17 Story Rug: Tower of Terror

The neighborhood we reside in is extremly...interesting. On one end it's an up and coming, basically gentrified area with a lot of little local businesses(including like 10 fucking barber shops/hair salons). Then there is the tower on the other end in more of a low income setting, I guess you could say, but still intertwined with the nicer area. Some call it the Thunderdome, I prefer The Tower of Terror.
From what I've come to understand, it used to be housing for seniors with disabilities and such. Subsidized housing, but there was an age requirement. Now, I think it's open to everyone with DSS/Sec 8, I think. Either way, it's not just old people anymore, it's a lot of younger people and mentally ill people. And the conditions sound absolutely horrifying.
Unless you're in the thick of it every day, I doubt you really realize how many mentally ill people are left to just fend for themselves in sub par living conditions. Every one of the previous storeies has had to do with someone who lives/lived in that tower. A lot of these people really don't leave outside of like a one block radius of their home. We are some of the only human contact these people have. I personally try to take that into consideration at this point, because before I would find myself getting mad at, and blaming these people for their illnesses, and that's fucking awful.
I have come into contact with some very, very sweet individuals who seem to have their illness under control, through medication I'm assuming. And I've also met individuals who are knowingly ill and either choose to not seek assistance or they simply can't afford it. You mix either of these with alcohol and it makes for very unpredictable situations from time to time. But we aren't here to not let someone choose to drink while on medication, it's their choice, we just can't keep selling to them if they return all fucked up.
When Jim (Ratmandu) was still with us, he would come in during the beginning of the month while he still had money in his account, and he would be perfectly polite and pleasant. To give you a mental image, Jim stood about 5'5", he wore a Greg Norman style straw hat(for all you non WASPs out there who don't love golf, just google it), a fringed leather jacket (I always speculated it was made of human leather), and usually grey sweatpants with a heinous stain down the back, absolutely stunning attire, really. ANYWAYS. He would come in and be totally fine and buy 3 Molson Ice 24oz cans (Genny Ice if he was feeling frugal) and head back to his place. If he was able to come back, his motor skills would be all fucked up, and he would slur hardcore, I had to deny selling to him on more than one occasion.
This is but one of like, dozens of people that live this way. People who maybe had caseworkers and people to try to help them at one point, but they were just lost in the system.
We used to accept SNAP/EBT(Food Stamps) and a lot of people would use this place as their grocery store. One guy(truthfully I have never taken the time to learn his name), who collects hats, who one time, I witnessed get off the bus with a live canary in his hand which was biting him and he dropped it and had to capture it(i was so sad for that bird), would come in and buy: 2 dozen eggs, 2 3lb boxes of macaroni, 2 1/2 gallons of milk, 4 candy bars and a box of crackers and then check out. After he was done paying he would ask me, "Should I get more?" My answer was always a halfhearted "Sure man, if you want." and he would engage in at least 2 more large purchases. What else am I supposed to say to him? He would often spend his entire benefit allotment in the matter of a weekend.
There is, to my knowledge, no government program where they actually educate the recipients on how to optimize their food benefits to live a healthy life. The amount of people I see that drink nothing but soda in this neighborhood is such a bummer. The frozen burritos/Hot Pockets, Spaghetti Os, Pop Tarts, candy, and other junk food that sustains people is borderline terrifying. I try to push seltzer water so hard, because I meet fucking 20 something year olds that weigh easily 400lbs, with diabetes, and who have told me, "What's the point of recycling? I'll be dead in a few years anyways." That was a low point in my interactions with humanity. That dude was fucking 23 years old.  He has since started eating healthier and giving a shit about being alive in general, I even saw him run to catch the bus the other week. I feel if someone was in the position to help people understand what goes into a healthy diet and how easy it is to budget for that stuff for benefits there would be a lot happier people in general that are forced into that system.
I know a lot of the systems meant to help these kinds of people are broken. I see that every single day. It seems like the people who control those programs stopped caring a long time ago. They would much rather cut a check to keep someone out of society and confined to a small radius than actually help human beings. Reduce them to a case number. Sweep it under the rug. The concrete, 17 story rug.
I've heard of people, not one, multiple fucking people, that die in their apartments, and are not discovered for WEEKS, until ENOUGH people, not someone, reports a foul stench on their floor, the cops come in, they find the body and that entire floor smells of death for months afterwards. No one should have to live and die like that, no one.

