My new-ish boss (6 months or so) starts accusing people of theft. Her breath smells like baking rotten fish, she has obvious beard stubble and white hair, bad teeth, poor eyesight, and on a scale of 1 to 10, her memory is... umm... forgot what I was talking about. She can't count money correctly, and anytime she makes a mistake and something comes up missing, misplaced, or miscounted, "someone stole it". Two of my favorite people to work with got fired because she felt that they had irreconcilable personality differences, though she didn't word it quite so eloquently because she has a 3rd grade vocabulary at best. As the assistant manager, I felt that something should be done. I called our district manager, who was also fairly new to our store. She became angry that I would bother her over such "nonsense" and asserted that I should have confronted the manager directly. How am I going to call my boss stupid to her face?

But I digress. One day, someone goes to check out a new Xbox 360 game (for the technologically impaired, the Xbox 360 is Microsoft's newest gaming console, released in November, with superior graphics to anything else on the market so far), and the disc is missing from the case, but the case has not been damaged and the copy number registers as never having been rented. Ding ding ding... inside job. We find in the neighborhood of 23 games this way, and at $60 a pop retail value, you're looking at the death penalty or something if caught for this kind of thing. As luck would have it, I recently sold my original Xbox (not quite as good at the 360) so I could start a savings account to get my girlfriend an engagement ring. Long story short, she found out, felt horrible, and bought me the new 360 console. So now all these games are missing and I'm one of the 6 people in a 100 mile radius who owns one of these consoles, and I just happen to work at the place where they were stolen. Great. I'm stressing. I'm accused. I quit.

Well, soon I get a call from the cops, and they wish to speak with me. Great. I'm stressing. Again. I visit with an officer in a cramped, stressing room, though he's really friendly. Asks a few personal, specific questions, whatever. I just want to leave. So it's over and I'm heading toward the exit, and just like in the movies, a bigger guy steps out of a room right in front of me, blocking my path. Blocking the light. Bringing the stress. Asks me to step in where he just stepped out. I step in, he takes the other officer down the hall. Chat chat. They come back in together and guy #2 says, "So I heard you say that it would have to be an employee who took the games." "I said it would ALMOST have to be, or someone who had a device to unlock them." That's pretty much all he wanted, but I had no idea they were recording me. Good God. They ask if I care if they search. "No, the Xbox logs all games that have been played on it, and I have nothing to worry about." "You have a cell phone?" "Not on me." They want to make sure I'm not going to call someone to get to my house first and hide all the games I "stole". Waste of my time, but it's the friendly guy who comes out, so I'm not so stressed anymore. He doesn't find anything, thanks me, almost apologizes, but catches himself. So this investigation is still going on, but I'll keep you posted. I just think it's b.s. that I'm the employee who'd worked there the longest, knows most about the system, is most reliable, enjoys his work, gets paid a substancial amount... y'know... and I get accused of theft and harassed to the point that I can't put up with it anymore. Anyway, thanks for reading my novel... I'm actually at my new job now: 3rd shift at the Super 8. College Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 8 to noon. Good times... ha.

And good vibes to you all.