The dismissal from the bookstore was a chart topper for blindsighted and busted for me.

This customer was at the coffee-shop before it was even open. I was functioning at a level of sourpuss bitch riding high on her horse at that time that I have since realized is a tendency I need to learn to keep under the hood if at all possible, but at the time, I wasn't really in the mood to be all perky at 7:30 in the morning and this guy was all in my face, and chatting it up with everybody making friends and I wasn't really feeling him, and I was a bitch to him. I just wasn't picking up what he was throwing down, it wasn't funny to me. Whatever, I opened the shop, he left to get doughnuts or whatever, and that was that. I learned from this experience, or at least it is clear to me now, I shouldn't have second guessed those gut instincts to distrust this man.

A few hours passed and it was just another day, and I was still a smoker at the time, so when another employee came in for coffee, as was common I asked him to watch the shop for me while I went for a cigarette out back. He assented and off I went. The door slammed shut.

I was smoking, not having a clue about the drastic impact on my life the moment of neglect I demanded for my own momentary comfort would have on my life, on my stability.

I walked into the shop and the other employee who covered for me left. Then I noticed the hundred dollar bill on the counter. I put the money in the register. I got scared and acted impulsively to try to cover my ass. Boy, did that blow up in my face. Well, it turns out the money belonged to that first customer, who had walked in the front door while I was having a cigarette and played some unfunny joke on the other guy covering for me; the joke hadn't gone over well so he left a $100 bill as a "tip" for the other guy, still catching all this shit during my break, I don't even know whats going on at this point. The guy just then walks out of the bathroom and starts asking me about this hundred dollar bill. I offer to sell him 100 dollars of books for the money that is already in the register. He assents, brings books to the counter that he wants in exchange for this 100$ that I mistakenly put in the register, and off he goes. A sale, with a misunderstanding that was about to get big.

I get off my shift and a few hours pass, and then I get a phone call from the other girl who works there, saying the guy is back, trying to return the books. But the bookstore doesn't do returns, and this guy has this crazy story about how you stole his money...can I come down there and clear some things up? So I am on my way down there, already knowing that sinking feeling in my stomach, that this gig that I finally scored is getting lost because I let myself get distracted and they got me again! I got to the shop and I got my friend to lend me $100 to pay this guy off so I didn't have to step over the no returns rule for the washed up, far away boss. I still haven't paid my friend off yet for this debt, and I hate that. That night I got the phone call from the washed up, far away boss telling me I was fired because of "theft". I didn't remember this guy having enough energy to walk to the liquor store so the excitement he exhibited when dismissing me with this really overbearing like disappointed tone, it was obviously just him getting off on his idea of power of whatever, while really just complying with the other regulars at the coffee-shop who had found my lack of sexual promiscuity discouraging and therefore I was disposable. It was a big disappointment at my own ability to administer order and... I wonder about the implications of the choices from that time alot. I wish I hadn't felt guilty for being a bitch to that customer, and just refused him service from the start. I was not awake enough, I gue