October 2, 2025 • 18 mins
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Target seems to attract a certain set of customers, one
kind of which is so infamous for their entitled and
senseless behavior that an entire first name has been hijacked
to describe them.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
The Karen.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
As someone who worked at Target for over six years,
I'm well versed in their day routing outbursts. I started
the job when I was eighteen, and I kept working
there even after college. Actually I only just recently quit,
and it was because of a Karen. I thought I'd
seen everything they could throw at me, and as much
as I hated to take their abuse, whenever they felt
like dishing it out, I never flipped my switch or
(00:44):
walked out of a shift over it, because I was
not about to let someone else's dissatisfaction with their lives
make mind any worse. That was all until this one,
especially unhinched suburban suckubists decided to top every tantrum I'd
ever seen. Funny thing about her, though, was that she
managed to dump hidden fronts on me when I was
out working a very easy and relatively care and proof
job self checkout attendant.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
There's not much to do in that position.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Just make sure people aren't stealing and help people with
whatever little problems that come up in ninety nine percent
of the time, all that means is we're moving an
item that they accidentally scans twice.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
That was how it started with this one lady.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
She was clearly flustered or in a bad mood when
she walked past me to go to the checkout station.
She was beat red, pushing a cart full of hundred
little things and sucking air like she was out of breath.
Figured she would create some kind of problem, and I
knew I was right when she was scanning things for
about ten seconds and the light above her went from
green to red. I quickly went to help her so
(01:41):
she wouldn't get impatient, but she immediately started spitting careen
flavored venom in my face. Go away, she hissed. All
I did was scan this stupid thing twice. I can
figure it out myself. Sorry, I began already biting the
inside of my cheek. I'll have to enter my employee
code to all that, why, she shouted, Do you people
(02:04):
not trust us to run a simple register? It's store policy.
I said, it'd only just take a second. As I
reached over to the screen and punched at my number
As I did this, the Karen looked at my arm
like she was about to bite it off or something.
Next time, ask before you've invade my personal space, She
screamed in my face. My apologies, ma'am. Let me know
(02:26):
if you need anything else, I said, while we're treating
away from her bubble of loathing. Of course, she made
sure to get the last word. I don't want anything
from you, Just leave me alone, she said. It already
felt like the whole store was rolling their eyes and
averting their stairs. As I walked back to the front
of the section, Miss Karen was stuck scanning items into
her station long enough for a whole entire new set
(02:48):
of people to.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Come around and go around her.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
At one point, I saw that she had double scanned
another item, so I started to approach her again, but
then she almost backhanded me across the face and screamed
at me, forget about it, I'll just pay for twice.
That's obviously the racket you're running here. I backed off,
and because she almost hit me, I was ready to
boot her out of the store, so I quietly notified
(03:11):
the manager of development through my earpiece. By the time
I got done with that, exchange. I looked back over
to the caaren to see that she was striking the
touch screen in frustration and wailing like a banshee. What
do you mean there's three types of green peppers? I
only saw one. It's just a green goddamn pepper. Just
let me scan it, you stupid, worthless machine. Apparently she
(03:32):
was struggling with the process of looking up her produce,
so I gave it one last ditch effort to help her.
Excuse me, ma'am, if you're having trouble using the self
checkout machine, any one of our associates can ring it
up for you the old fashioned way. How about you
shut up. I don't want to talk to any of
you people. Why do you think I'm trying to do
this myself in the first place. I've had it with
(03:52):
you and your associates always patronizing me like I'm some
sort of helpless baby. At this point, I totally gave
up on her, walked away, and my manager spoke through
the earpiece that she could hear her screaming from the
office and had already called the manager of the publics
down the street to send their resident police officer our
way in case things got any worse. A few more
minutes passed and the Karen was still not done wringing
(04:14):
herself up. She had one more item left in her car,
and I have no idea where she got it from.
She tried to skin it ten times, but the machine
kept saying the item was not found, meaning it wasn't
in our system.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
This was the last straw for her.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
She started to kick and punch the screen so hard
I was surprised he didn't break. Right then, I saw
the manager approaching her, looking pissed off, so I went
up with her. The manager asked her to please finish
checking out, or to leave her items next to the store.
In other words, please get the hell out. All this
did was an enraged, insane woman even more out of nowhere.