"That's my buddy right there!": Joe

*I bet there's a lot I'm going to miss, I'm sure I'll come back to it.*


I think we're all really hot and cold on this guy. Some days I can handle, even look forward to, the loud, repetitive antics of this character, some days I could not run down to the basement fast enough when I see/hear him coming.
Joe is probably in his early-mid fifties, always around, and almost always happy. He knows pretty much everyone in the neighborhood, and if he doesn't know them he just pretends, everyone has their opinion on him. "That's my buddy right there!" he yells, as he goes running out the door, mid transaction, to go greet someone who may or may not know him. He loves being very polite to ladies, in a gentlemanly way. The worst I see him do is tell people they have a nice/beautiful smile, one time he told one of the servers next door that she has a "doughnut smile". What the fuck could that possibly even mean? For the most part he's a goofy, older dude, who is totally harmless.
When I first started here Joe drank, a lot. He always drank Genesee Cream Ale 24oz cans, and when the label switched to a throwback design he insisted it was a new beer. He was a lot more abrasive back then, it probably had a lot to do with his girlfriend at the time, Anne. He and Anne would just get shitfaced together, pretty much every day, and she was a very negative person naturally, so it wasn't great for Joe, what with his intense desire to socialize. Her negativity totally brought him down. I don't remember when or why they broke up, but I'm really glad they did, Joe is a lot happier now, and drinks way less.
Joe has a lot of little routines/schtick he likes to go through. Some past ones(that still occasionally make an appearance, for nostalgia sake) include, but are not limited to: driving a pretend car making all the noises verbally, pretending there is an invisible dog named Sparky that lived in a PBR dog house we had about 2 years ago, talking about how he's got hair as long as Rapunzel's and he uses it to climb down from the 14th floor, sleepwalking(he looks like one of the little blue floating dino ghost things in Super Mario for SNES, it's weirdly adorable). I think the longest running one was when he would pretend that his leg was hurt, he would come in, pretty much screaming, "OOOOOH MY LEEEEEEG, MY LEG HURTS!" I sometimes have to tell him to shut the fuck up because there are people in the store not used to his antics. Then he would go into song, "The leg bone connected to the thigh bone, the thigh bone connected to the ear bone, the ear bone connected to the right bone..." and so on, for a long time. I found that one to be really funny, for the first three months, the following 6 months was just me asking him to get some new material.
This guy loves junk food. He drinks Arizona Fruit Punch, in place of his old Cream Ale, I don't mind one bit. And he eats a ton of Peanut M&M's, like he buys several bags at a time, and he calls them his medicine for some insane reason. He tells us about a bigger lady he hangs around with who steals all his M&M's, so he had to put a lock on his drawer and leave a decoy bag out on the table. True or not, he's pretty fucking crazy for that one.
He used to talk about how he works everyday, which I don't doubt he does odd jobs for people, but he talked about being a trucker and driving his rig absurdly long distances. We liked to pretend it was all true, but I think a lot of people would be dead if that were the case. He mentions how he goes to work sometimes now, but not like he used to. "I go to work every day. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday *sucks teeth* Thursday, Friday *sucks teeth, again* Saturday, Sunday, back into Monday. I work every day." That was a common thing to hear the first, like, year and a half of my employment.
He also used to talk about how he has this banging stereo system and tons of music, records, cds, tapes. He would talk about his disco ball, and how he would just party up there, music blaring, disco ball spinning. We knew a kid (photography student maybe?), who went up to Joe's apartment one time. That was all true. All of it, even the disco ball. It really makes me question which of his stories are true, and which are just stories. It was really mind fucking to find that out.
Joe disappears from time to time, for up to a few months. It's been a while, but I remember worrying that something had happened to him the last time. I'm not looking forward to the next. I guess at my core, I really do like Joe. He's in truth, one of the most pleasant people I have to deal with overall. This dude is straight up shrouded in mystery. I wonder if he's aware of that and it's intentional. I'm going to pretend it is. It's crazy to interact with someone so much, and know so little about them.

