Post by junastarrider on Dec 21, 2011 9:10:52 GMT -5
Basically, here's the gist. I work the midnight shift at a coffee place. (If you're Canadian, you'll know where). Granted, I do work in the 'ghetto' portion of town, but my shifts are mostly quiet. Recently, two things happened that concerned me.
First, a semi-regular named "Joanne" came in with her friend, shortly after the bars closed. She's a woman in her 50's, friendly, and quite drunk. Not the 'horrible, loud, obnoxious', drunk, but the friendly, happy, doesn't-know-how-loud-her-voice-is drunk. She's come in a few nights since I started the shift.
That night, I had noticed for the first time, instead of her more sober friend driving her around, they both came in separate cars. That's right, she was driving while intoxicated. And from what I could tell, she had drank quite a bit that night. I wondered if I should call the police. My coworker simply stated, "I'm not going to do it, it's none of my business" The baker said, "I'm not going to do it, I personally know her, and besides, she doesn't live that far away, and no one's outside right now at this time of night"
So, due to a combination of their ambivalence, and the fact I dislike calling people on phones (Irrational...fear, I suppose, hard to explain), I let the women leave, and apparently nothing bad happened. When I got home, I relayed this to the boyfriend, who surprisingly argued that I should have called the cops (He's one of those people with the 'screw the cops' mentality).
Now, I know eventually, this woman will come back, so next time, should I be calling the cops?
Next question: Lately, as the weather gets colder (Although afew of you forrumites who live in Alberta will laugh when I say -3 Celsius is cold for this time of year) People tend to stay longer.
"Jim" is a grizzled older guy, who is rather quiet, polite, and almost certainly homeless. He comes to the store, purchases a coffee, muffin, makes some small talk with me (and only me, he seems to be very shy. Which is odd, because I'm not the type who talks to strangers), grabs a newspaper, sits in the hardest to see corner and falls asleep.
Now, unlike the other riff-raff we get in this store, he doesn't smell like booze (he does smell like cigarettes, but I'll let that pass), he doesn't cause any trouble, doesn't rifle through our butt stops or garbage bins, or stealling our toilet paper dispensers. He merely falls asleep, waking up so every often, and purchases a muffin or something, and goes back to his table.
Now, one of the other early morning girls saw him as she was coming in, and ordered him out, pointing at our '20 minute time limit' sign. And then went to our managers, who told us to kick him out after 20 minutes.
Now, I'm probably not going to do that, not unless he actually does something that warrants it. Neither will either of my midnight co-workers (although, it seems, that is due to the fact that he creeps them out.) If this town actually had a homeless shelter ("We're a small city, we don't have any homeless people!" is probably the mentality of City Hall), maybe I would direct him to it, but I'm content to leave him be. But now, due to the complaining of the above early morning girl, management has increasingly pressured us to kick him out, saying it's looks bad for the restaurant if there's a disheveled guy sleeping at a table.
So, what to do?
First, a semi-regular named "Joanne" came in with her friend, shortly after the bars closed. She's a woman in her 50's, friendly, and quite drunk. Not the 'horrible, loud, obnoxious', drunk, but the friendly, happy, doesn't-know-how-loud-her-voice-is drunk. She's come in a few nights since I started the shift.
That night, I had noticed for the first time, instead of her more sober friend driving her around, they both came in separate cars. That's right, she was driving while intoxicated. And from what I could tell, she had drank quite a bit that night. I wondered if I should call the police. My coworker simply stated, "I'm not going to do it, it's none of my business" The baker said, "I'm not going to do it, I personally know her, and besides, she doesn't live that far away, and no one's outside right now at this time of night"
So, due to a combination of their ambivalence, and the fact I dislike calling people on phones (Irrational...fear, I suppose, hard to explain), I let the women leave, and apparently nothing bad happened. When I got home, I relayed this to the boyfriend, who surprisingly argued that I should have called the cops (He's one of those people with the 'screw the cops' mentality).
Now, I know eventually, this woman will come back, so next time, should I be calling the cops?
Next question: Lately, as the weather gets colder (Although afew of you forrumites who live in Alberta will laugh when I say -3 Celsius is cold for this time of year) People tend to stay longer.
"Jim" is a grizzled older guy, who is rather quiet, polite, and almost certainly homeless. He comes to the store, purchases a coffee, muffin, makes some small talk with me (and only me, he seems to be very shy. Which is odd, because I'm not the type who talks to strangers), grabs a newspaper, sits in the hardest to see corner and falls asleep.
Now, unlike the other riff-raff we get in this store, he doesn't smell like booze (he does smell like cigarettes, but I'll let that pass), he doesn't cause any trouble, doesn't rifle through our butt stops or garbage bins, or stealling our toilet paper dispensers. He merely falls asleep, waking up so every often, and purchases a muffin or something, and goes back to his table.
Now, one of the other early morning girls saw him as she was coming in, and ordered him out, pointing at our '20 minute time limit' sign. And then went to our managers, who told us to kick him out after 20 minutes.
Now, I'm probably not going to do that, not unless he actually does something that warrants it. Neither will either of my midnight co-workers (although, it seems, that is due to the fact that he creeps them out.) If this town actually had a homeless shelter ("We're a small city, we don't have any homeless people!" is probably the mentality of City Hall), maybe I would direct him to it, but I'm content to leave him be. But now, due to the complaining of the above early morning girl, management has increasingly pressured us to kick him out, saying it's looks bad for the restaurant if there's a disheveled guy sleeping at a table.
So, what to do?