The time I got held up at knife point

Prologue

I think it was a class called “Earth Science” or maybe it was just “Science”.  But the teacher was a guy I really liked.  I was in 7^th grade, I believe.  His name was Mr. Cisar.  It was pronounced the same way as The Roman Emperors.  One day, someone said to him that they heard that people are more afraid to have a knife pulled on them than a gun and did he think that was weird.  He said, “Well maybe that’s because people know a knife is loaded. 

Actually, I don’t think that was Mr. Cisar who said that.  I don’t really remember who it was.  I did think it was clever, but I didn’t believe it.  I thought I’d be more afraid of a gun than a knife.  And I was right.  Yay me!

The thing between the Prologue and Epilogue

So when I was about 16 years old or so, I wanted to get a job so I could buy a car.  My dad’s car.  A 1972 Chevy Nova.  It was gold.  It was an 8 cylinder 307 1 barrel.  Dad’s asking price was $300.  He assured me that that was the “friend rate.”  My insurance would be an additional $46 a month.  Gas would be about $2 every three days (I only ever put $2 at a time in it). 

So after the initial investment, I’d be up and running for about $66 a month.  I needed a job.  I applied at all the cool places.  Gas stations.  Grocery stores. Supposedly, the Baker’s gig was a 2 year waiting list.  I don’t know where that rumor came from, but that’s what people said.  If you went up to Baker’s customer service to get an application, you could tell.  They were sizing you up.  They were thinking “You?  Baker’s?  Not gonna happen.  You see that building across the street?  It’s called “Burger King.”  That’s where your job application is, kid.   

So yeah, I got a shitty fast food job at Wendy’s.  It paid the league minimum of $3.35 an hour.  Don’t get me wrong – Of the big 3, I think Wendy’s would always be my choice.  But it was still fast food.  There was one job that “Fast food” was better than, though.  “No Job.”  In fact, when I first got the job, I was so proud of it, I’d wear my powder blue and white striped team uniform around places without any sort of shame.  That didn’t last very long.  After about 3 weeks, I realized the “Chicks dig a guy in uniform” thing – yeah – must be some other kind of uniform. 

If you were a high school student who worked at Wendy’s, you typically had to work one of the 2 weekend nights until close.  I normally worked on Saturday because I wanted to go to games on Friday.  I was assigned to the grill.  This meant that it was my job to take out all of the trash.  And the big bucket of disgusting grease (juices, as their called in the industry) had to be dumped into the big huge way more disgusting bin of rotting grease out back. 

There were 2 five gallon plastic pickle buckets that collected the grease that cooked off the hamburgers.  They sat under the grill just at the grill man’s feet.  Sometimes they would get slightly kicked out of the way of the chute and the drippings would lube up the floor real good.  It was a real pain in the ass to clean up, but it was kind of fun to slide over to the carry-out sandwich station to deliver the patties. 

To empty the grease buckets, you needed a rubber spatula because you couldn’t just dump the grease into the big smelly rotting bin of grease.  You had to then scrape the bucket clean.  Often, there was a two inch thick layer of hardened yellowish grease, kind of like a crust, on top of about 18 inches of liquid ick grease.  Sometimes, you’d go to tip the pickle bucket into the disgusto-bin only to have the hard crusty top hold the rest of liquid stuff in place.  This made the upside down bucket top heavy and difficult to navigate.  Sometimes the crust would break on its own.  Sometimes you had to shove the plastic spatula into it to break the seal.  And sometimes the whole thing would come splashing down on your arm as you went at it with the spatula.  It was pretty much impossible to get the grease completely off of your arm until a long hot shower.  And the next morning, when you got into your car, you realized it was time to get a new pine tree air freshener deal.

It’s not a good smell.

So anyway, if you had to close, the rule was nobody could leave until everybody was done closing their station.  This included the manager.  Everybody was supposed to leave at the same time.  But that rarely happened.   Sometimes, the manager would be way behind because of a real busy night, so he’d let everyone go while he finished up late at night alone with all the money from the afternoon/evening sales. 

Ideally, the only money there was from whatever came in after the dinner rush.  The non-closing manager would make the deposit after the rush so there would be very little cash there at close.  Normally. 

Sometimes it would be busy all night and we would be short staffed and there would be no opportunity to make the early evening deposit.  This is what happened the night we were robbed.  It is also why there were rumors that it was an inside job.

