I'm never going to the gym during lunch again

I just had the craziest lunch hour. I decided to grab a quick workout so my gigantic ass will be slightly less gigantic for Palm Springs next week. Afterwards I stopped at the Duane Reade for some incidentals where I was witness to a most frightening scene which I can consider amusing only now that I am sitting safely at my desk.

I was in the back near the mouth herpe medicine (for a friend!!) when I heard screaming at the front of the store. I walked up the aisle to get in line when a shopping basket came hurling towards my head. I stepped out of the way just in time nearly knocking over a entire nail polish display.

An extremely strung out looking man and woman were brawling with two male cashiers. They had apparently been attempting to shop lift when the workers confronted the couple and all hell broke loose.

It was insane; they were shouting obscenities and throwing anything that wasn’t nailed down at the employees. The two cashiers, I must say, were pretty brave. Finally after every shopping basket had been thrown one cashier threw an umbrella from a nearby rack to the other cashier and they were able to chase the wanna-be crooks out of the store. All the while I stood with about 6 other onlookers not knowing what to do but stand around in shock and maybe blog about it later.

A few minutes after the melee the crack head woman came back, opened the door, shouted “You aint shit!” to the cashier and proceeded to throw a hot dog at him. She had left earlier to go buy a hotdog from the street vendor only to come back and throw it at the cashier. Classic.

You always wish, later of course, that you could have stepped in and saved the day. I would have loved to grab a can of Raid or something such similar to mace and sprayed the would be attackers while kicking them out the door and calming the fearful shoppers. Of course they could have easily knifed me, but really whats more exciting than almost dying, right?

Then when I thought the day couldn’t possibly get any better I saw on the walk back to my office, two gigantic lesbians passionately making out in front of Penn Station.

A nice normal afternoon in the city.