VI.

"If you don't leave I'm going to take the shotgun we have in the back & shove it down your fucking throat..""Are you threatening me?"

I got drunk last night. My friend & I went shot for shot with Jameson's. Naturally, after such an adventure - I feel like shit. I woke up to people yelling outside & a barking dog. Not like a cool dog. Those little ankle-biters that cower when you even motion towards them & it is these bafoonaries of nature that produce the most piercing, most annoying "YELPS!" that kept me from further slumber. As it goes, I didn't wake up the happiest camper this morning. I digress, we leave the place & I go to drop my friend off before we both go our separate ways into the glorious, glorified workplace. This all will tie in shortly.

Come to work today to find myself doing the same tired things, in the same tired place. Get here at 10, Matt leaves 20 minutes later. We've had some snow these past couple weeks, probably three feet if you count all the precipitation so people are stocking all of what they feel they will need. Well at a pawn shop, along with all the awesome/useless things we carry, we carry generators which happened to be in high demand. A gentlemen comes in, friend to the owner of the cafe next door & wants to purchase one so he does. A little 1000 watt generator for $150 bucks. Skip to the next half of the day, he's back because it doesn't work. Well this thing was brand new, in box, never opened so it was pretty full proof. Granted, one can follow directions to use the thing. The gentleman doesn't follow directions. Generators require oil & gas. He didn't put oil in there & it wouldn't run properly so Marc fixes it & gets it running proper.

Skip to two days later. The present. We've had the generator over the course of the past two days because I guess he couldn't get in to pick it up. According to him, himself & the owner, Will, next door went in on it together. He comes in today & wants their money back. Well, Matt doesn't do that & my biggest peeve with Matt is how much shit I catch because of him. He usually remains faceless when things go wrong but luckily I didn't have to take this one. Marc fixed it, it became his burden to bare. So naturally, dude isn't getting his money back so he asks how much we'll buy it back for which would be $40. He's not so happy & starts to give Marc attitude. He says, "Well, Will(the owner of the cafe) wanted me to remind you guys how much money he spends in here & he will not be too happy about this." as he walks out of the door. Marc starts laughing & the show begins. "Now, what's so damn funny?" Marc rebuttals, "well why are you giving me attitude? It's not me, It's Matt." I think he's learned by now that it's not worth it to take the fall for Matt.. If someone is to remain faceless then let the blame fall on them because the conversation will never exist between Matt & the un-happy customer. Dude says to Marc, "You won't find it so funny when I shove my foot up your ass." Now Marc has a quick temper, it will usually get the best of him -

Marc - "Are you threatening me? You need to leave right now."
Dude - "Yes, I am. And what are you going to do if I don't leave."
Marc - "First, I'm going to call the cops & tell them someone is threatening me. Two - If you don't leave I'm going to grab the shotgun in the back and shove it down your fucking throat."
Dude - "Are you threatening me? You don't know who I work for buddy."
Marc(as he is picking up the phone to call the police) - "You need to leave right now."
Dude - "Or what?"
Marc - "Hello, I'm at the pawn shop off of _____ & I have someone here threatening me."

Dude walks out the door. I had to sit here & grasp what had just happened. I felt like I was watching five year olds argue over a toy or middle aged men flex about how big their dicks are or are not. "You don't know who I work for buddy.." What the fuck? Like your employer is going to come down here and what then if he does? Marc's just being a fucking baby though he was catching the short of the stick for this.

This cafe next door is run by a born again christian named Will. Will used to have a lot in common with me. He followed music for a while til, as he so passionately described it, "Music didn't pay my bills." Well, that is a whole other argument with me but whatever. I'm fairly certain most, if not all, of his customers are from his church plus everyone loves a guy who's "doing something for the kids" & "on God's side" which let's be real here - If there is a God, he's not going to be picking sides, at least not on a christian's view because their God is a forgiving God anyways so SIN IT UP FUCKERS! Just blows my mind.. Two people, devout followers of Christ will be the two quickest people to flex their supposed power or lack there of but it will be righteous. The food sucks, it's all microwaved & it's way over priced. Support the small guy, right? I'm straying from the subject...