"I could have been somebody": The other Mark

I have never seen and will never again see someone put an Olde English 24oz can away with the speed and determination of Mark. One long chug, spit out the foam, chug the rest. I counted once. 7 seconds. Impressive and depressing at the same time.
I first met Mark probably on my first day. He would be the first one in at 8 AM(sometimes earlier on accident) to get his beer. He only ever drank OE800(this is important to remember later on) Always. He would also use the store as a grocery store, which always bums me out to see as we are a convenience store, so we don't offer that great a selection of healthy food. He would rarely wash his clothes, and I could only assume lived in squalor, because he would constantly buy Glade air freshener(air spray as he called it, which always caused confusion as to why he needed it, he was bald, and we were hearing hair spray over the phone). I always felt bad for the guy, except the few times he sliced OE cans open on the sharp edge of the slot they're in and then just stood there holding it saying "Hey boss man, I think this one's leaking." as it sprayed everywhere. Those times, I loathed him.
Mark was pretty blind, I don't really know how well he could see. He would walk around most of the day looking for partial cigarettes on the ground, I witnessed him smoking filter on multiple occasions. He had a child's sock that he would keep his change in, and it always took him forever to get his change out or put it away, and if he dropped change, strap in, because he's going to be there for a while crawling around looking for it, I would get frustrated at that as well.
Most of the time he was pleasant enough. About a year into me working here he just one day, all of the sudden, blurted out "Man, I could have been somebody", I just stood there and looked at him, puzzled. How the fuck am I going to respond to that? I said "Yeah, well..." and that was that. It was probably the most powerfully sad interaction i have had yet with a customer.
We have a policy that if we ban a customer(there are a lot of banned customers, mostly for getting belligerent and mean when they're drunk, so we don't want to be the ones to facilitate that kind of behavior in the neighborhood) you cannot come in and buy anything for them, if we find out that you are, you risk being banned yourself. Mark came in one day, probably about 6 months ago, and bought a 6 pack of Genesee 16oz cans. Mark doesn't drink Genesee, ever. I had known that man, pretty well, for over 2 years at that point. I said to him, flat out "Mark, you don't drink Genesee, you aren't buying this for someone who isn't allowed in the store, are you? Because I'll have to ban you if I find out you are", he assured me he was not. I watched him walk out, cross the street, and hand the bag to a recently banned customer. Mark was no longer allowed in the store.
I rarely saw Mark after that. Maybe twice, walking around the block looking for cigarettes.
I found out 2 days ago that Mark jumped off of an overpass into the highway. I feel partially at fault for cutting him off and not letting him have access to that vice, but that feeling is fleeting, as I cannot be responsible for that kind of self destruction.
It's okay Mark, we all could be/have been somebody, but it's rare that any of us ever are, at least in the way you thought it was to be "somebody". I hope you're at peace now.

Mark

I think this post will take me a few days to write. I know I'm going to cry going over this series of events, multiple times. But I think Mark deserves the best post I can make.

Mark. Mark was a veteran. He was drafted when he was a kid, I'm pretty sure in Vietnam if I remember correctly. He didn't have a great handle on his life. He would come in and buy 3 Genesee tall cans at a time after he was done with work for the day. He worked construction, so he was in great shape for abusing his body so badly and being almost 50. Or if he had the day off, he would drink and clean his house. Always drinking. I don't know if that stemmed from his time as a child in the military or if it was to cope with something else, I never asked.
Mark started dating an old girlfriend, she was really cool. Older biker chick, leathery skin, raspy voice, really great smile and nice personality. Eventually we could see that her and Mark were not great for each other.
Mark would come in all worked up telling us about a fight they had, he would always say "I would never hit a woman, but..." It was always really tough to cope with.
I remember Mark coming in and talking to me one day about how bad it was. i told him "i like both of you a lot, but you're poisonous for each other, you can't be happy together". They didn't break up, but I could see a change in him.
I would ask him every now and then how everything was going, the fighting got less frequent but was still occurring, or he would tell me well enough. At one point I just couldn't handle it and I would hide when I saw him coming. In retrospect, I feel fucking horrible for that. I wish I had talked to him more. I wish I could have asked him about his life. I just couldn't look past his demons, I was blind to his suffering and only looking on in a judgmental way. It's shitty and I make a conscious effort to not do that anymore.
Mark came in one day and was looking very somber. I asked him what was wrong. He proceeded to tell me about how his doctor had found some spots on his lungs. At the time he was fairly optimistic that it would get better.
Over the next few months he would come in and give me updates. It was not getting better. I was watching him wither away before my eyes. It was heartbreaking to watch someone go from a healthy man to a human skeleton in less than a year.
 Eventually his friend came to live with him, for hospice care essentially. He would ask me if we could carry the protein rich Naked juices to help Mark keep his strength up. I always tried, but our delivery with that company is sporadic at best. At some point Mark stopped coming in completely.  I would see his girlfriend and his friend come in and i would ask for updates. He would be really optimistic, she would give it to me bluntly, it was a very strange but comforting juxtaposition.
There was a beautiful day in July, I think, and Mark was able to get enough strength to get out of the apartment. His friend pushed him over in his wheelchair, but Mark didn't have enough strength to get out of the chair. I at least got to say "Hey Mark! It's great to see you man!" "Great to see you too!" He yelled back to me through the open door. That was the last thing I ever got to say to Mark. I'm glad that was our last interaction at least.
Over the next month it was very busy over here at the store and the 4 of us that work here didn't have much time overlapping to shoot the shit, so I lost track of Mark.
I found out Mark died on the day of his funeral. I was already at work and couldn't even make it to say goodbye. It still kills me, like, I'm weeping just recalling it.
I'm not going to go too deep into the political aspect of it, but mark got swept under the rug. He had to be driven all the way out to Buffalo to be given some sort of treatment. That's bullshit, I can't go into it because it fills me with an intense rage and sadness i can't handle right now, I have a register to run.
So i guess this is the best way I can say it, goodbye Mark, I miss you. I hope you don't feel any more pain wherever you are. Cheers man...I'm so sorry.

