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.