Are you fuckin kiddin me

                 This day I'm about to tell you about, ran as they all do, normal ups and downs. Same bitchy customers complaining about the same fucking thing and ending with "I will never be back" and that's cool, if only that were true. My staff dragging ass also complaining how awful the night was with difficult guests that were all lousy tippers, leaving me wishing I had a pocket full of tissues to hand out. Then as the night winds down, the staff now getting their second wind because a cold beer is waiting on them at another bar, a critical mistake was made.
                  It was down to three of us, one waiter, one dish guy and me. The waiter had changed his cloths and was hanging with me till its time to leave, the dish guy was on his last couple of duties to finish up. Next to the bar, visible to the whole restaurant, the waiter and I stood talking about the horrific motor cycle wreck I had had a couple weeks earlier. Proud of my wounds, I put my walking cane down to show the waiter my extreme road rash, when we heard a noise at the Togo door. We looked up at the same time to see a hooded masked man rounding the corner pointing a gun at us. Immediately I laughed and said "are you fuckin kiddin me?" Thinking it was a prank by someone I may have pranked before. No response from the intruder as he swiftly moved closer and again I asked, not laughing now, "are you fuckin kiddin me?" With his out reached hand holding the gun, now only a couple feet away and pointing it at my face says "I'm not fuckin kiddin". I couldn't help but to stare at the mesh cladded face, I could almost see a human under it all. "Stop lookin at me mother fucker" he yell at me, I methodically look down towards the floor and thinking this shit isn't funny. He grabs the waiter and pushes him towards the kitchen doors as though knowing where he's going. Then turns and grabs me to push me towards the kitchen doors, I struggled to stay walking on my wounded legs and no cane. As we entered the kitchen, the dish guy had no idea what was coming through the door, nor did the robber know the dish man was back there. This freaked the dish guy out who was wearing headphones and didn't hear any of the ruckus, but even worse it freaked out the robber. Keeping the gun on me and the waiter, he reached over with his free arm and grabbed the dish guy by the back of his shirt and threw him across the room in front of us and now amped up he yells "get on back to the safe". I honestly cant tell what was going through my mind at this point because it just didn't seem real. When we were all outside the office door, the robber, forced my two fellow workers to the floor and aiming the gun to their heads. In a voice that seemed unstable from fear and anxiousness the robber said to me "get in there and open the safe". I complied but being nervous myself I fumbled around with the combination and just like in the movies, was unsuccessful in opening the first try. This infuriated the robber and he starts yelling "I'm going to blow their fuckin heads off if you don't get that safe open now." I stopped what I was doing to regroup then looked at him and said "calm down, your making me nervous". Robbery 101, never tell a robber to calm down. "Nervous! Your about to be dead" he hollered, there might have been another "mother fucker" I don't even know. I turned and open the safe per his request. He throws a mesh bag at me and instructs me to put all the money in it. Its funny the power of money, all of our lives are at stake for money that belongs to none of us, yet I still don't want him to get it all. In the bottom of the safe were two deposits that probably totaled 6000.00 dollars. I skipping right over them I went to the two cash drawers that combined had less than $600.00 in them and a lot of that was rolled change. I put it all in the bag and started to hand it to him. He said "that can't be everything" I said that it was. Then he did something that seemed to knowledgeable, he pointed to the file cabinet drawer that we keep a bank in during operation, I opened the drawer to show him it was empty now. He took the bag, instructed us to leave our cell phones on the desk then he pushed us all towards walk in "get in". We all complied and before he closed the door on us he said "now count back from a thousand" We all looked at each other with humor and all said at the same time "a thousand". Now in that same class earlier, Robbery 101, we would have learned NOT TO SAY ANYTHING. The robber fired two rounds into the dish guy killing him instantly, is what you are probably thinking right now but you are wrong. The felon simply replied "If you ever want to see your families again, count back from a thousand." We made it to Nine hundred and ninety when we ran out, grabbed our phones then quickly returned to the walk in. We called 911 and the bosses. Everything was pretty much a blur after that, I do remember one of the of the accusatory detectives asked me why I didn't hit one of the many panic buttons in the building. I told him that I didn't know of them. He began to point them all out to me. One behind the bar, one in the safe and one in the walk in. I ask him, if I had pushed one would you all have swarmed the building? He said of course we would have, I replied "sure glad I didn't hit the panic button because then it would be a hostage situation!
                 A couple of days went by and the dish guy stopped coming to work, another week and the server got another job. I can't shake the thought of my crew on the floor with the gun poised on them. The Robber was never caught. Oh and the critical mistake was that the out going staff was in such a hurry leaving to get that cold beer down the road, they left the togo door slightly ajar.