Tweety bird's grandma

I bond with some of our customers over the weirdest shit. I think it might be because I show them a level of respect/decency they don't often encounter.
Peggy fucking rules. She's a sweet lady in her late 50s early 60s. She really sounds like Tweety Bird's grandma. But she has quite a quick temper. She has lashed out at me one time, and one time only, when she was a little flustered and trying to use the atm, I was whistling along to something overbearing like Jethro Tull. She snapped at me to stop whistling, but made sure to say please, so I totally obliged. I try to be very conscious of our more unique customer's quirks.
Peggy does not like when people try to do things for her. I'm fairly certain she has MS, so she walks with a cane and loses her footing often. If someone tries to hold the door open she'll just stare at them and wait for them to walk away. But really, she's a nice lady.
She comes in and complains about her hair getting in her mouth whenever it's windy (which is like all the time on our street). I think that's how we started bonding. She would come in and talk to me about needing to get her hair cut, or how she needs to keep it under her hat so she doesn't eat it all the time, I one time told her i know how she feels and she's been great to me ever since.
On some level I think she has some sort of idea in her head that I'm like a son to her. I love it. We have fun. She loves to pretend she's going to throw canned goods and 6 packs up to me at the register, I play along. Last week she tried to float a bag of Lay's BBQ chips up to me, she smashed them into the ceiling, it was awesome.
The qualities people show you when you treat them like a human are astounding. I'm glad I've befriended Peggy, she's a lot of fun to deal with. I will never whistle Thick As A Brick around her again. I like her too much.
Sometimes we talk about her exploits as a child. She tells me about Randy, that bastard, who taught her how to be tough. She's told me about her girlfriends in high school she would try to smoke pot with, it made her too goofy. I encourage her to try getting high to help her with MS, some day I'm going to go to her apartment and get her stoned. I think it would improve her life tenfold.

Pathalogical

I can't decide if I like the customers that are clearly pathalogical liars, or if I love them. They give us the opportunity to guess which parts of the story they are telling us might be true. Or we can just play pretend and believe everything they say, it's a good time for sure.
There's one guy we haven't seen in a while. He was a little 50 something year old white dude, grey and black beard, always wearing a baseball cap. Sometimes I see certain customers coming and I'll put on a certain album to shape my interaction with them. When this guy comes in I always make sure it's something heavy. This dude picked Sleep's Dopesmoker out when I had it on the first time I met him, so he had me intrigued from the get go.
He's got a pretty killer taste in music, he loves stoner metal and psych rock. I would turn him on to things like Goat and Bongzilla. He would tell me about Hawkwind and Sabbath.
He would start to recount cool stories about being a roadie on various hard rock and metal tours from the early 80s to the mid 90s. They would consistently get more outlandish, but I never questioned them. Next time he comes in i'll be sure to ask him what his favorite tour he worked was. I'll be sure to let you know.
I know some of his stories are not true, but, are any of them true? I choose to believe some are. We often discuss how much of our daily interactions are factual and how much is fabricated. I have no idea. But I'll keep guessing.

The Bumble

A lot of these posts initially will come off like a listing of a cast of characters. Sometimes it's hard to believe we are existing in any sort of reality. Like this is all some big hoax being played on us. But I'm pretty sure that's paranoid insanity creeping in. Anyways we have had a lot of unique individuals cross the threshold at the shop.
One of the newer regulars is quite an anomaly. Stuff like he hates rap music, unless you're listening to it, then he loves this kind of music. He can never be truly pleased with the weather. If it's snowing he talks about how he hates the snow, in the summer he can't wait for it to snow. I don't think he's ever once acknowledged that it was actually nice out, at the present. It's confusing. I think he's a little handicapped on some level, but he's mostly totally with it.
He has always been pleasant enough, bumbling mostly. But recently, the day after Election Day, the results of the elections came up in conversation. He informed me that he is a staunch conservative republican, which confuses the fuck out of me. I tried to explain to him that inherently, that political party doesn't have his best interest in mind. He's a poor, black, mentally disabled man that lives in poverty. He just kept laughing and whooping that they had won the majority. I was pretty much speechless. I still am. I haven't looked at him the same way since.
How many of the people living across the street have that similar view? Are they drawn to the traditional values of the Republican Party and ignore the economic stances? I haven't been more confused by any interaction at the store half as much as this one. What the fuck?