(04:49):
She swung on the manager. The blow connected right on
the edge of the draw, shocking my boss so hard
that she fell on her butt. I rushed over to
help her, but I couldn't even get a word in
The Karen was cackling like a witch, and right as
I was turning my head to tell her to shut
up so I could see if my boss was all right,
she threw an entire roll of quarters in my face. First,
(05:09):
one hit me square in the eye, leaving me with
a giant bruise, but there was more of where that
came from. I guess she had intended to pay this
self checkout with coins the whole time, because her purse
was full of rolls of quarters, and she started pelting
them at anyone who came near.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
That's been my boss.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Someone I've never heard swear before in my life, got
to her feet and dragged me away, uttering the words, hey,
leave that woman alone, you damn psycho. There were tears
in my eyes as she walked me off, but I
remember rubbing them away just enough to see a cop
hustling over to the scene. I didn't want to see
what happened next, but according to my coworkers who were
watching the whole thing, the Karen's little temper tantrum came
(05:47):
straight to an end when that cop body slammed her
so hard as she got a concussion from her head
hitting the ground. Now, it's probably understandable why I didn't
even bother putting in my two weeks notice after that,
so I quit at the end of the day. I
(06:10):
know I've never been what I guess is considered a
normal person. More often than not, simple things like going
to the grocery store can feel daunting because I know
it's going to be packed with quote unquote normal people
living out mundane aspects of their boring lives like a
bunch of solace in PCs. It's honestly creepy. But the
only thing that personally gets to me about it is
the toxic tendency of these supposedly respectful people to pass
(06:33):
judgment on me just because of the.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Way I look or act.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Don't get me wrong, I do the same, but only
when I feel like I'm being mentally attacked by everyone
I see. It's just a looks in the eyes of
some people that lets me know they're criticizing my existence
at a literal first glance, rather than seeing me as
a real person. If anything, I'm more real than them.
All that being said, I took a trip to Target
the other day, and for the first time ever, it
(06:58):
was more for fun than actually needing to go. I
was out hanging with my girlfriend on her side of town,
which is kind of in the zone where the suburbs
start to meet the rural countryside. She told me she
used to hang out of this Target after school, since
it was right next to the mall and that it
was always full of the weirdest people. So I guess
it might sound hypocritical of what I said before that
we were going there to people watch, but at the
(07:20):
end of the day, I.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Don't really care.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Our girlfriend and I sort of embolden each other to
let our more peculiar tendencies take hold. That's what made
this trip to Target so fun. Though all we needed
to get were Mother's Day cards, but we went across
the entire store like it was an amusement park. Everywhere
we went, we saw the saddest looking people, and I
felt like they were all so empty inside that they
didn't even notice us. I mean this literally, as they
(07:43):
would walk straight into us with their cards. Either they
were distracted by thinking about where to go, or there
was nobody really piloting those bodies at all. We saw
the whole gamut of the residents of Liminal Suburbia, everyone
from unhappy married couples bickering at each other, to white
high school girls yaking and makeup department, and even some
freakish looking people that could have easily been aliens wearing
(08:04):
human skin. I'm sure we stuck out like crazy people too,
though we couldn't help but laughing at all the people
we saw, and we didn't always try that hard to
get out of earshop before cracking jokes. We weren't able
to stop ourselves from swearing with some not so inside
voices either. I guess we got so worked up from
the stress of being cooped up with all those people
that we very quickly lost our manners. It only made
(08:27):
the judgmental stairs even worse, but we didn't really care. Eventually, though,
we wanted to make our escape, so we finally went
to the card section to pick out Mother's Day cards
for our moms. Of course, this was the most crowded
section in the whole store. It was so bad that
I was sweating. There was a woman right next to
us talking really loud on our phone, and a mother
(08:48):
and a father with their kindergarten age kid running around,
not to mention a bunch of depressed millennials sighing as
they thought about their relationships.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
With their mothers.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
I found a card for my mom pretty quickly. It
just so happened that I locked out and found the
perfect one on the third try. My girlfriend was having
more trouble, though, so I kept looking for That's when
I pulled out this one joke card that said something like,
it's Mother's Day, the one day of the year where
you don't have to lift a finger, and if anybody
asks you to, you know which one to use. I
(09:19):
thought I was a pretty funny middle finger joke that
I might have gotten for my own mom, so I
showed her to my girlfriend, who was crouched down looking
at the other cards in the bottom row. She didn't
get it, though, by her own admission, she has trouble
with grasping wordplay. Wait what finger, she asked me. So
in a moment of forgetting that we were surrounded by people,
I jokingly flipped her the bird. The timing of this
(09:42):
could have not been worse. Right as I did this,
that little kid was standing right behind her, so I
might as well have given a small child the middle
finger right in their face. What's worse is six foot
tall by four foot wide, bald meat headed father was
standing right behind him. I would have felt guilty just
for the mistake, but since the dad saw it too,
(10:02):
I wasn't going to get away of just feeling.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Guilty right away.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
The dad's fat face expanded with a surgeon and blood
pressure turning red as his veins started to bulge. What'd
you do that for a punk, he barked at me.