Today - I woke up drunk & hung over, I saw two grown ass men go at it about what they're going to do to one another, 20 feet away from one another, learned to hate my job & everyone that's involved with this place a little bit more, if possible. And now I so passionately type this blog. I wonder what the rest of the day will bring?

For one out of the 30 people we do business with, I think we actually help two. That's Matt's whole argument, "we're here to help people. I try to do good business, ya know, we have all these people getting ripped off & I just try to be fair." Dude didn't know how to work a generator so he lost out. The morality behind this business is not morality at all or really human for that matter. I've learned a lot from this job about the human species as a whole.. though this is all first world problems I just want to re-iterate; I hate my job.

Bullshit.

V.

A lady came in this morning trying to sell off some gold. Early 90's hair that's gone to the fritz, hanging on to it's last fried strand, tight jeans with reebok sneakers & a white Virginia Beach shirt with gawdy pinky letters. I wish I could've taken a picture of what she had. Basically it was a ring, that was once whole, but now in four pieces like some sort of puzzle. Lady proudly had her appraisal in hand saying that this once great ring was worth $2,200. I start to weigh out everything & examine the piece(s) as she rambles on about how it was & the potential it still has. The diamonds suck & if this was worth $2,200 at any given point she was either ripped off or whoever did the appraisal is a liar. It's bittersweet when people come in here looking for a certain amount of money because when you tell them how much we can buy it for, it looks like a piece of them dies. Their eyes get that hollow look. Like the thing they prided themselves in isn't worth a good god damn.. which is usually the case.

To paint you a clear picture - I was examining the jewelry at the front desk and as I've stated before, there is a camera in here for every angle you can find yourself in. Matt see's the jewelry on the counter on his 43" flat screen television in the back & comes out to do his evaluation. I really do not understand why I still have a job. I don't do shit because I believe these two think I am incapable of shit & will usually take over whatever function I am doing, which is ok because I'm still getting paid. The evaluation process usually takes about ten minutes. And this ten minutes is usually filled with silence with us on one end of the counter & them, the customer, on the other watching our every move. This wasn't the case with this lady. She had, I'm assuming, her boyfriend or husband with her and so it goes, they get into the great debate of buying things used, like jewelry, from a pawn shop. She asks her accomplice if he would happily accept something from a pawn shop to which he quickly replies, "yes." She immediately gets a confused look on her face to compliment her square head holding her self righteous thoughts. He knew he fucked up. "WHY?! you're buying someone else's misfortune & sorrow. I could never do that." Ok. I get it. People come into a pawn shop, see all the jewelry, and immediately get to thinking.. "This engagement ring was bought for some broad who cheated on their husband while he was deployed" or "some poor man's wife divorced him because he couldn't tend to her needs & wants or his dick wasn't big enough." A.K.A. - other people's sorrows & misfortunes. Ya know, first world problems... Now my point in this whole paragraph is this dumb bitch walks in here with a fucking diamond ring which was, nine times out of ten, probably mined from Africa and wants to bitch about where that ring or that necklace came from.. It just bothers me. And I don't mean to come off as pretentious and/or pompous but this is just ignorant. Which is worse? Some man losing his wife and a marriage that was probably rushed into anyway or some eight year old, starving child losing his life for the good find he stumbled upon earlier in the day. Whichever way you look at it, wherever it's coming from & unless you make everything you wear; don't come into a pawn shop talking about where things come from because chances are you don't know where what you have comes from. It could've been bought new or it could've came from the nastiest, smelliest and drunkest bastard walking the face of the earth. Maybe Some 10 year old made your shoes or shirt to compliment the 100 they already were taking on for the day for a weekly pay of $1 USD. Ignorance is not bliss, it is ignorance & this lady was ignorant.

