The Dangers of Retail.

Normally working retail is not an extremely dangerous job. You sometimes deal with irate people, but you rarely have any physical altercations, unless you're dealing with a shoplifter. Then all bets are off. You never know how they are going to respond to the situation and you have to be prepared for anything. Even knowing that, an incident that happened at the store I work at a few days ago, was very surprising. A customer leaving the store set off the alarm system, and when asked to step back inside the store, they used a tazer on the person who asked them to stop. The employee who was stunned was a lady we will just say qualifies as a senior citizen. She is one of those who greets people as they come in the store and is one of the nicest people that we have working that area. Fortunately, she was not seriously injured. I truly hope that they catch the person that did this. According to company policy, if the person refuses you don't try and stop them yourself and I am sure that the lady did not make any physical attempt to bring that person back into the store. She simply asked them to return when she was attacked.

This is the worst assault that has happened to anybody that I have worked with. I've known of a few people who've been shoved and a few who a been punched, but those were loss control people trying to apprehend a shoplifter. When you have that job, that kind of activity goes with the territory. The worst that has ever happened to me is being called a few names. I never take name-calling personally, I simply chalk it up to people being upset and they are getting their frustrations out. There are better ways of handling it, but I am not going to judge what other people do. People seem to think that they are always right, but that is a topic for another day. I will be addressing that before this week is over.

Unfortunately, this kind of thing just simply seems to be a sign of the times in which we are living. Too many people want to use violence as their choice of dealing with situations. Usually something like this is more common in larger cities, and while Calhoun is not a large city, it still is a good-sized community. I find it funny when I hear people refer to Calhoun as being a small town. The town I grew up in was a small town. The other day I mentioned all the fast food places that you can find here, and that list was simply on one stretch of road. There are several other fast food places here, in addition to Walmart, Kmart, Home Depot, Office Depot, Kroger, an outlet mall, I could go on but I think you get the idea. There is not a lot of violent crime here, but it does happen. This isn't Mayberry, you do have to keep your doors locked at night.

Last night was one of those rare nights that I did not get a prank phone call. However, I did get one on Saturday night. The caller wanted to know about the size of part of my anatomy. This one didn't beat around the bush, I was asked that as soon as I answered the phone. Of course, I had a few lines that went to my head on how to respond to that, but to respond to these people would only encourage them to call more often. Had it not been for that, I would've simply replied," why don't you ask your girlfriend." I know, I'm bad. I forgot to mention about a call that I had a couple weeks ago. I think person must've been asthmatic, because all I could hear was them gasping for breath. Since I had no way of tracing the call, I couldn't call 911 to send an ambulance to them. I hope they recovered.