I stood there silently as the man in his late 50’s yelled at the man behind the seafood counter at the local grocery store. He was dressed in pajama bottoms and a worn out t-shirt that had a picture of a beer bottle on it while wearing a dirty baseball cap. I’m not making this up, this was what he was wearing -I swear.
“How much is one pound of stone crabs!” he yelled!
“i’m not sure, but we can put some in a bag and see how many you get,” the counter man said.
“Who can tell me- if you cant!”, he said with a slur. He had been obviously drinking by the way he leaned into the glass covering the seafood and slurred his words.
The older latin man proceeded to put 4 crab legs into a bag and tell him that this was 1 pound.
The man was outraged, “You don’t know what you are doing”, he screamed, “get me someone who knows what he is doing.”
The man then leaned close to me to say the man didn’t know what he was doing and I should beware. The meat manager came out all while I stood there smiling at the counter clerk to reassure him that all was alright.
“What can I help you with?”, the manager said.
“I want to know what one pound of stone crab is”, the man said.
The manager said almost exactly what the counter man said and put 4 crab legs on the scale telling the customer that this was one pound. The customer said “great…I’ll take it.”
He left with his crab and I ordered my stone crab which was on sale, but I told the manager that the counter man had done exactly what he had done and had suffered a verbal beating because of it. The store manager replied I believe he has had a bit to drink and it was best not to have a relationship with him.”
I took my crab and walked to the front to see the drunken man walk around the counter and out the door. He didn’t even pay for his $25.00 stone crab. I was so aggravated that first he proceeded to yell at the counter man and then he didn’t even pay that I ran to an employee and told them that the man had not paid for his seafood. Everyone seemed to agree that he had been drinking and did not want to approach him.
But now I had paid and was in my car on the road with this drunken jerk. I saw him drive off and he didn’t seem impaired, he just seemed like he was a jerk.
What would you have done in this situation? Something my Dad taught me a long time ago was to never deal with a drunk or stupid person and I felt this man was both so after telling the store clerks, I let it go but I had a bad feeling in my stomach all evening as I thought about it.
Would you have done something different? If so, let me know in the comments by clicking below.
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