A blog no one reads that I never update.
I found this somber, enigmatic note posted on the Aurora Bridge this morning. It’s written in faded pen.
It reads:
Dear Sister,
All is
forgiven.
Please
come
home
The full significance didn’t hit me until I remembered that the Aurora is one of the most popular suicide bridges in the US. About two hundred and thirty people have leapt to their deaths in the last decade.
“Well, shall we?”
There was a series of nods from my coworkers as we finished signing our checks and rose to return to the office. We made for the corner. As we neared it, we saw a homeless man furiously digging through his backpack. He was mumbling to a man standing next to him, and seemed to be angrily searching for something. Bits of crumpled paper, odd and ends, and finally a Walkman scattered on the sidewalk. The Walkman hit the pavement, popped open, and a tape slid a few feet away.
“Oh wow!” said Hiram, one of my coworkers. “Is that a Walkman?!” I was staring at the tape on the ground, trying not to step on it, and didn’t pay much attention to either Hiram or the homeless guy. I rounded the corner and kept walking.
“He’s got a knife!”
I turned around to look, and yep, the homeless guy was brandishing a very large knife. It was a plastic-handled kitchen knife with an eight-inch blade, the sort of thing you’d use to slice bread. I noticed this with no sense of urgency at all. That car is blue, I had a burger for lunch, there’s a fire hydrant over there, and that guy has a knife. How nice for him. I wonder what he needs it for.
Suddenly I noticed all my coworkers were running, and it clicked: RUN, YOU FUCKING MORON! Adrenaline kicked in, and I was sprinting before I realized what I was doing. There happened to be a cop directing traffic through a construction area a half block away.
“Hey!” Hiram yelled at him, still running, “Hey, that guy has a knife!”
The cop stopped what he was doing and looked up, nearly as surprised as we were. “What?”
“Over there! That guy pulled a knife on us!”
The cop started running in the direction we’d come. I had a moment to think, and realized we were down two coworkers. Until this point I’d been too shocked to be afraid, but now I realized that a coworker recovering from a broken foot was nowhere to be seen.
“Where’s Chris?!” I asked no one in particular. “Chris can’t run…” As the slowest of us, I was afraid that he’d be the one who got hurt. The two coworkers who had come my direction had turned and were running after the cop. I followed.
I got back to the corner just in time to see the cop standing a few paces away from Knifey, gun drawn but lowered. Knifey tossed his weapon. I blinked, and Knifey was on the ground with the cop’s knee in his back.
“You want us to do anything?” Another coworker asked the cop.
“Call 911.”
Within a few minutes, a squad car had arrived and Knifey was in custody. In the interim, he slurred out that we had been threatening and teasing him. No one responded. We just waited and stared. I’m certain he thinks that’s what happened. It was obvious from first sight that he wasn’t well.
I made two phone calls. The first was to locate my remaining coworkers: they were both fine. As it turns out, being chased by a lunatic with a knife will do wonders for your ability to run. After he’d stopped chasing my group, he’d gone after the other while yelling, “Stop making fun of me!” The next call was to our manager, explaining what had happened and why we would be late coming back from lunch.
We regrouped and each gave a statement. A crowd formed, and a few other homeless guys picked through Knifey’s backpack. I noticed that the Walkman was already gone, and tried to keep my distance from a tall, gaunt man with crack sores on his face and arms. The guy Knifey had been talking to told the cops that they both went to the same mental health clinic. I did a few minutes of searching today, and found that the clinic almost touches the bar we had lunch in.
The cops took off, and we headed back to the office. The cop who had taken down Knifey was already back directing traffic. We all stopped, shook his hand, thanked him, and kept walking. We animatedly discussed what had just happened. Strangely, no one could remember yelling that he had a knife. The group consensus, repeated often, was “I can’t believe that just fucking happened.” Two of my coworkers live within a few blocks, and one is a life-long Seattle resident. Neither has had anything similar happen to them before yesterday.
I was impressed by the Seattle PD. They’ve had a bad reputation in town recently, and while it may have been a coincidence that there was an officer a block away when all this went down, there were cops on scene within a few minutes of the 911 call. They were there when we needed them. Everyone was professional and pleasant, and the crazy guy with the knife is behind bars right now. I hope he can get the help he needs.
I quit my job on Wednesday. I don’t feel that I had any choice.
My paycheck from July 10th bounced. Because I deposit my checks at ATMs instead of actually going to a bank, it takes nine days between an ATM deposit and the bank yanking the money back out of my account.
I didn’t notice that my paycheck had bounced until several days after it happened. At the same time, I realized I hadn’t gotten paid the day before. Until then, I’d had my weeks mixed up, and thought I was getting paid next week.
A coworker and I showed up at the office the next day to confront the owner, who was in on a Sunday for some reason. My coworker hadn’t received his paycheck either–in fact, no one had. Instead, the owner had given him a $20 bill and said she hoped it would tide him over for the weekend.
She had been expecting my coworker, but not me. This was intentional, we were trying to throw her off guard and outnumber her. I showed her the NSF paycheck the bank had mailed me and demanded a replacement. She spent some time lying to us, which we tolerated with blank, unconvinced stares. After she seemed to finish, I told her that I didn’t care why my checks were bouncing. She reprinted my previous paycheck plus an additional $25 to cover bank fees for the returned check, my missed paycheck from the previous Friday, and my coworker’s missed paycheck. Both were post-dated for the following day, and she warned us not to deposit them before then because the funds wouldn’t be in the account yet. We left without thanking her.
On the way back to my car, my coworker said that he was never coming back. I couldn’t blame him. If it had been possible, I would never have gone back either. But unfortunately, in order to get back on full unemployment benefits I needed iron-clad proof that I was fully justified in quitting. There was still a small chance that these checks would clear. If they did, I’d be unemployed without any income whatsoever. I had no choice but to return to work the following Monday.
I deposited my checks at the ATM down the street from my apartment the next morning. I called my now-former coworker to see if he’d had any luck cashing his check–he’d first brought it to an Associated Bank, the bank NobleLogic uses, and they refused to cash it because of insufficient funds. He eventually managed to cash it at Wal-Mart. If his check was no good, my checks were almost certainly rubber, too. Still, I had no proof. I finished out the week.
By this point, the office had all the vitality and energy of three-day-old roadkill. Everyone’s paychecks had either bounced or never arrived at all, and we knew we were going to be out of a job very, very soon. We grudgingly worked, expecting that we wouldn’t be paid for our efforts.
Nine days went by. Late on Wednesday afternoon, I performed a now-daily ritual of logging in to my online banking account to see if my checks had bounced yet. They had. I was now fully justified in quitting. I was free. Poor, angry, and cheated… but free. I packed up the few belongings from my office I hadn’t already taken home, and left.