Yelling at the wrong guy, or, how a bitchy lady learned what handcuffs felt like.

I've posted this story before, but it's been about a year and this is the perfect sub for it. Apologies for it's length, but it's a semi-complex tale that deserves detail.

I worked at a rather busy gas station in a quite rich neighborhood for several years. I was the closing cashier (rich people near an Interstate think that a 24-hour gas station would bring in "undesirables") which actually gave me quite a bit of authority. The Manager usually left around 4pm, and we were open until 10. So for six glorious hours, I was king of my little domain, which was the convenience store, the 12 pumps, the parking lot, and the car wash (which will figure into this story).

It was a rather nice spring day, and nice days tend to mean that the car wash will be busy. Rich people with nice cars want their nice cars to stay looking like nice cars. I was inside, selling cigarettes and trying to keep the local bored teens from stealing beer when a nice car drives at a higher-than-normal speed up from the car wash, through the gas pumps, and parks in a fairly incongruous angle in front of the doors to the store. Out jumps an older lady, somewhere in her late 60s, dressed like she was trying out for Meryl Streep's part in The Devil Wears Prada. Kinda looked like Streep, too. She marched toward the doors with a "this transgression shall not stand" look on her face. I steeled myself, and put on the CS fake smile.

Sadly, it's been a few years since this happened, so I cannot quote the conversation verbatim, but the upshot was that she was QUITE displeased with how clean her car was after going through the car wash. I apologized, and offered to run her through again for free, which was Standard Reply #1 for anyone having an issue with the car wash. Ah, but that just won't do. Okay, Standard Reply #2 was to offer to cut her into the head of the line, something we didn't like doing because it made all the other customers mad. But that wouldn't do, either. Standard Reply #3, refund the money. Nope, that won't do, either.

I'm now perplexed. What did she want me to do? Which is what I asked her. Instead of getting an idea of whatever it was that she wanted done told to me, I was instead impaled by a gale-force tirade about the quality of the store, the employees, our intelligence levels, why we found it necessary to hire high schoolers, and several choice coarse epithets that drew concerned and irritated looks from the two other women who were in the store with their children.

At this point, I realized that nothing was going to placate this harpy. I again apologized, and offered to give her the card for the General Manager so she could talk to her. Which the lady slapped out of my hand, but added that she wanted to know what I was going to do about this. I responded with "I don't know, ma'am, you haven't told me what you would like to happen." This, of course, set her off on another tirade, but I was now the full focal point of her anger. The more general comments she'd made earlier were now very specific insults about my intelligence, my work ethic, and my value as a human being. With several swear words thrown around quite a bit.

Now, another minor bit of back story. There was a reason that, at 26, I was working at a gas station. I was in school, working on my second degree.

In law enforcement.

Customer Service smile dropped away, and it was replaced with Authoritative and Stern. Calmly, I told this "lady" (though she didn't fit any definition of the word I know, exception the biological one) that if she insisted on insulting me and the station, and swearing in front of customers and their children, then we didn't want her business any more, that she was to leave, and that any further contact would have to go through the GM.

I'll give you a moment to allow your imagination to come up with a suitable idea of her reaction. I'll give you a hint, it wasn't unicorns and rainbows.

So now I went from calm to rather loudly commanding her to leave the premises or else I would be calling the police. To which she seemed completely nonplussed, and continued to rant. Now, being someone who's going into law enforcement, I don't bluff when I say I'm gonna call in backup. So I made the call. (Another bit of backstory, the local police LOVED our store, because we were one of the few places they could come get snacks at prior to graveyard shift, and we called in DUII drivers to them on a regular basis).

Five minutes later, here comes the black-and-white cavalry. The officer, whom I'd had numerous official and unofficial interactions with, comes into the store. I gave him the "holy hell, this idiot REALLY needs to be smacked and tossed out of here" look, and he gave me a "what, the she-hag? She's that much trouble?" look back. She then turned and lit into the officer about what happened, lying the whole time. She said that I had threatened her, that I had used racial and sexual slurs, and that I hadn't actually gotten her car cleaned, which was obviously theft. The officer turned and looked at me, to which I simply responded "We have five cameras and a microphone in the store. Everything has been recorded. If you'd like, I can call the GM and have her come down here and show you the tapes, because that's not what happened at all."

The officer escorted the lady outside, where another newly-arriving officer faced the same tongue-lashing. The first officer then took my statement, and asked what I wanted to do. I told him that she had to be off the property, and that she could talk to the GM in the morning, but I didn't want to deal with her ever again. The officer smiled knowingly, and walked back outside.

What followed was the officer telling her that, no matter what may have transgressed, he could find no evidence of a crime, and that since I was an employee here and had told her to leave, she had to leave. Period.

I'm kind of surprised that the lady's head didn't just explode right there due to high blood pressure. She started screaming at the cop, almost incoherently. I could understand words or phrases here and there, like "never" and "treated" and "have your badge" and "fuck." But she wouldn't leave. The officer, keeping his cool, asked her three separate times if she was willing to leave. She wouldn't directly reply to the question, just kept screaming.

So he arrested her for criminal trespass. She did not go quietly. I applauded.

Now, this is where the REAL fun begins. Because, as it turns out, her rage slowly turned into dawning realization as she was driven to jail, and she began to plead with the officers to be let go. When they declined, she tried to name drop by stating that her husband was a circuit court judge for the very county we were in.

Which turned out to be true!

So it became a minor bit of local drama. Since she was, in fact, married to a local judge, none of the other judges in the county could try her case due to conflict of interest. Not just that county, but two others as well, seeing as how she was a social climber and therefore was heavily involved in social events, elections, political groups, and such. She had to be tried in court almost 100 miles away. She plead guilty, got a fine, and did 100 hours of community service (which, really, for that kind of trespass is a reasonable punishment). Her husband, publicly quite humiliated, retired early and divorced her. I never saw her again after the trial. My boss gave me a raise for "dealing well with a difficult situation" and a paid day off. I spent that day at the beach, eating ice cream.

TL;DR - Entitled she-devil tries to push around a wage slave, he gets her arrested and gets mint-chocolate chip in a waffle cone as a reward.

EDIT: Some spelling and grammar issues.