Crazy Carl

There’s this tiny discount liquor store about half-way between my place & my mom’s house.  When I want to buy wine, I tend to go there.  The prices are good, there’s parking right in front of the door & I’m often the only customer in there.  The last several visits have stuck with me due to the guy who usually is on duty there (the only employee in the store).   I don’t know his name but I started referring to him in my head as “Crazy Carl” (I love alliteration). 

Carl is a tall, likely 30-something man, with multiple piercings, including the balls to wear a big gold stud earring in each ear.   From the first transaction I had with him, I knew he was not a friendly chap.  He has these weird unspoken rules I had to learn, such as he will NOT pick up the debit/credit card if you lay it down on the counter.  You have to put it in his hand or he will just stare silently at you until you do.  Yet he will not return the debit/credit card to your hand, even if you put your hand out.  He tosses it on the counter for you to retrieve.     

I’ve conducted entire purchases in which he said nothing to me except the amount of my purchase.  He won’t acknowledge me when I enter the store & toss him a friendly ”hi”.  He won’t respond to my “thank you” when my purchase is done.  More than once I have selected my wine while being forced to listen to him on the phone going off about “that fucking asshole better not do that cuz I’ll fucking fuck him up!” & other conversations I would assume the manager would prefer he not have in front of customers.

 

It got to the point that I began to look forward to my visits to see what Crazy Carl was gonna do next time.   I can’t help but find myself interested & somewhat entertained by encounters like this.  For months I never spoke of Crazy Carl to anyone else, so our ‘relationship’ existed solely within my head.

 

A few weeks back, I stopped off for a bottle of Merlot.  I approached the counter & stood behind a woman who was buying a regular size bottle of booze.  Crazy Carl put it in a tiny paper bag that was better suited for a can of soda.  The customer looked at her bottle sticking several inches out of the bag & said in a frustrated voice, “Don’t you have a bigger bag?”.  He responded by getting out a bigger paper bag & dropping the bottle (still in the smaller bag) in from such a height I’m surprised it didn’t shatter.  The shocked woman almost said something but then decided better & left.  

As Carl rang up my purchase, I noticed that his sunglasses were on all askew, like someone had punched him in the face & he didn’t bother to rearrange his shades.  I handed him my debit card & tried not to deviate from the norm, as I could sense my favorite liquor store attendant was having a bad day. 

Crazy Carl then put my big bottle of wine in a tiny bag, too.  He gave me this look I could only interpret as ”I dare you to say anything”.  I said nothing & scurried away.   

My guess is that my man Carl is having a med issue.  I’ve worked with enough people who take meds, as well as experimented with a few for my own perfect recipe of anti-anxiety, to guess that he was taking the wrong med or not taking the right one.  To be honest, I felt bad for him.  Even if he wasn’t in danger of winning “Employee of the Month” (even in a one-employee shop), I hate to think of people suffering. 

 

I went to buy some wine & a soda at my favorite tiny discount liquor store today & Crazy Carl wasn’t working.  I asked the guy who was working who the manager of the store was, hoping to find out more about Carl.  He told me Carl was no longer working there & apparently his behavior was indeed related to a med issue.  So I’m thinking to myself “I’ll miss Crazy Carl but at least now there’s a normal employee here”.

 

Then, with no provocation, the new guy behind the counter launched into his theory that Hitler was really misunderstood.