One of those calls

You know we respond to some pretty stupid calls sometimes. In fact, so stupid it makes think that "this can't be real".

When I was working patrol I was dispatched to a call of a 415V or in plain English, a verbal disturbance of the peace. The call happened to be at an open air market on one of our boulevards. I get to the location and contact the manager of this market and asked him what was going on.

He told me two of his employees were arguing. When I asked him what they were arguing about he told me that one of them accused the other of taking a quarter from him. I was thinking to myself, "You've got to be kidding!" I asked him where the employees were at.

The manager walked me over to them as neither of them spoke a lick of English. Their English was very broken and hard to understand. A fellow officer arrived on scene and thankfully he spoke fluent Spanish. The officer translated my questions to them.

My first question was "You guys are fucking kidding me right?" I don't know if the officer used the appropriate Spanish translation for "Fucking". I understood one of the probably few words of English they spoke and that was "No." My next question was "So you call the police for a quarter!" Again "No."

So obviously my next question was "Well who the hell did then?" They both simultaneously pointed toward their manager. I asked both of the employees how they wanted their problem resolved. One who denied taking the quarter just wanted to go about his work. The other of course wanted his 25 cent piece back.

Not wanting to waste anymore time, I reached into my pocket, retrieved a quarter and tossed it to the employee. I asked "Is everything square now?" The employee was happy to have a quarter back and replied "Jes".

I walked away, back toward my patrol car when the manager asked me if everything was okay. Now the manager was probably in his mid twenties. I walked over to him, told him everything was settled. I reached into my shirt pocket and handed him my business card.

He asked me "What's this for?" I told him on the reverse side was a number for conflict resolution and next time either call them first or maybe do something like use his brain and just fork over a freakin quarter.

That's what happens when you put "youngsters" in charge, DUH!