I stepped back and put my hands up. I'm sorry, sir,
that wasn't meant for him. I really didn't see him there.
I was trying to sound genuine, but I guess I
have a bad habit of sounding sarcastic and serious situations.
(10:27):
Don't be a KOI with me, boy. Suddenly he reached
over my still crouching girlfriend and grabbed me by the collar,
yanking me with an inch of his face. I could
literally smell the buffalo wild wings and still beer on
his breath. My girlfriend yelped as I inadvertently kicked her
while being dragged, so suddenly she scrambled out of the way.
But now I, unfortunately, I had something to be upset
about too. Hey man, I'm really sorry, but you're not
(10:51):
going to beat me up in front of that kid
if you care so much about a middle finger. Right now,
I was really using a coy tone, and I could
also feel the shit eating grin spreading a c my face.
I just couldn't help it. The dude was such a pig.
I wasn't even scared of pissing him off anymore. I
thought the bruised brain could be worth the laugh. I
just might if you don't watch your mouth, you little.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Shit, he said.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
I could tell he was about to reach his limit
and cross the line from assault into battery as he
started to lift me up off my feet, But luckily
I was saved by his unhappy marriage. His wife had
been basically ignoring this whole encounter until she found the
card she was looking for, But now she was coming
back to her reign and her dog, I mean, her husband, Dave.
(11:35):
I don't have the time or patience for another one
of your tantrums. Okay, why don't you be more like
your son and calm down before you have another heart attack.
I can't afford another er trip either. God, it's like
I'm living with two toddlers. Let's just get home before
you miss your precious college football.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Game and whine about it for the rest of the night.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Big old Dave Hofton poffed and rolled his eyes, but
eventually he listened to his nagging wife and put me
down without another word. The family of three rules on
toward checkout, and the onlookers of the scene started to
whisper and giggle. I found my girlfriend and we discussed
the whole situation in detail before checking out and leaving
the store. I tried to find it amusing, but I
was actually a bit shaken up. She tried to act
(12:13):
shaken up, but I could tell she was amused deep down.
That's a good balance in a relationship, right. Target used
to be a safe place for me. Whenever I was there,
I could just be myself, talk with my friends, and
(12:35):
buy Q things. There was never any expectation of being
forced to do anything I didn't want to do, talk
to anyone I didn't want to talk to, or anything
else I might have to deal with at school or
at my parents' house. My bestie Madison, and I would
often go after school on days when there wasn't anything
else to do. We'd always buy something so the workers
wouldn't accuse us of loitering, but we wanted.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
To buy stuff anyway.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
A lot of people who worked there started to recognize
us and stopped asking us if we needed help all
the time, which we appreciated. It's not like we went
to Target to me people. Obviously, we just went there
to talk to each other. Of course, every nice thing
seems to get ruined eventually, and a safe place becomes
a place in which you were traumatized. This happened just
a few weeks ago when I was at Target with
(13:20):
Madison in the makeup area. We were discussing some tea
as we usually do, when this absolutely horrid hobo looking
dude walked over to us from the shaving aisle and
started hitting on us. Excuse me, ladies, can I ask
you a question? Madison and I laughed in his face
at first, hoping this would crush his soul enough to
screw off, but he lingered, So I feel like I
(13:42):
had to say something.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Why.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Well, you both seemed very attractive, so I wanted to
ask your opinion on which deoduran.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
I should buy.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
He held up two kinds of deodoran both hands, which
I hadn't even noticed he was holding before. Still, I
was trying to shut him down immediately. Sorry, I said,
with fake niceness, we're kind of in the middle of
a conversation. This still didn't work, though, Oh I know
I was listening. I hate to interrupt, but from your
conversation I can tell you're both probably sexually active young women.
