Oh the Joys of working Downtown...

First, before I start the story that gave title to this posting I have a small disclaimer about the Neiman Marcus Cookie Recipe below. After Christian read it he wanted to make sure I wasn't breaking any copyright laws by posting their famous recipe....so to answer your question: I don't think I am. On the recipe card that I got from Neiman Marcus it says "...take the legendary recipe home and by all means pass it on..." So this is my way of passing it on!

On with the reason for the title of my post today...

I work in downtown Dallas and my office is about two blocks from the soup kitchen that feeds approximately 600-650 homeless every day for lunch. So naturally, on occasion, there are some hanging around my place of employment. Last week I had an unfortunate incident with one. I decided that I wanted a donut from a little grocery/cafe store called Urban Market. It's not far from where I work, in fact it's just across the street...safe enough! (Or so I thought) I left my building and as I was crossing the street I noticed that I would be walking right past a homeless man with his little suitcase. He was walking towards me and honestly made me a little uncomfortable. I finished crossing the street and right before I passed him he stopped and looked like he wanted to strike up a conversation. I noticed this and decided not to make eye contact and just keep walking. Little did I know, this was the start of a somewhat large fiasco. As I walked past he said "Hi, how ya doing lady?" I didn't respond and kept walking towards the door to the market. Next thing I know he's right behind me yelling at me, calling me all sorts of names that I'd rather not post. All the while, asking, well yelling, That I must be too good to talk to him. I brushed off the choice names and words and figured that if I could just get inside the market he would leave me alone. Unfortunately, not the case! I got about 15 feet into the store and I turn around and see that he has just come in the door and is still yelling at me! Then I got scared, found the nearest associate and let him know that the guy that just walked in was harassing me. He was very quick about stopping what he was doing and went to ask the guy to leave. Well, then the homeless guy started yelling at the associates and wanted to know if they wanted a piece of him. Next think I knew, the seemingly unremarkable suitcase became a flying weapon of sorts. Two men eating at the cafe realized what was going on and got up to help the associate. From then on the slowly worked their way towards the door, while punches were flying. I sure didn't mean for things to go that badly. I just didn't want the guy following me yelling and cursing and name calling me. They got him outside finally, but not off the property so 911 was called. I went and bought my donut and sat down to eat it there in case the police needed to talk to me when they arrived since it was me who was being harassed first. The police took a little while to arrive so I left and went back to work after leaving my name and phone number in case they needed me to come back over and make a statement or something else. The associate called me about 30 minutes later and said that the owner and associate that helped me filed a report and I didn't need to. Apparently the guy had been bothering other people the day before so they arrested him and took him to the psych ward. So all in all, a little scary but it turned out ok for me. I was a little shaken up but I'm sure that the homeless guy probably still had a worse day than me. Thanks so much to everyone at Urban Market that helped!!! -Erin

(Oh and by the way, my co-worker said that from now on she would walk with me because she wears stiletto's and we figured they might come in handy!)