Work Stories: Episode 63: I'm Talking to You

Previously on Work Stories, I wrote about a weird guy who came up and asked if he could get the walking record because he’d been walking for years, even though I could see a car key in his hand.  It’s one of many times that someone has approached me while I was working and started talking in a way that I find crazy.  I could go with another one from this past week for this week’s Work Story, but why would I want to do the same thing twice in a row?  I’m going to find something else to write about this week.

But what am I going to write about this week?  I’m not sure right now.  While writing this paragraph, I will figure it out.  Ah, yes.  I’ve got it.  I have the perfect one to come after last week’s walking guy.  It involves me walking, but not for walking’s sake.  I was walking to go get something to eat.  That’s what this week’s Work Story will be all about.  Hold onto your butts because you’re about to get something!

There are many times that I don’t bring anything to eat at work.  Usually it’s because I’m too lazy to make something before work.  The odd time, the reason behind not bringing something to eat is because I can’t find any clean containers to hold the food.  I’m not going to bring loose food to work and hope it doesn’t get covered in bacteria or something.  Nope.  Not going to happen.  If I’m going to take food to work, it needs the container.  I don’t know why I spent so much time on that detail.

What do I do for food if I didn’t bring a lunch?  There are places to get food around my work.  There is a Wendy’s across the street, some pizza places, Ruby Tuesday is upstairs, and around the corner is a whole street of restaurants.  One of the restaurants is Subway, which is more of a fast food place, but oh well.  That’s still a restaurant.  Most of the time I go there because I like Subway.  Deal with it.  They make delicious sandwiches and I don’t find them too expensive.

One day, I didn’t bring lunch.  You didn’t see that coming, did you?  I decided to go to Subway to get something to eat.  That means I had to go up the street to the stoplights and cross to where Subway is.  So I headed out from work and up the street.  When I got to the corner where the stoplights are, there was something different.  It wasn’t the look of the place.  People were crossing the street normally and everything looked the same.  Instead, there was a difference in what it sounded like.  Usually, I can hear music from the places around the intersection.  This day was different.

What was it that I heard when I approached the intersection?  There was a man with a microphone and a speaker.  He was standing at the corner preaching religion.  He was trying to force it upon anybody who was walking by.  He wanted people to hear the word of his God and go into his religion with him.  He had a guy with him and that guy was handing out cards about religion.  This is what was happening on the street corner.  This is why I couldn’t hear the music.

So I went and got my food, trying as much as possible to avoid the guy who was preaching his religious beliefs to the public.  When I came back, he was still preaching away.  The other guy was still handing out cards.  As I walked by, trying to ignore them as best I could, I heard the greatest thing I’ve ever heard from a street-side preacher.

“When you turn your back on God, it is like you are spitting right in his face.”

That made me laugh.  The fact that I laughed at this might seem disrespectful to some of you, but I found it funny.  I can’t help that.  The way that the phrase was worded, and the way that the preacher guy shouted it was funny to me.  I’ve never heard something like that before.  Perhaps because I don’t encounter religion all that much in my life.  Perhaps I don’t pay enough attention.  Either way, I still found that to be an outrageous thing to hear.

That’s this week’s Work Story.  I really didn’t have anywhere else to go with it, so I stopped.  At least I didn’t pull the same thing as The Devil Inside and put a website there for if you wanted any more information.  That’s all I’ve got this week.  Next time, I’ll write about another thing that I’m not sure about yet.

Until then, there’s a leek in the boat!