(14:15):
So I'm sure you can give me good advice. You,
I yelled, almost skagging, you were eavesdropping on us. Why
would we help you, honestly, said Madison, rolling her eyes.
Just pick the one you liked the most and leave
us alone. Unfortunately, and disgustingly, it seemed like the more
we yelled at this guy and humiliated him, the more
turned on he got. He kept inching closer to us
(14:37):
as the creepy smirk on his face turned into a
drooling grin. Oh, come on, ladies, help me out here.
I need your opinion. You're the kind of girls I
want to attract, so I need to know what smells
good to you. Really, she wheezed, then slowly collected herself
just enough to lay it on him. On behalf of
all hawk girls, no, all girls everywhere, how of a
(15:00):
single one of them is going to want anything to
do with you, no matter what you smell like. Finally,
it seems like we were starting to hurt his feelings,
so I joined in. Yeah, I mean, seriously, you look
like my ex boyfriend. Shower drained when he shaved his pubes.
Madison slapped me on the shoulder. Crying from laughter. So
I thing he's supposed to mean, I smirked and looked
(15:21):
the creep dead in the eyes. It means you're disgusting, revolting, ratty,
greasy clump of filth. And you know what else, you're
even shorter than my ex boyfriend. So why don't you
go jump back into the sewer you crawled out of,
because obviously that's where you belong. I really thought that
would be the final blow, but the creep just stood
there for a second. Clearly you had a loss all
(15:42):
the while in Madison, and I just kept laughing at him.
But then slowly the smirk returned to his face. I
see how it is, he mumbled, putting one of the
sticks of deodorant on the shelf next to him, then
opening the other one. I guess you don't want me
to ask nicely. Either of us were paying attention to
what he was doing, though, we don't want you to
(16:03):
ask us anything at all, you weirdo.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Come on, take the hint.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
I was still laughing as I said those words, but
I stopped in the next moment as he took off
his shirt, exposing a nightmarish chest of matted hair. I
yelled at the top of my lungs so the whole
store could hear what was going on. This was one
of those moments when we did need help from an employee.
Both of us were honestly completely stunned watching him put
the deowner and on on one of his armpits, in
(16:28):
total shock with our draws to the floor. But then
the worst thing imaginable happened. That sicko lunched toward us
and grabbed me by the hair. Then he yanked my
face straight into his armpit. Smell it, now, tell me
what you think, he shouted and laughed like a psycho.
It smelled horrible, obviously, but it was the feeling of it,
(16:49):
the sheer principle that my face was being shoved into
the grossest armpit into existence, that truly traumatized me. I
felt like I would never be clean again. After that,
I was screaming and c at him, all basically blinded,
but he had me planted there for what felt like eternity.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
However, before anyone else.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Got there, I heard the loud clicking of a stun
gun going off. I knew it was Madison's because she
always kept one in her purse. The Creep's whole body
tensed up for a moment as he shoddered it in pain.
Then he went lip enough for me to break free
from his grasp. He staggered back and fell onto a shelf,
but he was still standing. As soon as I regained
my balance, I reached into my own purse and I
(17:27):
grabbed my little bottle of mace. Before he could run
away or attack us again, I unloaded the entire bottle
into his face. All three of us were caught in
the immense cloud of toxic chemicals, but he was getting
the direct stream. I didn't hold back until he was
on the floor, writhing in pain and crying like a baby.
When the bottle was empty, Madison pounced on him and
(17:48):
got him with the sun gun again, right on the neck,
and she didn't let go. I was about to jump
back in and start stomping on his balls, but that's
when a bunch of employees arrived and broke the whole
thing up. Obviously, that meant when as a society got arrested,
and I'm still pressing charges. But honestly, what might be
the worst thing about this whole ordeal is that I
got banned from Target just because I discharged mace to
(18:09):
protect myself.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
I don't see how that's fair.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
But if Target wants to lose a loyal customer about
disrespecting and validating them, that's fine. I'll go somewhere else,
Somewhere I'm not going to get attacked by gross old men.
