When I was… uh, 20… all of a few months ago, I was managing at a smoothie store in Berkeley, CA. Just like a Jamba Juice, but just not the same. The store is on the corner of a very busy intersection, right next to the BART (mass transit) station and a couple of busy bus-stop hubs. Lots of foot traffic. Just up the street from gigantic Berkeley High.
One day, on quite a busy day early in the summer, I heard shouting from outside as I was serving up a smoothie. There was a group of about half a dozen highschool-age kids shouting at an oldish-looking man dressed raggedly and dirtily. Maybe homeless. He’s shouting something like “I didn’t touch her” and they are shouting things like “Stay away from her” and “we’re gonna kick your ass.” This little altercation is moving rapidly up the street towards the store.
Soon the old guy runs into the store off the street. He’s still shouting at the top of his lungs. I try to talk to him. He has trouble focusing his eyes and speaking in complete sentences. He repeats himself a lot. He’s clearly been doing drugs. He smells bad. He tells me that the kids outside want to beat him up, and I can see that they’re still on the sidewalk shouting about some girl. I tell him politely but firmly to leave the store. There are still several customers in the store as he comes in, and they for the most part act shocked. He runs past the counter and into the back of the store, still shouting mostly incoherently. I tell him he can’t come back here and that he has to leave. Thankfully, the kids are not coming in to cause more of a scene, but they’re still outside yelling.
Everything is total chaos. The employees are trying to do their jobs while this is going on, and more customers are arriving and lining up out onto the street. The messed up old guy is still babbling and there’s a bunch of kids waiting outside who quite clearly do want to beat him up. I call the cops.
After I tell everyone that the cops have been called, the rest of the people working at the store are able to get back to their work and try to serve the people that have been waiting. They leave me to take care of the crazy guy. I stop trying to get him to leave the store, and satisfy myself by getting him to go back out into the customer area. I turn to assist in smoothie preparation to try to get the backlog of orders under control. As I’m pouring a smoothie into a cup, I happen to glance up and make eye contact with one of my coworkers. We both smell something at the same time.
Suddenly the entire store smells like crap. I hadn’t noticed it before, but I guess the crazy guy had some shit on his shoe. So at this point I renew my efforts to get him to leave the store. “Look,” I say to him, “You’re spreading shit all over my store.” I was pretty fed up. But when I heard myself say this to him, I had an awful realization. It hadn’t occurred to me until that time to wonder where the shit had come from that he was spreading all over the store. But as I convinced him to take himself outside, fortunately, the police were arriving. Some of them take him aside, and some others go to talk to the group of kids. I stand in the store, amazed at what had just happened in the last 4 or 5 minutes. Then I look at the crap that is literally all over the floor. I look from the crap to the guy, and I hear him say shakily to the policeman “They were harassing me. Harassing me. I was so scared I defecated on myself.” And then more forcefully, as if the realization is just coming to him, as it is to me: “I defecated on myself.”
I cleaned it up.
