Pickles!

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Has anyone here even been in a really intimidating or even deadly situation? Being in a real pickle, as they say? Tell us about it! We could use a good scare since all those horror movies out there kind of suck nowadays.

About two years ago I was working graveyard shift at a gas station (yeah, I know, that alone is scary enough, isn't it?) and I'd been making friends with the local homeless population who would keep me company while I did my janitorial duties and entertain me with stories about how tough life is (really gives you some perspective.) So one night this homeless couple walks in looking like they'd just been playing Rugby against the Incredible Hulk. I asked them what happened and they said they were jumped at the light rail station just half a block away from the gas station. They said five young African-American men attacked them (even the woman got beat up!) and were filming the whole thing. Then they said the five men got in a white car and drove away. I let them call an ambulance and it actually got there surprisingly quick; I guess when you're in a place that's likely to get held up, they take it pretty seriously when they get a call from your phone that late at night. Plus the couple didn't mention to the 911 operator that they were homeless! ;)

Anyway, less than five minutes after the two of them were taken to the hospital by the ambulance, and the police helicopter started drifting away from the area, a white car pulls up into the parking lot of the gas station very quickly, right in front of the door. It's so close to the door I can see who is in it. Five young black men. "Oh, it's just a coincidence." I laughed to myself. One of them in the backseat got out and came up to the door holding something. He comes inside up to the counter and holds it up. It's a video camera.

"Ey, man, you know how to erase stuff offa here?" he asks me, sounding like he's out of breath.

I just blink at him for about two seconds before shaking my head and shrugging. "You got me." I laughed, "I don't even have my diploma, dude, I don't know shit about stuff like that."

He curses and gets back in the car and they drive away.

Now of course I knew how to erase stuff off of there. Just rewind and record over it, the quick way; not sure if they can dig up stuff from underneath that with police equipment. As far as I know, they were never caught, but I do hope they do get their comeuppance. But if I hadn't answered them in a satisfactory way, I might have gotten beaten up as well, or robbed, and if I HAD helped them I'd be an accessory to the crime.

Needless to say, that definitely made my evening (and my shift had barely started!) Anyone else have any stories like that, where something really scared the pants off of you?

[Moondazed]

Too bad you didn't get their license plate number :)

I was working at second shift at a gas station and we had to drop our deposits off at the bank (in one of those metal drawers).  The girl I was working with wasn't the sharpest pencil in the box so I was very glad that shift was over!  We pulled up to the bank, I got out of the car and walked up to the deposit drawer, and someone burst out of the shrubs that were on either side of it and grabbed me from behind.  All I saw was a red hooded sweatshirt tied tightly so that there was only a little circle visible before someone said, "Give me the fucking bag, bitch!" while pressing something that felt pretty knife-like against my ribs.  I let go of it and he ran off, but I about passed out from fear.  It doesn't sound like much, but I'd never experienced anything remotely like that, and for the next week I about had panic attacks if I was outside in the dark.  Ironically enough, the police tried to say that I set the whole thing up (because obviously the idiot I was working with could barely tie her own shoes) since the bank camera cycled every four seconds and it missed him grabbing me.  A very unpleasant experience all the way around!

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Damn! Sounds harsh, the police even thinking you were guilty of that. Sounds like what happened to this guy who came in one night, he said he was at the Wendy's next door at the drive-thru and two punks got on either side of his car and shoved a gun in his face, telling him to get out of the car and took off in it. And the guy was a restaurant manager and had the whole day's cash intake in a bag in the car. Sounds kinda suspicious, doesn't it? Like, how would those guys be lucky enough to make a score like that? With a gun that the guy says, wasn't even cocked, now that he thought about it. That's what I thought, anyway. Insurance fraud, anyone?

This one night, at the gas station (I worked there for a whole year, so plenty of dumb shit happened) this black guy came in wearing a thick coat and it wasn't even raining or that cold out that night, and he just turned to the left once he got into the store and faced the coffee machine right near the door. He had his hands in his pockets the whole entire time, never saying a word, never looking at me, and the way he was standing was just exactly so that the cameras wouldn't get a good look at his face. I wasn't sure what was happening but I had my suspicions, but I thought if I picked up the phone and dialed the police, the guy might have pulled a gun on me. He stood there for almost ten minutes, and no one else was coming into the store, so why the guy was standing there for so long, I had no idea. Until I looked out into the parking lot, really craning my neck, and saw the reason. There was a homeless guy standing outside the window smoking a cigarette. He would have seen the whole thing, and the black guy saw him there, so he hesitated, waiting, it would seem, for the homeless guy to go away.