Target seems to attract a certain set of customers, one
kind of which is so infamous for their entitled and
senseless behavior that an entire first name has been hijacked
to describe them.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
The Karen.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
As someone who worked at Target for over six years,
I'm well versed in their day routing outbursts. I started
the job when I was eighteen, and I kept working
there even after college. Actually I only just recently quit,
and it was because of a Karen. I thought I'd
seen everything they could throw at me, and as much
as I hated to take their abuse, whenever they felt
like dishing it out, I never flipped my switch or
(00:44):
walked out of a shift over it, because I was
not about to let someone else's dissatisfaction with their lives
make mind any worse. That was all until this one,
especially unhinched suburban suckubists decided to top every tantrum I'd
ever seen. Funny thing about her, though, was that she
managed to dump hidden fronts on me when I was
out working a very easy and relatively care and proof
job self checkout attendant.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
There's not much to do in that position.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Just make sure people aren't stealing and help people with
whatever little problems that come up in ninety nine percent
of the time, all that means is we're moving an
item that they accidentally scans twice.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
That was how it started with this one lady.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
She was clearly flustered or in a bad mood when
she walked past me to go to the checkout station.
She was beat red, pushing a cart full of hundred
little things and sucking air like she was out of breath.
Figured she would create some kind of problem, and I
knew I was right when she was scanning things for
about ten seconds and the light above her went from
green to red. I quickly went to help her so
(01:41):
she wouldn't get impatient, but she immediately started spitting careen
flavored venom in my face. Go away, she hissed. All
I did was scan this stupid thing twice. I can
figure it out myself. Sorry, I began already biting the
inside of my cheek. I'll have to enter my employee
code to all that, why, she shouted, Do you people
(02:04):
not trust us to run a simple register? It's store policy.
I said, it'd only just take a second. As I
reached over to the screen and punched at my number
As I did this, the Karen looked at my arm
like she was about to bite it off or something.
Next time, ask before you've invade my personal space, She
screamed in my face. My apologies, ma'am. Let me know
(02:26):
if you need anything else, I said, while we're treating
away from her bubble of loathing. Of course, she made
sure to get the last word. I don't want anything
from you, Just leave me alone, she said. It already
felt like the whole store was rolling their eyes and
averting their stairs. As I walked back to the front
of the section, Miss Karen was stuck scanning items into
her station long enough for a whole entire new set
(02:48):
of people to.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Come around and go around her.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
At one point, I saw that she had double scanned
another item, so I started to approach her again, but
then she almost backhanded me across the face and screamed
at me, forget about it, I'll just pay for twice.
That's obviously the racket you're running here. I backed off,
and because she almost hit me, I was ready to
boot her out of the store, so I quietly notified
(03:11):
the manager of development through my earpiece. By the time
I got done with that, exchange. I looked back over
to the caaren to see that she was striking the
touch screen in frustration and wailing like a banshee. What
do you mean there's three types of green peppers? I
only saw one. It's just a green goddamn pepper. Just
let me scan it, you stupid, worthless machine. Apparently she
(03:32):
was struggling with the process of looking up her produce,
so I gave it one last ditch effort to help her.
Excuse me, ma'am, if you're having trouble using the self
checkout machine, any one of our associates can ring it
up for you the old fashioned way. How about you
shut up. I don't want to talk to any of
you people. Why do you think I'm trying to do
this myself in the first place. I've had it with
(03:52):
you and your associates always patronizing me like I'm some
sort of helpless baby. At this point, I totally gave
up on her, walked away, and my manager spoke through
the earpiece that she could hear her screaming from the
office and had already called the manager of the publics
down the street to send their resident police officer our
way in case things got any worse. A few more
minutes passed and the Karen was still not done wringing
(04:14):
herself up. She had one more item left in her car,
and I have no idea where she got it from.
She tried to skin it ten times, but the machine
kept saying the item was not found, meaning it wasn't
in our system.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
This was the last straw for her.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
She started to kick and punch the screen so hard
I was surprised he didn't break. Right then, I saw
the manager approaching her, looking pissed off, so I went
up with her. The manager asked her to please finish
checking out, or to leave her items next to the store.
In other words, please get the hell out. All this
did was an enraged, insane woman even more out of nowhere.
