I was robbed by twooo men

  I posted that title as my facebook status and no one seemed to get the joke, I think partly because I did it in the wee hours of the morning. It’s a quote from this amazing example of Japanese education, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf-C8gGSnBE

  A large amount of time was suddenly freed up today and I promised myself I’d get some more of my novel written but because it’s been a week since my last blog post I thought I’d better write something for here first.

  I have a few blog posts half written (one about the credits after films and the other explaining my beef with Ben and Jerry), and some ideas for a little project (something to bring the subject back around to writing). But screw these ‘cause I was robbed by two men!

  On Friday evening the small manager Lindsay (I’m not being petty, she’s pretty short), my tall co-worker Adam and myself were all waiting around to shut the shop. The shop is a small supermarket, think of something similar to a co-op. We had 20 minutes left and Adam reminded me of something I still had to do. So I popped in to the office, grabbed what I needed and turned around to see something dark travel in to the shop. At the time I thought someone was throwing a bag but later I discovered it was actually robber number one. I could then hear the second robber shouting to the others to get on the ground.

  I must have still been moving forwards and I think I even popped my head out briefly but as soon as I realised what was going on I disappeared back in to the office and locked the door. I had been seen, because a second hadn’t gone by and the second robber was pounding on the door. Thankfully the window and the door remained solid. I took the key from the door and threw it to a chair. It was time for some kind of action.

  I hurried to the phone and here there was a problem. You see in the office are two phones, a regular one and one attached to a fax machine. A couple of days before the normal had been unplugged because apparently the number 2 doesn’t work. So in my haste I went for the phone I assumed we were using. I dialled 999 and waited. I heard nothing. I hung up and tried again. Nothing. Damn.

  Outside the office, while I was trying to find a phone that worked, the two robbers were ripping apart the cigarette stand and Lindsay and Adam were crouched on the floor nearby. Back in the office and I moved on to the next phone. I picked it up and was about to dial when I heard a voice. I don’t know how but clearly dialling one phone had affected the other.

  The normal thing to do in this situation is to, well, explain your situation. Now I’ve had to ring police before now and always, always forget the first “threshold guardian”. The person sat in a call centre whose job it is to ask you one thing. “Police, ambulance or fire department?” And my forgetting this leads to the irritating situation of shouting down the phone “I’m being robbed, they’re armed, help!” followed by “yes, but what do you want police, ambulance...”

  I understand why this person is there and why they can’t just assume what you need but it still annoys the hell out of me. I just want to scream “The coastguard? What do you think I need?!” Also my hope in these situations is that the police will arrive while the robbers are still around but the sad thing is it’s just not likely. Especially since the days when robbers asked for tills to be opened is gone. It might sound strange but in my experience robbers don’t go for cash. They go for cigarettes. The most expensive packs are near enough £7 and it’s far easier and quicker to fill a bag with those than go through the trouble of asking frightened staff to open the tills.

  So the robbers left, but not before dropping some of the vodka they were trying to take. Adam appeared at the door and I opened it. We checked we were all ok and soon after the police arrived. The police took statements did their usual thing and eventually left over an hour after what would have been closing time. We were told to leave the mess that had been made so as not to ruin any evidence forensics might find.

  Since the shop is my dad’s and I live with my dad this means I live above the shop. So I went upstairs and awaited the arrival of C.S.I. Trust me this wasn’t as exciting as television makes it out to be. C.S.I turned out to be a singular middle aged man with a torch who made even more of a mess of the tills by chucking black powder everywhere. He also seemed very bored by the whole proceedings. I know he’d already been at a robbery that night but come on, at least give us a smile.

  For me the worst part of these events is usually the cleaning up afterwards, made even worse because my dad is away on holiday leaving me to deal with a lot more than usual. And of course it never helps that usually after these sorts of incidents sleep is taken away from you by a brain that just won’t shut down. A brain that insists on replaying the events over and over like it’s trying to burn them in to your eyelids. Then it shows you what could have happened if things went wrong. What if I hadn’t locked the door in time? What if he’d broken it down and come after me? Then for my own amusement it replays the events except I have Jean Grey’s psychic powers, meaning I can leave the two men hanging in mid-air until the police arrive.

  In these situations it’s important to find the funny side, such as the fact one of them left a very clear footprint on a nice clean bit of paper that happened to be on the tills. I bet C.S.I. man loved that. Or even better that when the second robber jumped back over the tills, he fell flat on his face. The idiot.