So one Saturday night, we were all done except for the Jay, the Manager.  He decided to let us go while he finished up.  There was one little bag of trash that I hadn’t already taken out.  It was from the manager’s office.  Jay handed it to me to throw into Long John Silver’s trash on the way out.  Wendy’s trash was way at the back of the Wendy’s parking lot.  Long John Silver’s was right next to Wendy’s employee parking, so we’d usually throw smaller items in there to save a trip.  So as Jay unlocked the door to let us go to our cars I was the first one out.  Looking to my right, I saw my friend Ron who also worked at Wendy’s, approaching me out of the darkness.  He was being all sneaky and put his finger to his lips to let me know to be quiet and play along with his little prank.  Oh man, was I ever game for that!  Ron, wearing a ski mask, pretending to rob Wendy’s.  This is hilarious.  Jay’s gonna shit his pants!

Except it wasn’t Ron.  I don’t know who it was.  NotRon then grabbed my left arm and shoved his fist into the middle of my back.  At the same time he was yelling for everybody to get the fuck back into the building right fucking now.  Since I was the first one out, I was the last in.  There were 2 other workers there (Sheila and Joe) besides the Manager and me.  Sue was already gone.  Sue worked front register and was usually done closing her station at around 10:01.

The rumor was that Jay and Sue had an arrangement whereby Sue could leave early.  They were fucking.  That was the rumor.  So it was just me and the 2 other employees that Jay wasn’t fucking, being herded back into the restaurant.  At that point, I believed there was a gun to my back and I was terrified.  I thought I was going to die.  As NotRon shoved us around a corner to go toward the back of the store, I glanced down and saw the biggest chef’s knife I’d ever seen.  I almost smiled with delight.  Everything’s going to be alright, I thought.  I mean, I worked in a restaurant.  It wouldn’t do to be terrified of knives.  I then thought of Mr. Cisar’s (or whoever it was) clever little thing about knives being loaded at all times.  What has 2 thumbs and is more afraid of guns than knives?

NotRon shoved the employees into the walk-in cooler and went with Jay to get the money from the office.  While we were in there, we devised a plan.  I grabbed a plastic rack that normally holds packages of buns.  I imagined that it would somehow protect me from the knife when NotRon returned to kill us.  Sheila grabbed a can of garbonzo beans, she would heave at whoever opened the door.  Joe ladled some chili onto the floor just in front of the door, thinking that the thug might slip in it long enough for me to overpower him with my plastic bread rack thing.  Although all of these things are ridiculous, we all felt pretty damned heroic shivering there waiting for the bandit’s return. 

Well none of it was necessary.  After a few minutes, Jay came and got us out of the cooler.  He had a puffy red eye where he claimed NotRon had slugged him when he heroically lied and told NotRon he didn’t know how to open the safe. 

The crook was gone and the police were on their way. 

There were 3 police officers that came to get the story.  Each one of them separately asked each of us what had happened.  I had to tell my version of the story 3 times.  As did everybody else.  One of them asked me if I thought it was a white or a black man.  I said he had a mask on and it was dark, so I didn’t really know.  Then he said something that some might call racist.  He said, “Well, you know how white people and black people sound different some times?”

“He sounded mad,” I said.  Then I casually glanced at the notes he was taking.  I have never had any problem reading upside down.  He wrote “black” on his notepad.  I minded my own business.

Later, Sheila said that she thought it was a white guy but you could see the skin around his eyes was black.  She figured he had put some shoe polish around his eyes to make himself appear black.  Then I realized.  We’d just been robbed by Al Jolson.  I immediately alerted the authorities.

Sunday, I was working the 11-2 shift.  I was looking forward to it more than any other day I’d ever gone into work at Wendy’s.  I was a brave hero who would be the admiration of all of my co-workers.  They’d all be dying to hear about how I survived the knife in the back thing.  Yeah I was pretty cool.

Except when I got there they’d all heard the story from everybody else.  There was just one thing they wanted to know from me.  Why in the hell did I leave a bag of garbage in the walk-in cooler?

Because I’m not cool like Shim, is all I could say.

Epilogue

Within a few days, Jay quit the manager job, citing extreme stress and fear and stuff.  Even before he quit, people were saying they thought Jay and Ron (AKA NotRon) had cooked up the whole thing.  Jay could have made the deposit at some point before close, but purposely didn’t, they said.  The claimed bluff that he could not open the safe was beyond ridiculous.  Why would the money even be locked in the safe at that point?  It normally wasn’t.

I didn’t believe the rumors (except that Jay and Sue were fucking) because I couldn’t imagine doing something like that, so I couldn’t imagine Ron and Jay doing it.  However, I had never told anyone (even the police) that I initially thought it was Ron sneaking up on us because to me it obviously wasn’t after it turned out to be a real burglary.  So looking back on it, I think it was Ron and Jay.