I had maybe 20 minutes left before it was time to clock out, and a customer comes to my department wanting to buy a car charger for his cell phone-- the usual run of the mill kind of thing. He was a young stocky Hispanic guy wearing a white wife beater and covered in whacked-out tattoos and a goatee. He spoke perfect English with no accent.
As I am checking it out for him, he makes idle conversation, asking me how far Ft. Lauderdale(basically Miami) is from where we were.
"I don't know" I said, "About 3 or 4 hours of driving I think."
"No, no" he said "It's only about 30 minutes."
(Yea right, maybe going 200 mph or some sh*t. Why does he ask me this if he already "knows" the answer?)
I tell him that I have never been that far south before, or really traveled anywhere, for that matter. Remembering this it now feels as though he set up the whole conversation this way.
He then goes on to tell me that I should leave with him, right then and there. He had no idea what time I was supposed to leave work, and didn't care. He said he'd take care of gas and food, and to just go with him.
I politely refused, saying I had other obligations. He went on to tell me it would be the best thing for me to go with him. He was extremely charismatic, and it felt to me as if he were trying to recruit me to some religious or political agenda, possibly a gang.
He asked me what kind of car I drove, "I used to have a Mazda, but I sold it..." "I didn't ask you what you used to drive."
"I have a Kawasaki Ninja and a Roketa, which is a scooter."
"Which one do you drive to work?" he said.
"...the scooter."
He then told me that he drives a box truck, because he works for a "Logistics company."
He kept asking me if I could tell him what his name was, and specifically not to "guess" but just to tell him what I thought his name was. I made a few guesses-- what I should have done is looked at the name on the credit card he gave me to buy his phone charger with, but I had forgotten at the time.
The way he acted, it felt as though it were a scene from a movie, kind of like "Collateral" or "Training Day." My intuition screamed "NO" but he made it sound like such an opportunity.
He would say things like "You gotta go out and experience the world." And I would say things like "I know" and he'd say "No, you don't. No you don't."
I refused again and again as he tried different approaches to convince me to leave with him. He even called his friend on his phone to get him to talk to me. "I have a white boy here" he said on the phone "this fool." At first I didn't even believe he was really talking to anyone, then he handed me the phone. The guy on the phone said "Hey, you should listen to him man."
While I was on the phone my supervisor, Scott, happened to walk by. I gave the phone back to the guy and called Scott over and made up a reason to talk to him about work related stuff I made up off the top of my head. As soon as I did this, the strange guy quickly walked away without saying anything. I then told Scott the whole story of what just happened. He'd never heard of anything like it. "That's weird" is all he could say.
So what the hell? Was this guy setting me up? Was he trying to recruit me to some gang or something?
Obviously I don't want to walk out on my job considering how hard it would be, if not impossible, to get another one. Seriously, what the hell?
Edited, May 7th 2009 11:33am by Kuwoobie
I thought the same thing...