The story:
My uncle is 67 and looks it. Actually, I take that back…he looks older. But one can easily tell he’s over 65 on sight–not that age matters in this story because I know there can be robbers of all ages.
Still…
So he’s waiting in line and, to pass the time, he opens his mail and reads it.
When he finally gets to the cashier, she needs to change out some cash since her drawer is full. So she starts taking out huge heaps of cash to put it in the managers one (who is carrying it around for that purpose).
Seeing this, my uncle holds out one of the (now empty) envelopes that one of his letters came in and jokingly says “Oh, you can put that in here…” with a wry, joking smile on his face.
Everything happened at once.
The cashier, immedately after (without another word or action–in the next 3 seconds, at the least), tripped something beneath the register that locked all automatic doors, started blaring an alarm, and automatically called the police.
It caused the store to be closed for about two hours and my uncle to be held for about four while it all was straightened out and eventually figured out that he had been joking when he said that.
So my question is just this. If you were the cashier, would you have reacted the same way? Or would you have guessed or known he was joking?*
Mind you he didn’t have any weapon of any sort, he was just holding out an empty envelope as he said what he did.
*I don’t care if you vote against believing he was joking. It’s obviously fine if you’d have behaved the same way. I’m just curious. Personally, I think the girl overreacted, but YMMV.
I would have assumed he was joking, and voted the same.
OTOH, I can see why cashiers can get a little jumpy when people joke like this. When I worked in a bank, sometimes you couldn’t tell whether someone was joking or not when they told you to hand over all your money (which has actually happened to me). The customers think this is hilarious, unfortunately they also don’t realize that pretending to rob somewhere, especially a bank, can be just as serious as when it actually happens.
No I wouldn’t have done that. I worked as a cashier in a gas station (it’s amazing how many twenties can accumulate in a little over an hour when you get busy) and have handled large amounts of money in front of customers. Almost every time there was some sort of “give me all your money” joke made.
I used to manage a gas station, and if the cash in the drawer got to the sorts of levels implied in the op the cashier had more to fear from me than from customers.
I would have reamed them for counting so much in front of customer and for letting it accumulate in the first place.
I guess it might depend on the store location and the experience of the cashier.
I have worked cashiering jobs and was always taught to keep money as “unseen” as possible though I realize it’s often impossible to do that, with large sums.
Almost every time I ever had to handle large numbers of bills in a cashier drawer, someone made a joke about giving them the money. It’s not even remotely funny, and it’s really creepy. I can easily imagine a scenario in which the cashier could have gotten the wrong idea and been intimidated by your grandfather, but I didn’t vote because I wasn’t there. I’ve never pushed an alarm for someone making a joke like that, though.
Hmmm…I’ve been a bank teller and had two robberies, so I have some experience in this area, but I think my initial reaction would have been to laugh along with your Uncle rather than automatically assume a robbery.
Well, like everyone else I voted that I’d have guessed he was joking… unless, of course, I’d been held up before and was still jumpy, or had just come back from training where they’d scared the life out of me going over all possible scenarios that involve me being robbed and how to handle it, or me mishearing what the guy said and thinking it was something more threatening, or (etc etc etc).
I’ve been a cashier, and I’ve had this sort of thing happen to me. Yeah, MOST of the time the person is joking…but there’s always that one time when s/he’s not. And you know, criminals don’t retire, they keep on doing illegal acts until they die. So his age is not a defense.
Some people will try to pull stuff like this, and if they don’t get away with it, they claim they’re joking.
The cashier might have been robbed last week, or the management might have just told everyone that these sort of statements are to be taken seriously every time.
I have also handled large amounts of money in front of customers. But that is why this is not a funny joke. I think she overreacted, but…
my uncle was shot and killed in front of his two kids when he finally stood up to a robber. His gas station was robbed four times in a month. All of the other times he gave in.
So I can kind of see why she panicked. Maybe that store had been robbed before, who knows?
Right. We live in a hyper-vigilant, zero-tolerance, treat-everything-like-9/11-redux society. There’s probably some retarded rule somewhere that says “Even if your own grandmother walks in and makes a joke, while laughing, about robbing you, report it immediately to the FBI.”