"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.