(04:49):
She swung on the manager. The blow connected right on
the edge of the draw, shocking my boss so hard
that she fell on her butt. I rushed over to
help her, but I couldn't even get a word in
The Karen was cackling like a witch, and right as
I was turning my head to tell her to shut
up so I could see if my boss was all right,
she threw an entire roll of quarters in my face. First,
(05:09):
one hit me square in the eye, leaving me with
a giant bruise, but there was more of where that
came from. I guess she had intended to pay this
self checkout with coins the whole time, because her purse
was full of rolls of quarters, and she started pelting
them at anyone who came near.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
That's been my boss.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Someone I've never heard swear before in my life, got
to her feet and dragged me away, uttering the words, hey,
leave that woman alone, you damn psycho. There were tears
in my eyes as she walked me off, but I
remember rubbing them away just enough to see a cop
hustling over to the scene. I didn't want to see
what happened next, but according to my coworkers who were
watching the whole thing, the Karen's little temper tantrum came
(05:47):
straight to an end when that cop body slammed her
so hard as she got a concussion from her head
hitting the ground. Now, it's probably understandable why I didn't
even bother putting in my two weeks notice after that,
so I quit at the end of the day. I
(06:10):
know I've never been what I guess is considered a
normal person. More often than not, simple things like going
to the grocery store can feel daunting because I know
it's going to be packed with quote unquote normal people
living out mundane aspects of their boring lives like a
bunch of solace in PCs. It's honestly creepy. But the
only thing that personally gets to me about it is
the toxic tendency of these supposedly respectful people to pass
(06:33):
judgment on me just because of the.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Way I look or act.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Don't get me wrong, I do the same, but only
when I feel like I'm being mentally attacked by everyone
I see. It's just a looks in the eyes of
some people that lets me know they're criticizing my existence
at a literal first glance, rather than seeing me as
a real person. If anything, I'm more real than them.
All that being said, I took a trip to Target
the other day, and for the first time ever, it
(06:58):
was more for fun than actually needing to go. I
was out hanging with my girlfriend on her side of town,
which is kind of in the zone where the suburbs
start to meet the rural countryside. She told me she
used to hang out of this Target after school, since
it was right next to the mall and that it
was always full of the weirdest people. So I guess
it might sound hypocritical of what I said before that
we were going there to people watch, but at the
(07:20):
end of the day, I.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Don't really care.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Our girlfriend and I sort of embolden each other to
let our more peculiar tendencies take hold. That's what made
this trip to Target so fun. Though all we needed
to get were Mother's Day cards, but we went across
the entire store like it was an amusement park. Everywhere
we went, we saw the saddest looking people, and I
felt like they were all so empty inside that they
didn't even notice us. I mean this literally, as they
(07:43):
would walk straight into us with their cards. Either they
were distracted by thinking about where to go, or there
was nobody really piloting those bodies at all. We saw
the whole gamut of the residents of Liminal Suburbia, everyone
from unhappy married couples bickering at each other, to white
high school girls yaking and makeup department, and even some
freakish looking people that could have easily been aliens wearing
(08:04):
human skin. I'm sure we stuck out like crazy people too,
though we couldn't help but laughing at all the people
we saw, and we didn't always try that hard to
get out of earshop before cracking jokes. We weren't able
to stop ourselves from swearing with some not so inside
voices either. I guess we got so worked up from
the stress of being cooped up with all those people
that we very quickly lost our manners. It only made
(08:27):
the judgmental stairs even worse, but we didn't really care. Eventually, though,
we wanted to make our escape, so we finally went
to the card section to pick out Mother's Day cards
for our moms. Of course, this was the most crowded
section in the whole store. It was so bad that
I was sweating. There was a woman right next to
us talking really loud on our phone, and a mother
(08:48):
and a father with their kindergarten age kid running around,
not to mention a bunch of depressed millennials sighing as
they thought about their relationships.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
With their mothers.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
I found a card for my mom pretty quickly. It
just so happened that I locked out and found the
perfect one on the third try. My girlfriend was having
more trouble, though, so I kept looking for That's when
I pulled out this one joke card that said something like,
it's Mother's Day, the one day of the year where
you don't have to lift a finger, and if anybody
asks you to, you know which one to use. I
(09:19):
thought I was a pretty funny middle finger joke that
I might have gotten for my own mom, so I
showed her to my girlfriend, who was crouched down looking
at the other cards in the bottom row. She didn't
get it, though, by her own admission, she has trouble
with grasping wordplay. Wait what finger, she asked me. So
in a moment of forgetting that we were surrounded by people,
I jokingly flipped her the bird. The timing of this
(09:42):
could have not been worse. Right as I did this,
that little kid was standing right behind her, so I
might as well have given a small child the middle
finger right in their face. What's worse is six foot
tall by four foot wide, bald meat headed father was
standing right behind him. I would have felt guilty just
for the mistake, but since the dad saw it too,
(10:02):
I wasn't going to get away of just feeling.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Guilty right away.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
The dad's fat face expanded with a surgeon and blood
pressure turning red as his veins started to bulge. What'd
you do that for a punk, he barked at me.
