Next time, Pay attention because that the cheapest advice you’ll ever get.

Let me take you back 19 years. I am 17. I am fit and busty. I worked at a NYS Thruway rest stop that was owned by Marriott Corporation and we locals called it "The Hot Shops". Why? I don't know, it was always called that and people today still refer to it as such even though it now is a mini mall of fast foot and bathrooms. Anyway, that is just filler so you know where it was. In that day it was one big open coliseum. I can remember every detail of that building well. There was one entrance/exit. In the back of the kitchen there was another entrance but it was used by employees only. That was when building code allowed stuff like that. So, you walked in the main entrance and straight ahead was the ladies room and the water fountains, to the left was the mens room, to the right was the wall of the gift shop. You went in the building about 20 paces and next to the ladies room was an alcove and that was where we had put the TCBY kiosk that I eventually ended up managing. Ok but to the right was the walkway to sit down dining, linning the walk on the right was the entrance to the gift shop and on the left was the "overnight" fast food line. Now to the left of the fast food line was the regular line, it went towards the back of the building and the whole section between the back wall, ladies room and the "overnight" fast food line was the take out dinning area. At the back wall there were two cash registers. One was fancy and new fangled. The other was old and barbaric. It was the latter that caused my ultimate doom. On holidays, we would open both the fast food lines and have extra people on staff to "Stock" the lines as needed. At this point I was a break manager. We would also have all three cash registers going. Problem with that was if you were going to use the Trendar (barbaric) cash register YOU HAD TO KNOW The PRICES. SO. You're smart; you see where I am going with this.

The manager on duty was Cliff. Cliff is/was a very large black man about 6'7 and ooohhh I'd say close to 400 lbs and around 60 ears old. Intimidating to look at yea, temper YES, caring, loving, genuine person… 100%. Cliff was one on my favorite people. Always has been and always will be and that was prior to his saving my left boob. You already know my stats. But allow me to paint this picture for you. I was wearing a waitress dress that was a size too small and would ride up when I moved my arm (no choice, it was what we had and I had just got done waitressing for breaks). I had my bra length red hair French braided. I had on full make-up (I knew I was going to be really busy) and I had on a pair of LOVELY Knapp safety shoes.

We kept the Trendar on top of the Haagen Das self serve freezer. So, it was slightly elevated. The drawer opened about a half inch below the natural state of rest of my breast. Cliff was on the fancy register. He came for break first. The girl running the Trendar got mad because he relieved the other cashier first and she walked out. He had a stock person come and find me and ordered me to work the Trendar. I gave him an intrepid look because I had left the waitressing side and started to prep the chef salads for the take out line seeing we were out of them. I told one of the stockers to wash her hands and put the salad stuff away (we are talking a case of lettuce heads, bushel of tomatoes…. I made them big and in a hurry when I did them.)

So, I put my key in the Trendar and typed in a code and opened the drawer with the No Sale button. I looked in and it was over flowing with money and I knew I didn't have time to count it. Cliff said not to worry that I wouldn't be responsible for it. OK, so I started to rock and roll. I was doubling on ringing up people. A smile, a thank you and it was so fast, I had to take a handful of money every 20 people or so and drop it in cliff's safe (the trendar did not have a safe and it only took cash or Canadian it did have a conversion on it for Canadian moohlah). So, a pair of elderly ladies came up . Badda bing badda bang badda boom. I gave them their total. The woman smiled at me and her eyes twinkled. She gave me her greens and I hit the cash button. I counted her change back the old fashioned way, leaned slightly forward to grab something slipping off of her tray with my right hand and my left hand automatically slammed the drawer shut (now look it here, I had shut it, but it didn't shut, I was unaware that the dress was caught in it, so when I was leaning and slamming it, guess what…the under side of my left breast was there also.) I FELT THIS SUDDEN HOT searing pain shoot up from my breast and it felt like fire water rushing out. My left hand went numb, I couldn't breathe; I felt a burning sensation rush up my neck, my ear lobes throbbed, I could only hear a rushing sound of water and my eyes begun to water (on their own free will). But I didn't know what happened. I actually thought that someone had stabbed me. I remember opening my mouth to speak and nothing came out. The elderly lady with the twinkling eyes made eye contact with me. The color drained from her face. I KNEW I WAS DEAD. THIS SON OF A BITCH THAT HAS JUST STABBED ME WAS HOLDING A GUN TO MY HEAD. I turned to get a swat in, I wasn't gonna go down without a fight. I wasn't turning either.

