Cargo Pants Overflowing With Revenge

Let’s go back to the year 2001. Cargo pants were fashionable and the penny was still in production. I was only fourteen years old, so I had no car, but it was fine; my parents lived close to the best ice cream place in town, which I walked to often. Amazing ice cream within walking distance? What on earth could be wrong here?

Well, to get to and from said ice cream, I had to walk past the gas station where an employee had taken to catcalling me every time I walked past. I could not get the yummy delicious ice cream without being treated to hollers of, “Nice t*ts! Why don’t you lick something else?” and so on and so on. For weeks.

Let’s just say it’s very stupid to harass people from your place of work; they know where to find you. And since I was only fourteen, I didn’t think to go to the manager of the gas station about his employee’s conduct, and I didn’t want it to turn into a he-said-she-said, no-harm-done situation. Because, again, it was the 2000s — how lame were security cameras? I was fourteen and angry and wanted my revenge to be painful.

So, I started my quest to collect pennies — as many pennies as I could get my hands on. You had pennies, I had nickels, dimes, and even quarters, and I would trade for them. It took about a week to collect just over $2 in loose pennies. People were so willing to part with them.

One ruined walk for ice cream later, and I knew my target was at work. Home I went to gather my hoard of pennies. Into those massive cargo pants pockets they went. One short jingling walk later — during which I wasn’t 100% sure my pants weren’t about to fall down due to the weight of 200-plus pennies in my pockets — I arrived at my destination and in I went.

I grabbed what I needed for a simple $2 transaction, a pack of Skittles and a red Gatorade, and to the till I went.

My target looked rather smug. I don’t know, maybe he thought his many unwanted invitations to [perform a sex act on him] had succeeded. That is, right up until I started pulling fistfuls of pennies out of those pockets and simply dropping them on the counter. They weren’t in a Ziplock. Nope, loose pennies all over the counter.

Of course, the right to refuse an overwhelming amount of coins is and was a thing. I believe anything more than fifteen pennies was considered excessive at the time and could be refused. And so he tried.

Employee: *Defiantly* “I don’t have to take that!”

But I was angry and my revenge would not be denied, so I shot back.

Me: “Oh, but you will. You clearly wanted my attention with all your hollering over the past few weeks. So, you’ll take those pennies or I’ll have a chat with your manager.”

And so he started counting, and I stood there repeating back all the “lovely things” he had been saying to me and interjecting random numbers in for good measure. He wasn’t smart enough to make piles of ten, not that I expected smart from a boy stupid enough to sexually harass women outside of his place of work. So I kept him there. His coworker opened another till to help other customers, but she made no moves to help him.

Once the transaction was finished, I took my purchase, and before I walked out the door, I told him:

Me: “If you ever catcall me again, it will be $5 in pennies, and I will be chatting with your manager.”

Ice cream trips were so blissfully free of catcalling after that.

I know that 99.9% of cashiers don’t deserve that mountain of coins. I just wanted to share my story of that 0.01% who got what they had coming.

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