Don't take my tie!!! {robbed @ gunpoint}

I didn’t plan to write about the time I was robbed at gunpoint, it’s not that interesting. But I mentioned in my last post that it was NOT my scariest moment and that got me thinking about it. The one aspect of it I find interesting is what I had to do the next morning.

Once upon a time I worked for a fast food chain. I asked for a nickel raise and instead they made me an assistant manager (with a 10 cent raise—LOL). Later I was asked to work night shifts for a few weeks at a different location. Two of the assistants there quit. It was a bad neighborhood, but I accepted. Their one remaining assistant was going to work with me the first two nights to help me get to know their crew and any minor differences in procedures.

The first night went well. After we closed, the other assistant and I headed to the bank across the street to make the nightly deposit. As we crossed the street, motion to the right caught my attention. I saw two guys walking from behind the restaurant. In the dark I thought they were the guys who worked the grill that night and I kept walking towards the bank. The other assistant stopped. Five seconds later he went flying past me and down onto the sidewalk—he had been punched. I turned to see two men wearing ski-masks, one holding a sawed-off shotgun and the other holding a handgun. They didn’t hit me or even come close. They just told me to get down on the sidewalk next to the other guy.

Once I was down, one of the men came over to take the deposit from my hand. When he grabbed it he also got my company-issued tie. I started to ask him to leave it (a very cool black number with little orange H’s all over it), but I decided he wanted it more than I did. LOL! The other robber started giving us instructions. The dude went on and on and on. I felt like we were getting to be old friends, so I turned my head to look back at him. That wasn’t smart. As I turned my head, I very quickly had the shotgun barrel pressed against my left cheek and the side of my nose. When the crook asked what I was looking at, of course I said “nothing” and turned back around. Finally they ran off.

Anyway, we were stuck talking to the police until 3:00 in the morning. I didn’t feel any fear during the entire incident. But it did catch up to me later. When I was driving home I looked at my speedometer and saw that I was driving 80 mph in a 40 mph zone--and I felt shaky. I don’t know exactly what I was feeling (fear, anger, anxiety, frustration, helplessness???), but it was affecting my driving.

I went to bed around 4:00am, but had to get back up at 6:30am. I had to get up early because it was the first day of school--my senior year of high school. I was 17. It was a pretty memorable (and unpleasant) way to spend the last night of my last summer vacation as a high school kid!


PS – The other assistant called in sick the next night. I was on my own. I ended up making a game out of the night deposit. I had the cashiers stand in the lobby, looking out the windows in each direction and I had the grill workers take out the trash and scout behind the restaurant as I dashed across the street to the bank. We were all laughing. That turned out to be my last night there. My car died and it was too far to walk (it was a 30 minute drive) so I went back to working at my restaurant. There was more to this part, but it is too b-o-r-i-n-g!!!