I became aware of a few things all at once.

The elderly woman was saying, "Dear, you appear to have shut your breast in the cash register, let me help."

I was suddenly and acutely aware of the source of the pain.

And my boss had seen the whole thing and was bent over the tray rail laughing. Yes that's right. Not running to rescue me. He was whole heartedly laughing at me. Tears in his eyes, choking to breathe laughing. I decided to rescue myself. I hit the no sale button. The drawer clicked but did not release. Panic began to ebb. I knew that the EMERGENCY key was in the basement, IN the office, and locked in the safe that only CLIFF had the combo for. I made a noise. Croak actually. Cliff came running over. He did stop laughing long enough to realize this was serious. He hit the button. Nothing happened. He ran. Really I didn't know that he could move like that. He was gone maybe five minutes total. He came back with the key and flipped the register on it's side (which I had to move with it and hit my head on the corner of the kiosk, talk about insult to injury but HE WAS NOW in a state of panic.) and I watched his trembling hands disappear in the underbelly of the register. I head the lock click, it was unlocked but he had to hold the key in that position and hit a button. Another customer saw me struggling to open the drawer in my now compromised position. Be pulls a KNIFE out of his pocket and PRYs the drawer open. I screamed when it released. One of the stockers came running over with a glove of Ice (safety awareness classes do help) and the stranger held it to my breast and assisted me back into a standing position. Cliff righted the register and shut the drawer. The elderly lady patted my hand and informed me that that might leave a mark and went on her way to eat. THE NEXT CUSTOMER IN LINE almost got his ass kicked.

He made the snotty remark that he was never going to get waited on when there was a stupid woman trying to do a mans job. The young man that pried the drawer open assisted him out. Cliff told me to go fill out an incident report and go to the hospital. I told him I was fine. I (cautiously) started to ring people up again. And I will be damned if I didn't shut my breast in the drawer a second time. But this time, when I hit the NO Sale button I slid my finger in where it had been pried open and got free. The line was waning at this point, the next shift was coming in, I logged off of the register and brought the drawer down stairs. I locked it in the office and returned with a money bay to clean out the safe. The report was still running on the register. I wonder which numeric code was for the activation of the flesh eating protocol. I added the safe money to the 2^nd shift safe and ran back upstairs. Mike N was getting his cashiers ready to head upstairs. I closed the waitress register, the gift shop register, the secondary take out register and strolled over and got my tape off of the Trendar. Cliff was just finishing closing out that drawer and he double checked the safe. We went down the stairs together. I still cradling my breast on ice every few minutes and Cliff spasmodically giggling. He let me in the office and we began counting the registers.

Mike N had come back down and he wanted to know what kind of totals we had. He randomly grabbed a close out sheet with tickertape. Wow, who ran the Trendar, they did really good. Cliff lost it. He laughed. He placed his head on the desk and gasped for air. Mike asked me if he needed to call 911 because Cliff was acting like he was having chest pains. I gave Cliff an annoyed look and I glared at Mike. Mike was only two years my senior so I could be disrespectful. Mike glared back, "Oh you ran it, I thought you were the break manager"

Cliff, "yea, she broke it all right!"

Mike, "Wha-huh?" and he looked at me for clarification. I just shook my head, and left.

Now when I got home, I was really looking for sympathy. I was going to call my best gal pal (NYPINTA) of the time and tell her of my horrific experience. But surprisingly my mother was home. She looked at me. "Are you all right?" I nodded. "I saw what happened, I was in line with Janice and Larry, we were going to say hello, but your register was so busy we went to Cliff's." I glared at her big time.

"And you didn't try to help me?"

"Well no, I was visiting with our family, they called and said they were on the way to West Point, did I want to meet with them for dinner, And that's what we were doing. Besides, you didn't leave in an ambulance or anything. You didn't even take a break from working."I just stood there staring at her. Heartless bitch. Then she started to laugh. She asked me if it was bruised. I went to investigate. I didn't think about it, I just… I don't know. I got some pajamas out and went up to take a shower. When I took my bra off I knew I was in major big time trouble. My breast swelled as I checked it. It doubled the size of the other. Bruise? Talk about it. All of the under side bruised and had ugly red and yellow lines creeping towards the top and minor red/yellow discoloration at the top. I put a t-shirt on and drove myself to the hospital.

But that is another story. I was fine, just a hypo-condriact. Take an asprin every 8 hours, yadda yadda yadda.