I stepped back and put my hands up. I'm sorry, sir,
that wasn't meant for him. I really didn't see him there.
I was trying to sound genuine, but I guess I
have a bad habit of sounding sarcastic and serious situations.
(10:27):
Don't be a KOI with me, boy. Suddenly he reached
over my still crouching girlfriend and grabbed me by the collar,
yanking me with an inch of his face. I could
literally smell the buffalo wild wings and still beer on
his breath. My girlfriend yelped as I inadvertently kicked her
while being dragged, so suddenly she scrambled out of the way.
But now I, unfortunately, I had something to be upset
about too. Hey man, I'm really sorry, but you're not
(10:51):
going to beat me up in front of that kid
if you care so much about a middle finger. Right now,
I was really using a coy tone, and I could
also feel the shit eating grin spreading a c my face.
I just couldn't help it. The dude was such a pig.
I wasn't even scared of pissing him off anymore. I
thought the bruised brain could be worth the laugh. I
just might if you don't watch your mouth, you little.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Shit, he said.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
I could tell he was about to reach his limit
and cross the line from assault into battery as he
started to lift me up off my feet, But luckily
I was saved by his unhappy marriage. His wife had
been basically ignoring this whole encounter until she found the
card she was looking for, But now she was coming
back to her reign and her dog, I mean, her husband, Dave.
(11:35):
I don't have the time or patience for another one
of your tantrums. Okay, why don't you be more like
your son and calm down before you have another heart attack.
I can't afford another er trip either. God, it's like
I'm living with two toddlers. Let's just get home before
you miss your precious college football.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Game and whine about it for the rest of the night.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Big old Dave Hofton poffed and rolled his eyes, but
eventually he listened to his nagging wife and put me
down without another word. The family of three rules on
toward checkout, and the onlookers of the scene started to
whisper and giggle. I found my girlfriend and we discussed
the whole situation in detail before checking out and leaving
the store. I tried to find it amusing, but I
was actually a bit shaken up. She tried to act
(12:13):
shaken up, but I could tell she was amused deep down.
That's a good balance in a relationship, right. Target used
to be a safe place for me. Whenever I was there,
I could just be myself, talk with my friends, and
(12:35):
buy Q things. There was never any expectation of being
forced to do anything I didn't want to do, talk
to anyone I didn't want to talk to, or anything
else I might have to deal with at school or
at my parents' house. My bestie Madison, and I would
often go after school on days when there wasn't anything
else to do. We'd always buy something so the workers
wouldn't accuse us of loitering, but we wanted.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
To buy stuff anyway.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
A lot of people who worked there started to recognize
us and stopped asking us if we needed help all
the time, which we appreciated. It's not like we went
to Target to me people. Obviously, we just went there
to talk to each other. Of course, every nice thing
seems to get ruined eventually, and a safe place becomes
a place in which you were traumatized. This happened just
a few weeks ago when I was at Target with
(13:20):
Madison in the makeup area. We were discussing some tea
as we usually do, when this absolutely horrid hobo looking
dude walked over to us from the shaving aisle and
started hitting on us. Excuse me, ladies, can I ask
you a question? Madison and I laughed in his face
at first, hoping this would crush his soul enough to
screw off, but he lingered, So I feel like I
(13:42):
had to say something.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Why.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Well, you both seemed very attractive, so I wanted to
ask your opinion on which deoduran.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
I should buy.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
He held up two kinds of deodoran both hands, which
I hadn't even noticed he was holding before. Still, I
was trying to shut him down immediately. Sorry, I said,
with fake niceness, we're kind of in the middle of
a conversation. This still didn't work, though, Oh I know
I was listening. I hate to interrupt, but from your
conversation I can tell you're both probably sexually active young women.
