Bank Robber In Disguise

My all-time favorite let’s not meet story. I hope it also has a chance to make it on the front page.<br><br>&#x200B;<br><br>Freshly turned 22 and just graduated from university, I was still living in my college town to enjoy the last few months of freedom with my college friends before we all went our own ways. I didn’t have a job lined up yet, and I was living off of my student loans for the summer. I worked part-time at the campus Starbucks to make some extra money, and all of my college friends were doing the same thing. It was a great time before things got too serious in the real world. <br><br>There was a particularly difficult customer who would come in and make everyone’s day miserable multiple times a week. He was always wearing the same outfit - a tan shirt, with white suspenders and khaki shorts. It was pretty well-known among my coworkers that he was the bank manager at the bank next door. Every day when he came in, I’d joke to myself that he was there to rob us, especially since he wore the same attire every day. I wonder if it ever came true.<br><br>One afternoon, I was working the afternoon shift alone as the barista and the shift manager. As the weather started to get nice into spring, the cafe started to get more busier and we had a lot of all-day studying regulars. Around 4 o’clock, a man wearing a tan shirt, with white suspenders and khaki shorts walked in the front door and waved at me. I got a really weird feeling about him. The first thing I thought was that it was the “tan shirt guy,” but he acted completely different than the other guy. Instead of being rude, he was very polite and courteous as he walked in, waved at me, and walked over to the bookshelves along the walls. <br><br>There were also a few other customers in the cafe who noticed him. Some were studying while others were just chatting behind me and could also see this man. I went up to him and asked if he needed any help, and he said no, he was just looking at the CDs for sale. By this point, the coffee shop was completely silent as everyone in there was staring at him. I went in the back to call my district manager and told her what was going on. She said to call the police.<br><br>There was a phone on the counter near the window as well as a door near the window that led outside to a back alley. I slowly walked over to the phone near the window to call the police and told them that there was a man in the coffee shop who I believed was going to rob us. At the same time that I was on the phone with the police, one of my regular customers, who was a swim coach at the university, walked up to the man and asked if he needed help. The man said no, and the coach went up to me and asked me if everything was okay. I mouthed to him that I thought the man was going to rob us, and that the police were on their way. The coach nodded his head and walked over to the man again. This time, he asked the man if he needed help finding anything. The man again said no, and then all of a sudden, the coach grabs the man’s head and twists it to the right, like he had all of a sudden realized the man was a threat. <br><br>I still don’t know what was going through the coach’s mind, but he knocked the gun out of the man’s hand, and he and another customer wrestled the man to the ground. The gun landed next to the CD display case, and I slowly walked over to it to pick it up, while the coach and the other customer held the man down. I slowly crept to the door behind the window and walked outside with the gun. A man was standing outside smoking a cigarette, and I asked him if I could borrow his phone. He looked at me in confusion until I showed him the gun. <br><br>I called the police and told them that we had the gun and were holding the man on the ground. I slowly walked back inside and set the gun on the counter. I walked back over to the man who was now bleeding on the floor because the coach had punched him in the nose. I got on the floor with the coach and helped hold him down until the police showed up. As soon as the police walked in the door, the man started yelling, “I don’t want to go back to jail! Get off of me! Get off of me!” The police were so shocked at the whole scene that they didn’t know what to do. <br><br>I told them that the man said that he was looking at the CDs, but that I believed he was going to rob us. They asked how I knew that, and I told them it was because the “tan shirt guy” was a rude regular customer who always wore that outfit, but that this man was very polite. The police looked at each other and said, “That’s not the guy who wears that outfit?” And I said no. They asked me what the other guy looked like compared to this guy, and I said that the other guy was about 50 years old, skinny and short, had grey hair and slicked it back and had a few missing teeth. <br><br>They looked at each other again, and both said all at the same time, “we have the bank manager next door on camera robbing his own bank. We think he’s wearing a disguise.” They said that the guy on the floor matched the guy in the video. The police left with the guy on the floor, and I never heard anything about it ever again. <br><br>&#x200B;<br><br>Edit: I have no idea why this blew up. Thank you all for your kind comments. The reason that I recognized the outfit so quickly is because every time the “rude tan shirt guy” came in, I’d joke to the other baristas that he was going to rob us and that we should be on the lookout for him. That’s how I was able to recognize the outfit so quickly. And yes, I know that it’s pretty random to joke about someone robbing a coffee shop every time you see them. It was just a weird inside joke we had.