I was a district mgr for a small 8 store fast food chain here in Dallas. One night, (the night before Thanksgiving) the store manager calls me at home, says she's sick, needs to go home. I told her to go home, and that I'd come over and lock up. This was back in 83.
I get there, send home all employees except a cook and myself. I tell him to start shutting down, while I watch the front.
I pull the cash from the register, put it in my pocket. (owner's rules) After I lock all doors I'd pull that cash and make out the deposit and walk across the street and drop it into the night deposit. We never left money in the floor safe because it was extremely difficult to get opened. In fact, it was about to be replaced witha new one.
The owner always kept a 9mm handgun, in a drawer behind the counter where we kept the rolled change, pennies, nickles dimes, quarters, etc in one of those plastic zippered bank bags.
The gun was always cocked and loaded and chambered, and ready to go.
While the cook is putting stuff up, I finished paperwork while standing at the front counter looking out through the dining room and out to the parking lot.
It is about 9:45 pm.
I look up, and see a black kid walking through the lot, glancing inside towards me.
The third time he walks by, I think 'I bet he's gonna walk in here, ask for change for a dollar, and then pull out a gun and rob me.'
Which is, of course, exactly what he did.
Walks with up to the counter, throws a dollar bill down, says 'gimme four quarters'
I open the register (which I know, to the penny, exactly how much is in there) and I am reaching for the four quarters, he pulls out a little snub-nosed 38 and sticks it right in my face. And I mean IN my face. I remember that I could actually SMELL the oil on the gun barrell.
He says, while you got that open, gimme all of it. So, I reach back, and open the drawer where we keep the bags of rolled coins, and pulled one out. It was rolls and rolls of quarters, and then I scooped out the $56 in the register and gave it to him. Then I closed the register, and stepped away from it, down the counter a little bit.
He turns to leave, then thinks better of it, turns back around, pulls the gun out, and sticks it across the counter, right at my heart. Says he wants MORE. NOW.
NOw, what's weird about all this, is that I wasn't the least bit scared. Not one iota. It was SO bizarre, because there I am with a gun in my face, and then aimed at my heart, and I'm standing there thinking, 'Shouldn't I be scared?'
Instead, HE was scared. I know because that gun was shaking SO badly, that I actually thought that it might go off by accident. So, I reached up, and using my fingertip, I pushed the end of the gun towards my left so that it wouldn't go off by accident and hurt me, and I tell him, go ahead and put that away, now, and I'll give you more.
He puts his hand with the gun back into his winbreaker jacket, and that's when I realized that, hey, my gun is bigger than his! All I have to do is reach back and open that drawer, pull it out and start squeezing off rounds. I know it's always cocked and loaded with safety off. I knew that. I'd seen it a hundred times.
So, why not? I tell him I'll give him the rest of it, and I reach for the drawer, all the while keeping my eyes on his face.
I open the drawer. reach in for the gun. The gun is gone. Dammit. (the owner had taken it out about a week earlier, and I didn't know it)
So, I pulled out another plastic bank bag filled with rolled quarters, dimes, nickels, and held it up to him. He had the gun back out, pointed at my head again, and the other hand was still in his windbreaker pocket. I held the bag out to him, and he puts his gun hand and gun, back into his pocket, brings the other hand out for the bag of money.
I walk around the counter, walk up to him and come up to his side (the gun side) put my hand on his elbow and my other hand on his back, and start waslking him towads a side door. This side door has a knob, I knew he'd have to turn it to get out, thus getting some fingerprints on it, and he does. He takes one step out, and I turn and start towards the phone to call the police, but as I walk back up the hallway, I realize he's turned around and is following me, with the gun in my back.
The cook comes out from the back, and he sees what is going on, and I just shake my head at him to be quiet.
Robber-boy tells me, 'We're gonna go in the back, and I want the two of you to lay face down.
I immediately stop walking, turn to him and say, No, you've got everything, you're leaving now. And I take him by the arm and march him to the door, make him turn the knob to open it. He steps outside, turns to me with the gun (his hand still shaking crazily scared) and he says, I know you got a safe in there.
I tell him, You need to get lost. I shove him backwards a foot or so, and he turns and sarts walking across the parking lot.
I shut the door without touching the knob. I call the police, and they were there within 30 seconds, maybe even 20.
I told the dispatcher to tell them to come in the front door not the side because I had somefingerprints for them.
First thing they did, they came in, start questioning me, and I look over and see a cop reach down for the doorknob on that side door, and I yell at them not to touch it. Too late, they ruined the fingerprints!
Earlier that night, a few miles away, a man walked into a nightclub and shot and killed 6 people.
At any rate. I guess the gist of my story is, try to be calm if something like that ever happens. I don't know how, or why I was. It surprised me. But for some reason, with me, when things get more intense, I get calmer and more even and, I don't know, it's not my 'real' self, smething just takes over and I do whatever i'm directed to do. Must be my 'protective' self or something.