(14:15):
So I'm sure you can give me good advice. You,
I yelled, almost skagging, you were eavesdropping on us. Why
would we help you, honestly, said Madison, rolling her eyes.
Just pick the one you liked the most and leave
us alone. Unfortunately, and disgustingly, it seemed like the more
we yelled at this guy and humiliated him, the more
turned on he got. He kept inching closer to us
(14:37):
as the creepy smirk on his face turned into a
drooling grin. Oh, come on, ladies, help me out here.
I need your opinion. You're the kind of girls I
want to attract, so I need to know what smells
good to you. Really, she wheezed, then slowly collected herself
just enough to lay it on him. On behalf of
all hawk girls, no, all girls everywhere, how of a
(15:00):
single one of them is going to want anything to
do with you, no matter what you smell like. Finally,
it seems like we were starting to hurt his feelings,
so I joined in. Yeah, I mean, seriously, you look
like my ex boyfriend. Shower drained when he shaved his pubes.
Madison slapped me on the shoulder. Crying from laughter. So
I thing he's supposed to mean, I smirked and looked
(15:21):
the creep dead in the eyes. It means you're disgusting, revolting, ratty,
greasy clump of filth. And you know what else, you're
even shorter than my ex boyfriend. So why don't you
go jump back into the sewer you crawled out of,
because obviously that's where you belong. I really thought that
would be the final blow, but the creep just stood
there for a second. Clearly you had a loss all
(15:42):
the while in Madison, and I just kept laughing at him.
But then slowly the smirk returned to his face. I
see how it is, he mumbled, putting one of the
sticks of deodorant on the shelf next to him, then
opening the other one. I guess you don't want me
to ask nicely. Either of us were paying attention to
what he was doing, though, we don't want you to
(16:03):
ask us anything at all, you weirdo.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Come on, take the hint.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
I was still laughing as I said those words, but
I stopped in the next moment as he took off
his shirt, exposing a nightmarish chest of matted hair. I
yelled at the top of my lungs so the whole
store could hear what was going on. This was one
of those moments when we did need help from an employee.
Both of us were honestly completely stunned watching him put
the deowner and on on one of his armpits, in
(16:28):
total shock with our draws to the floor. But then
the worst thing imaginable happened. That sicko lunched toward us
and grabbed me by the hair. Then he yanked my
face straight into his armpit. Smell it, now, tell me
what you think, he shouted and laughed like a psycho.
It smelled horrible, obviously, but it was the feeling of it,
(16:49):
the sheer principle that my face was being shoved into
the grossest armpit into existence, that truly traumatized me. I
felt like I would never be clean again. After that,
I was screaming and c at him, all basically blinded,
but he had me planted there for what felt like eternity.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
However, before anyone else.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Got there, I heard the loud clicking of a stun
gun going off. I knew it was Madison's because she
always kept one in her purse. The Creep's whole body
tensed up for a moment as he shoddered it in pain.
Then he went lip enough for me to break free
from his grasp. He staggered back and fell onto a shelf,
but he was still standing. As soon as I regained
my balance, I reached into my own purse and I
(17:27):
grabbed my little bottle of mace. Before he could run
away or attack us again, I unloaded the entire bottle
into his face. All three of us were caught in
the immense cloud of toxic chemicals, but he was getting
the direct stream. I didn't hold back until he was
on the floor, writhing in pain and crying like a baby.
When the bottle was empty, Madison pounced on him and
(17:48):
got him with the sun gun again, right on the neck,
and she didn't let go. I was about to jump
back in and start stomping on his balls, but that's
when a bunch of employees arrived and broke the whole
thing up. Obviously, that meant when as a society got arrested,
and I'm still pressing charges. But honestly, what might be
the worst thing about this whole ordeal is that I
got banned from Target just because I discharged mace to
(18:09):
protect myself.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
I don't see how that's fair.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
But if Target wants to lose a loyal customer about
disrespecting and validating them, that's fine. I'll go somewhere else,
Somewhere I'm not going to get attacked by gross old men.
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