Hey Daggers! I thought a bit of memoir might be a nice change of pace. Yes, I made sure to post it to the Creative Corner!

A couple years ago, I worked at a Halloween store. It was one of those corner ones that shows up for a few months and sells a bunch of junk items that should be sold in a dollar store for upward of $40.

Immediately, the staff were abusive. I read it immediately but I needed the work and I didn't want to be immediately confrontational and neglect an opportunity. While the manager was showing me how to use the computer system, one of the staff walked up and simply asked, "Where are the garbage bags?"

The manager, a blonde white guy somewhere in his early 30s, harshly responded, shockingly, "Why? So you can put yourself in it and take out the trash?"

The staff, a teenager of East Indian descent, that was victim of the harsh retort simply walked away meekly. From his effeminate tone and demeanor, he was clearly gay and he was rude in his own way, but not like that. 

That same manager later on took a shine to me and, being on the intimidating side, had me escort him to the bank to cash checks and then back. People have done this for a long time - kept me around for protection. It's part of why I was generally a self-involved recluse, because usually when people want you around as protection, the situation they are in is bad. People also pick fights when you look intimidating in order to test what they think they're made out of. If he was feeling unsafe in the environment, it was a no brainer to figure out why he hired me so promptly. I worked as a security guard after that job and the Halloween store manager saw me at one point, giving me the thumbs up out of his car.

As time went on, I took a shine to the job. The co-manager said I did an excellent job. After bordering on poverty after trying to tap my writing ability in to money for so long, thinking I could do it since so many people had said I was good at it, it felt good to just get paid for doing stupid, menial work - to help people have fun and be free and cavalier about life.

Then the abuse started in again. There was some serious homophobia going on at this business. Another gay employee, a tall blond guy, who I will call Joe, who claimed to be a Master's student just working during the summer, caught heat bad. There were two locations and the manager of the second location, an Asian guy in his mid-20s, was in charge of clean up of both. At one point, when we were cleaning up the business, the Asian guy quite literally jumped up in the air and did some martial arts kicks at the gay guy.

At that point, I left. I was disgusted and wanted to stick up for him, but I was getting older and the best I did was to tell Joe to leave with me. Joe didn't. He stuck around and dealt with the asshole for several weeks apparently.

I ran in to Joe repeatedly and he couldn't stop talking about what pieces of shit the management was. He said that they gossiped a bunch of stuff about me that was clearly made up. I actually got in contact with the company itself to report abusive behavior but Joe didn't want to go through with it.