Luckily, I happened to know that particular homeless guy, one of my many homeless night-wandering buddies, and I signaled for him to come inside. "Hey, Tree, how are you tonight? Have you seen Hans?" I asked him casually as he entered. "Grab a free fountain soda, and we'll take a smoke break as soon as I've helped this gentleman." I pointed to the black guy. The black guy, prompted by that and knowing that he'd have to commit double-murder to get out of there if he was really going to do what I thought, left and drove off. I breathed my sigh of relief and I told Tree everything. We called him Tree because he was so tall. But he as good as saved my life so I have deep appreciation for homeless people. Who says they're good for nothing?

[Caity]

I have a similar "working late at a gas station" story....

The drunk guy didn't have enough money to pay for his poptarts.  It was kinda scary.  Then a girl came in and paid and they left...

Not quite a pickle.   :P

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LOL, that reminds me of a non-pickle another night at the gas station. Actually, it reminds me of a funny thing and yet another severe pickle. These are some humorous TRUE accounts of things that happened to me while I was working at the Shell gas station down the street from where I live in 2005-2006.

This one homeless guy who wasn't one of the 'clique' around that area, came in to buy a 40. He plops down a bunch of change on the counter and doesn't know how much it is. It's about 75 cents short, so I tell him to go get 75 cents and come back later if he wants the damn beer that badly. He takes his change and leaves, and I think I've seen the last of him for the night. Nope. He comes back about half an hour later and plops some change down on the counter. Guess what? It was the EXACT SAME AMOUNT AS BEFORE, down to the freakin' penny. I laughed at him and told him not to come back again, wasting my fucking time counting his filthy freakin' change and making keep the cooler open almost until it was time to lock it down.
But here's a REAL pickle. You guys have all GOT to read this one! And I have to say, you can NOT make something like this up, this ACTUALLY HAPPENED, I swear to (well, I'm an atheist, so...I swear on something someone else believes in) that down to the last detail, this was all true.

So it's about 1:50 AM and it's ten minutes until I have to lock up the beer cooler for the night. I'm out in the parking lot sweeping up, ready to go inside and lock it up five minutes before 2:00, just to be safe and since the clocks on the wall are all fast, I felt justified. There's this van parked next to the dumpster in the parking lot, and I'm staring at them, since it's a rather odd spot to park in, whether day or night. But I ignored them, figuring they weren't hurting anyone and I'd already taken out all the garbage that night and thrown it in the dumpster. I went back inside and locked the cooler and a customer came in; a white girl who was about four feet tall, dressed like the craziest looking hooker you have ever seen. I mean, she's wearing these cut-off jean short-shorts that are riding up her ass like nobody's business, she's wearing hot pink fishnets with wide holes between the threads, old-fashioned hi-top shoes, and a hot pink wife beater that's barely covering her belly button. She was kind of cute though, aside from the freaky initial appearance. Surprisingly she spoke perfectly articulately and was very polite. She bought a sandwich, some chips and a soda, nothing out of the ordinary. Then the van pulls up right on the handicap ramp in front of the door.

In it are four overweight black women, I would guess the average weight of the four of them being 250+ pounds each, and one skinny black man who was about 5'5" tall. The man sticks his head out the window of the backseat and asks if he can buy a beer. I tell him the thing is locked, and he says it's still three minutes until 2:00. I tell him that by the time I ring up this nice young lady (the one dressed like Frankenhooker) and he grabs a beer and brings it up to the counter, it'll be 2:00. So then he accuses me of being a racist and just not wanting to sell him a beer because he's black.

Let me digress and say that I hate when people do that. My boss was a Hindu from India for crying out loud, not white, so how could I get away with racism like that and keep my job for that long? And for the record, I could give a rat's ass who buys a beer that my boss is going to probably make only 50 cents profit from, so accusing me of being a racist for that is stupid since that fifty cents helps keep my paychecks coming. One time, the ATM in the store was empty, and this black guy comes in and tries to use it. "Hey, there's something wrong with your machine, it ain't taking my card." he says. I shrug and tell him there's nothing I can do about it, my boss is the only one with the key and the cash to fill it. So he brings his card up to the counter so I can give him some cashback out of the register, expecting not to have to buy anything OR pay a fee, and get something like forty dollars back. I can't give more than $5 cash back at the register, and even if I could, I saw the reason his card wouldn't work; it was so bent out of shape it looked more like a chewed-up dog toy than an ATM card. So he accuses me of being a racist and just not wanting to give him any cash back. Not only that, he goes on to accuse me of having a button under the register that disables the ATM. How retarded is that? Some people, I swear, they have to believe EVERYTHING is someone else's fault. There's no such thing as just bad luck, someone is always out to get them.

