The Rekindling

 I had once thought that I am pretty bad at the whole moving on thing, but some people are just crazy and out of their minds. Now I guess in some departments, e.g. relationships, I can get clingy and I can just get all up in my own head and not move on from one crush to another for good lengths of time.

This is not a fun post that I am writing.

I'll start with a recap:

If you've been around the blog, you'll know that over a year ago, about 12.5 to 13 months ago in specific, I was fired from job that I had working at a local Jersey Mike's Subs. It was a bit of a mess, considering my former boss had tried to pin it on abandonment of my job and apparently had claimed I suddenly died and thought that calling the police to check my house the day after I got fired was the right move.

Anyways, after all that time, I had remembered that I still had a loyalty rewards account for the corporation as a whole, so since we were out to get some errands done, on our way home we had figured "eh, why not use up some of these points for lunch."

This is where the "fun" begins

Prior to today, I had suspected that since I signed up on the loyalty account under my real name, that if I ever ordered online and used my points that somehow there'd be trouble if I happened by the store I used to work at. Now I guess I always could just go to another store it doesn't have to have been the one I worked at, but for convenience's sake it just is. I had gone into the app and changed the name to Bruce Wayne, and the app displayed that name, so I figured no harm no foul, I'm sure there are actually people named Bruce Wayne out there and not just Batman.

I placed my order to redeem some points, and it says the order will be under my real name. I immediately got a sinking feeling but thought, "hey maybe they won't say anything, I'll just get my food and go. No one will recognize me or maybe I can get my brother to go in if I'm not comfortable and don't want to talk to anyone." Then just my luck as we are pulling up to the store, I see a guy I had occasionally worked with since he's technically "from corporate" (his dad is high up there so I don't really know what this guy's role is, but point is I've seen him plenty of times). And since I'm sitting in the front seat, he sees me through the windshield, and it looks like he was directing us to a parking spot, even though there was plenty of spots to park at.

Initially I didn't want to talk to him. So my brother gets out of the car to go get the food (which apparently they didn't bother to make until they confronted me, but that's something we didn't realize until later), and the "corporate guy" walks up to the passenger side of the car. I figured at this point, I might as well try to be amicable and not be rude, so I unbuckle and hop out of the car to just chat for a bit while I figured it'd be 2 minutes and then we're on our way.

The conversation started off friendly. Just a "hey how are you doing" and stuff like that. Then there was mention "oh the crew you used to work with, yeah they're all gone now" so I just nodded my head and was like "wow really? That's interesting." Sort short responses but enough so that no one can say I'm not doing my part. Then this guy thinks that it's a prime time to start interrogating me. He asks things like "so what's going on? Why did you leave? Who was your animosity towards? Because I'm trying to look out for you, but I'm also trying to look out for the company. I know you and know that you didn't earn a single one of these points." Once I heard all this line of questioning, I cut him off and said "I think we're done here." He took it to another level and started saying, "look man, if you want to play dumb, I can play dumb too. You claim to not remember any of the details from a year ago but that's bullshit. I'm going to call up corporate and get them to shut down your account."

At this point he's still too close so I told him "get out" and pointed away from me. Now I guess that phrasing doesn't make sense, but it became an adrenaline rush. My mom sees that something isn't right through the car window, so she opens the door and asks what the problem is, and corporate guy thinks this is me hiding behind my mom so he throws out fighting words, saying "your son is a big and strong guy, let him fight his own battles." It sounded to me that he was trying to size me up, but physically this guy is shorter and smaller than me. Even with that being the case, I knew that legally I cannot strike someone until they strike first. And I don't want a physical altercation if I can help it.

He starts walking back to go inside the store and says he's going to call the cops on us for being there, despite no one asking us to leave. In the heat of the moment I shout at him "fuck outta here" and he's like "oh yeah big tough guy now, aren't you." He proceeds to go take a picture of me standing next to our vehicle and says, "yup, just getting a picture so I can show the crew to never serve you." Sure he's allowed to do that, but clearly he's trying to get a rise out of me. He would retreat into the store for a little bit, at which point from what I heard the store manager is saying he wasn't going to get involved, but is refusing to make our food and is arguing with my mom since she got out of the car in pursuit to make sure they stand down.

Some minutes go by and I see corporate guy come back out and he's calling someone and starts to describe my mom saying what I thought I heard was "a crazy Asian lady" so I shout at him "yeah real tough, trash talking my mom while you're hiding out here." He claims he was calling the cops. Shortly thereafter, my mom started to call the cops as well because this was getting out of hand.

Corporate guy finishes the call and says to me, "I didn't want it to get this far" which is ridiculous so I retorted with, "YOU took it this far. If you want us to leave, just give us our food and we'll go."

Time continues onward, and the cops show up. Two patrol cars show up, with an officer in one and a sergeant in the other. They start asking questions to corporate guy and also start talking to my mom and my brother. Eventually they made their way to the car, where I had been sitting because I had figured stepping into the store was not a good idea and I should disengage. So when the officer got to me, I stepped out of the vehicle, handed him my ID when asked, kept my hands in front of me and visible, and answered all of the questions he had for me. Then the sergeant eventually made his way around and the two cops pieced together all that they could think they'd need.

It became a very long and drawn out event that could've just been a few minutes of grabbing food and going. If they didn't want me to come back, they could've simply made the order, then said to me to never come back, and that would've been that. But they wanted a fight. They wanted to instigate something then try to turn it around and say I started something. The exact same thing that happened a year ago: starting an issue one way, then backtracking and getting the police involved so that they can metaphorically wash their hands of the situation.

The verdict ended up being that the cops deemed me to be a levelheaded guy and that this was ultimately just a verbal altercation that escalated. They saw that no crimes were committed and were saying that corporate guy was trying to claim I had frauded and added points to my account which the cop said was not in their jurisdiction. They said that we were trespassed and that we were no longer allowed at that location. The cop had said, "look we don't want to see good people get in unnecessary trouble, so just stay away from here and if you want Jersey Mike's just go to another store." I'm hoping that means a bit more in our favor that the cops sees us as the logical people, but since it technically is a private business, they do have to enforce a trespass if issued.

To think that this all started because I just wanted some lunch. I'm not entirely sure what power trip both the corporate guy and the store manager was going on, but whatever the case may be, I guess what are we to do now? I suppose first and foremost is to not eat at Jersey Mike's, at least not that location. And I guess we'll see if they do try to shut down my rewards account. I guess if they do, it's not the end of the world and sure I'll lose 4900 some odd points, but if they don't then I'll just use the points elsewhere.

Needless to say, this was not at all how I thought my Wednesday was going to go, but what can we do? Some people go on unnecessary power trips because they think they can. Some people hold grudges for so much longer than I think is necessary. But why do you have it out for me when I was fired? Saying I screwed up the store when it happened, but okay who's idea was it again to fire me? Oh yeah, not the corporate guy, but the owner of that franchise.

After all this time, I had thought all of this chaos was water under the bridge. There had better not be some repeat involving these people ever again. They started the mess a year ago, they continue it a year later. Next year had better be scot-free of this madness.