fisted justice. I bought a few feet of rope and a bucket from one store, a collapsible folding chair from another, a baseball bat from another, and some razor wire from another.
When I was sure enough time had passed to take any suspicion off of myself, using some latex gloves and a lock-pick fashioned out of a paper clip, I snuck into that bitch’s house in the dead of night. The house was old and empty, and as I prowled around her cozy homestead’s hallways, random floorboards would creak and moan. It was so dark, but I was confident and careful. After hearing an intruder ascend the staircase, she came out into the hallway threatening to call the police if whoever it was didn’t leave immediately. No. Way. In. Hell. I bolted toward the sound of her voice, bat in hand, and cracked her a good one right in the skull. I can still hear the thud her body made as she crashed cold onto the floor.
She awoke to me pouring a bucket of cold water on her in her basement. I had gagged her with a pair of her own socks and used the rope to tie her to the folding chair. She began panicking, surely wondering what was going on, who would do this to her, what did they want, and was this going to be the end? Her mind must’ve been racing a mile a minute, trying to figure out exactly who it was that she had wronged so badly that they would do something so horrible to her. But believe me: as long as I let her sit there in the dark, terrified and confused, contemplating and wondering, I never once came into her mind. I could tell when I finally turned on the light to reveal myself to her, by the look in her eyes- the look of shock, and then regret…and then disgust. Disgust! Even as my captive, she still looked at me as a piece of vermin; a cockroach that needed to be squished. She never once imagined that I- a piece of store-register-machinery rather than human- would ever be capable of finding her and punishing her.
“Hello, bitch.” I sneered. “Do you remember me? Do you recognize me? Sure you do.” She began wiggling in the chair, trying to break free, desperate to get the sock out of her mouth so she could doubtlessly spew more filth from that facial shit hole.
“I’ve come here tonight, pretty much at your own invitation.” I said. “You see, you’ve come into my store on a weekly basis for years and treated me, my coworkers, and our other customers, as if we owe you something; as if you are God’s gift to the God damn world. As you know, I have processed many money transfers to your daughter in Florida over the last few years, and you, foolishly, handed over all the necessary information that I needed to make your life absolutely miserable while you were doing it. You gave me your driver’s license with your address on it which led me right to you. Don’t you think it’s sad that I showed up here, knowing that you’re such a bitch that I wouldn’t have any trouble having to fight a husband or boyfriend? You’re just a miserable old hag who preys on the kind and polite because you know we can’t say anything back or else we’ll get in trouble with our managers. All we try to do is help you and do our jobs, but you just always have to find something to bitch about.”
Honestly, at this point, it was as if I was speaking to a deaf woman. Clearly, the severity of the situation was not sinking in, so I decided to just get right to the point. Why draw it out any longer than I needed to?
“Do you love your daughter?” I asked, scratching my head, in a tone that revealed that I was completely in control of the situation. Her eyes shot open wide as if to ask, “What do you care?”
“Well,” I explained, reaching into my pocket. “More than likely you do. I can’t even begin to fathom how you managed to trick some poor man into fucking you. I can only hope it was through the use of some form of date rape drug and that the poor man never had to face the sight of his own dick disappearing into your decrepit cunt. But your daughter? She’s probably the only person in this world you’ve ever treated like an actual human being, isn’t she? Someone you used to read bedtime stories to, and sing lullabies to, and take shopping during “girls days out” as you paraded through town treating store clerk after store clerk like me more and more like shit as the day went on?”
At last, I saw a tiny bit of reflection in her eyes as she began reliving tiny moments of her past with her daughter in this highly tense, unpredictable situation she was stuck in.
“I imagine your daughter is nowhere near as rude to others as you are.” I said. “She’s probably beautiful, and married, with kids of her own. Maybe that’s even why you’re so bitter.”
I carefully pulled the sharp razor wire out of my pocket and slowly approached her, letting it rest, dangling around her neck past her shoulders. She squirmed and began to panic even more, desperately trying to wriggle free, to no avail.
“It’s a shame you couldn’t have realized that people like me? We’re not going to take people like yours shit anymore. If you had…perhaps you might have saved your poor, beautiful daughter’s life.”
From deep behind the socks jammed in her mouth, I heard the enraged and confused screech that was most certainly the word “What!?”
“You heard me right, bitch. Your daughter is dead. So are her kids. So is her husband. And it’s all your fault. You led me right to them!”
Wait- oh, yeah. I never mentioned this part, did I? So, in order to transfer the money to someone at our service desk, we need not only the state that it’s going to, but also the city in which the recipient is going to be picking it up. During my bereavement time off from work, I took a quick flight down to Florida to “clear my head”, as I told my family. I took an even quicker drive to the town in which the bitch had sent money, and, using a good old-fashioned phone book, managed to find the exact address of the daughter’s house!
“I don’t know if your parents are still alive,” I said, “but I’m going to assume that they croaked many years ago considering how old and miserable you are, although I want you to know, if I had any information on them, they’d be my next targets for ever bringing a miserable creature like you into this world. Oh, and if you don’t believe me about your daughter, here’s a picture to prove it!” I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small 6 by 4 piece of photo paper. It was a picture of her daughter, her husband, and their kids, all with slashed throats, sitting on their living room couch…with big red smiles painted with blood on each of their faces. Her eyes widened so far I thought they might pop out.
At last, the moment I had been waiting for! She started crying! She had stopped wriggling in her restraints and had finally just given up, bawling a river of tears down her cheeks. I had never seen her so powerless. Usually, at the store, she had a look of pure smug and superiority. Now, I had reduced her to a sobbing puddle of tied up skin and bones. It was wonderful. I had never felt so alive, but I kept my cool, and did to her exactly what she did to me. I furiously stomped my foot as hard as I could and shouted, “UMM! EXCUSE ME! I’m still WAITING here! What the hell is your problem!? I’ve got a lot to do tonight!”
It was over. I had completely broken her. She had learned her lesson, and I finally knew that I had proven my point. I removed the socks from her mouth and gave her a chance to speak.
“If you have anything to say to me, now is the time to say it.” I warned. She was crying so much she could barely breathe. With each sob she let out, I felt more and more relief and more sure that what I had done had worked. Sure, it was a shame that it had to come to this. But she brought it to this.
“You’re a monster!” she cried, humiliated and defeated. I laughed hysterically.
“Well! Then what does that make you, bitch?” I asked, but before she could vocally shit out one more word, I grabbed the ends of the razor wire wrapped around her neck and pulled them in opposite directions, severing her head from her shoulders. I then untied her, took the rope, the chair, the razor wire, the bat and the bucket and left her house before the sun came up.
Over the next few days, reports of the decapitated woman and her daughter’s slaughtered family dominated the news. Nobody could figure out a motive or reason why anyone would ever do this to an elderly woman and “her beloved family”. There were no prints found at the scene, no murder weapon found, and no incriminating evidence whatsoever was recovered.
As for me? Well…here’s something for you to think about. I’m still out there somewhere. Like I said, I’m not a bad person. If I was, why would I even be telling you all this? I want you all to hear this and let it serve as a warning: be careful how you treat others- no matter who they are, no matter where you meet them. You never know who you might push over the edge, and you never know what it might cost you.