Anyway, back to the story. So I apologize to the guy and tell him that if they weren't all sitting in the parking lot in their van next to the dumpster for 15 minutes, they might have had time to buy some beer before I went inside and locked it. So the five of them starts cursing me out amongst themselves, and then the one guy in the van, who by the way, was speaking very, very effeminately, started hooting at the hooker-looking girl (which, I mean, is understandable since, come on, she looked like a freaking prostitute.) "Hey, bitch, come over here. Let me holla at you, ho." he said.

I had never seen someone's eyes catch on fire before that night. This little hooker-girl turned military-style toward him, marched to the door and nearly bit the guy's nose off, but stopped short and started screaming about how dare he talk to her like that, he has no right to say such things to her and she can dress however she wants and should not be judged. I mean, I agreed with her to some degree since I don't like being judged for being overweight, but still, this was getting out of hand.

So the black guy shouts back at her, "Get up off me, ho, or my baby mama will kick your ass!" And I guess this very effeminate-voiced man wasn't gay after all because the woman sitting next to him (I assume she was his baby mama that he was talking about) stuck her head out the window and said, "Yeah!" in agreement to his statement.

So the hooker-girl retreated back into the store and asked me to call the police, while I was scared shitless of having four three-hundred pound black women beating the living shit out of me while the police would take their customary 35 minutes to respond.

Thank my lucky stars that less than thirty seconds later, a car pulled up needing gas, and two hulking bouncers from the club up the street got out and were ready to help us control the situation. Man, that was freakin' intense. The hooker girl thanked me for not yelling or escalating the situation, and she admitted she was ashamed for losing her temper and she even continued to shop at the gas station occasionally. And thus ends my tale.

[Caity]

Wow.. That's a whole barrel of pickles.  :p

My only other exciting gas station story was some punk kids calling repeatedly asking if I sold condoms.  *laughs*

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Well I hope more people read that last one of mine...I mean, you seriously can't make up something that insanely messed up.

[Caity]

Reminds me of a quote from KotH:

"Mr. Strickand got up under more balls than a midget hooker."

:o

[Mathim]

LOL, but I had said 'Frankenhooker', which is an actual movie if you can believe that.

[HairyHeretic]

Does being near bombs going off count?

[Mathim]

Define 'near'. Was your life in danger? Were your gonads in danger? We're looking for mostly Darwin-Award level damage (death and/or neutering) but if you were potentially able to lose a limb or something, that's acceptable I suppose.

[Caity]

That's a big pickle too, HH.  :p

[HairyHeretic]

Nah, not that near. I grew up in Norn Iron, so bombs were something of a semi regular occurance. Where I lived, there was the back of our garden, a field, then a UDR/RIR base. I got mortared twice while I was there. The first time the IRA overshot it and blew up the next field over. The second time they got 2 into the base, blowing up an empty landrover, and a guard dog.

I suspect the guard dog may have been the victem of friendly fire. Every night, without fail, at about 4 in the morning it would start barking. Every. Night. I'm half convinced some squaddie with a grenade decided this would be the perfect time to retire it, so everyone could get some sleep.

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Wait, I didn't understand half those acronyms. Does that mean you were military? If so that doesn't count, since you make it your job to put yourself in those situations.

[Caity]

HH.. Is that a new title?  Congrats!

[HairyHeretic]

Wait, I didn't understand half those acronyms. Does that mean you were military? If so that doesn't count, since you make it your job to put yourself in those situations.

Sorry. I grew up knowing these, so using the acronyms was habit. I should have thought to spell them out better.

UDR is Ulster Defense Regiment
RIR is Royal Irish Regiment

The UDR is (possibly was, I haven't lived in the North in 10 years now) along the lines of the Territorial Army / National Guard .. part time soldiers who help(ed) with policing duties. They'd do foot patrols, man checkpoints, that sort of thing. When the Troubles calmed down they were a lot less on the streets.

RIR are a British army regiment. I think they were sometimes based out of the same place.

And no, I'm not military. At the time these events happened I was in secondary school.

HH.. Is that a new title?  Congrats!

Yes, it is, cheers.

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Okay, I see. Well, as I said before, if you were near enough for it to really be a deadly situation, that counts. I may not live near bomb explosions but I sure live near a lot of really ghetto areas where there are drug deals, burglaries and shootings. In fact last year one of my neighbors was burgled and nearly executed by the burglars. I mean, they had him face-down on the floor with a gun to the back of his head. No idea how he did it but he just screamed bloody murder and scared the crap out of them, chased them down the stairs (and fell down them) while the burglars were running away, shooting at him to keep him away from them!