Matt chimes in. "We could do $150 on this." She's taken back and exclaims in a baffled expression, "One-hundred and fifty dollars?!" "Are you even taking account for the diamonds?" She promptly scuffles out of the store probably bitching to that poor man that whole ride home. Such is life.

I can't wait to leave.

IV.

There is nothing redeeming about this place. I always feel like I'm in a prison. The windows are all barred and there's 10 cameras always spying on my existence. I'm actually shocked as to how we haven't been robbed yet. I've always awaited that special someone coming in with a loaded glock, pointing it at my face, and in a desperate demeanor, demanding all the money in the drawer & safe. We keep some weapons about but nothing to write home about. I have a panic switch, bear mace & a police baton. There's some stuff in the back but it's not going to hold any avail at the front desk and I highly doubt anyone that could be by the weapons has a steady enough hand to not kill me. Then this place would truly prove to be nothing more than suicide. noise. Pawn paradise lost.

My boss just closed on a house yesterday and I had the delightful day to work. As I usually do not work Wednesdays, I have the pleasure to this week & I even get Friday off instead of the norm. What does one do with a Friday? He offered me Thursday or Friday instead and I took Friday cos it's sound just rings closer to the weekend but in reality it's not like I could take a weekend trip to get out of this extensive black hole. There is nothing in this town for anyone other than a house. I wonder if it's like this everywhere. Kind of a scary thought that no matter where you go on our little planet there will be a pawn shop flourishing with the very people that built America, only now their jobs have sunk to the better part of business. White Collar = Suckcess to me. And no matter how much I hate this job, I can take pride in the fact that I did things different, if such a thing exists. It's hard to find purpose when there isn't one. And at this very second, and for the past couple months, marc(with a c) steadily argues with his baby's mom. It's a promise, almost daily. He tries to be respectful about it by walking outside but I can hear him yell out there too & now he's in the back. If my tenure here at the shop has taught me anything it is this : I do not want to be like a Marc or Matt. Neither are happy. And while I can't say I am either, I can say that I am not like them.

My saving grace is that I leave here in a month. Win/Win. I don't care if it's less money/more work or even more money/less work, though the latter would be nice. My job consists of nothing. No feeling. No meaning. No work. No play. We all know that makes Mike a dull boy and that's exactly how I feel. Dull.

At this very second we have a spa chair sitting in front when you first walk in. Who the fuck is going to buy that. I digress, who the fuck is going to be sitting on a grand and walk into a pawn shop to buy a spa chair? We've some pretty sweet swords hanging up on the wall but they're not real. They're from Pakistan and I think that's about the only significance of them. They took away my desk too. I recently purchased a lap top from a good friend of mine & would keep my peace in the corner, furiously lurking away at the interwebs. But they wanted to expand our shelves so the desk had to go.. Bummer. I've never watched so many people do dumb shit in my life. I watched five minutes of a man with short hair up top and a five feet in the back asking for criticism of his sword technique on a youtube video. Suppose we'll sell these swords when he comes in but I personally think he's one out of a million.

We're also situated about 10 feet away from a major road. US RT. 1. Stretching from Miami up to Maine. Everyday I get to see people carry out their daily grind. Going up and down the road. It's depressing. I'll go to smoke a cigarette and catch so many dirty stares, it's unbelievable. This makes me ponder, though. Who's happier? These people work for an existence of comfortable living, or supposed comfort, and I work to fund my bills and play my drums. Truth is, we're both happy at points but I have fun. The only happy people in this world are the ones that do what they want, when they want. It's like being a child again only on a much larger scale. When you're younger, a piece of grass at the other end of the neighborhood was new and now we travel to other ends of the world to achieve something new. I like new. I want new.

Marc is out front of the shop as I type, moving his hands around screaming into his phone. He just walked out after being in the back. He started punching things. He is now somewhere else. I'm not sure where but he's not out front & not in the back.

One hour, 43 minutes, 20 seconds.