It has been an odd couple of days. At least at work, everything else has been fairly normal, and comfortable and sane.
Saying that tho, it only started getting strange and exciting late sunday afternoon, about 5 minutes before closing time, when a man, Eddie, decided to fall over outside the store (I don't actually think it was by choice, in fact I'm pretty certain it wasn't intentional, but fall over he did). I got a chair for him, and two lads picked him up, but he didn't look well, so I rang an ambulance, explained what had happened and they said they would send one out. Two seconds after I had put the phone down, a lady rushed in and said that Eddie had decided to get up and had collapsed again around the corner. Rushing out I found him on the floor, with a cut on his head complaining of chest pains and a pain in his left arm, he had gone a funny purple colour too. Now I've seen casualty and Holby City, not to mention doing a few first aid courses, and all this was suggesting to me HEART ATTACK in big flashing neon letters in my brain, so I left him in the capable hands of some bystanders who were making him comfortable, talking to him and stuff, and ran to ring back the ambulance people to seeif they could hurry it up a bit (they did say that if his condition deteriorated to ring them back, and I reckoned that a heart attack probably constituted 'deteriorated' compared to just a fall), by the time I'd done that, and given the keys to Will to lock up, and got back to him, his wife had been summoned from the pub down the road, and was being hysterical at him...I think she thought he was going to die, but he was talking and stuff, so I thought he'd probably be alright (then again, if you watch casualty, it's the ones that talk and move about that are the ones that die by the end of the show). The ambulance turned up pretty sharpish anyway, about 10 minutes after the first call, and they had carted him away to hospital by the time I'd locked up the shop and got out.
Was talking to a friend of his today, and she told me that they had kept him in overnight, and had sent him home the following morning, so he can't have been too bad...something to do with blood pressure pills the doc had given him, and they had reacted badly with his angina, or something. He is ok at least so I'm relieved about that.
Today, well today was drunks and shoplifters...on one occasion both together in the same body enclosed in a stinking pair of piss soaked Jog-pants. God I love my job. When I got into work, three members of staff were herding him out of the shop, after he had tried to nick 2 cans of special brew, and had tried to attack Joan with his walking stick when she tried to stop him. He came back half an hour later, and only me and Jean were on the till, so I rang the bell for the boss who came running up and was promptly attacked with the walking stick again, albeit feebly, but even so. He didn't come back this afternoon, for which I am profoundly grateful, but we did, at about 5 to 5, get a drunk with an axe. Now the law states that you're not supposed to sell alcohol to people who are already drunk. Well I am sorry, but there isn't any way on earth that I'm going to upset a drunk with an axe (not a little hand axe either, a bloody big chopping down trees kind of axe) by not giving him his drink, but neither do I want to be fined for serving alcohol to a drunk, so I rang my bell and let Bob sort it out. Heh, Bob sold him the bottle of wine anyway. I don't think he would have attacked anyone with the axe, but on the whole I think it's safer not to risk finding out.
Oh the joys of working in Hoylake, the crazy capital of the Wirral.
