People Who Don't Carry Cash

It's no longer news: In July, a young man shoved his way behind the counter in a small store, the kind called a bodega, and began manhandling a cashier called Jose Alba. Mr. Alba had a large knife behind the counter for use in situations like this. On the video clip you can see the young man attacking the older one first; you can see the white-haired (61 years old at the time) cashier aiming the knife. The video stops short of the part where Mr. Alba stabbed his assailant repeatedly, and emergency workers arrived to find the young man dead from loss of blood. Things that happen in big crowded cities...this was in New York. Where else?

https://www.rebelnews.com/tags/save_jose

It was unmistakably self-defense, and Mr. Alba walked. Rightly so. But one has to wonder what, besides the solar flares and the local warming effect, was going on. According to a Canadian news blogger whose e-mail I received very belatedly: 

"

In that video, a man named Austin Simon was seen going behind the counter and physically assaulting store clerk Jose Alba. The dispute was reportedly over a bag of chips that Simon's girlfriend was unable to purchase because her card was declined.

During the altercation, Jose tried to leave, but Simon continued to aggressively block his path inside the cramped confines of the store.

" 

The assailant had a girlfriend. Probably he had other friends. Likely he had a family. Probably a lot of people miss him. If it had happened in Washington the assailant might have been the subject of one of those mournful write-ups in the Sunday essay section, written for family members to save, detailing how he used to be a Boy Scout and so on and so forth, and an unknown assailant shot him in the back. Nobody ever claimed those stories weren't true, so far as they went, but they did skim lightly over the fact that a lot of those young men were shot in the back because they had become involved in the drug trade. 

The store's security camera doesn't show us what was said but we have to wonder at what point it might have been different.

AS: "Give'r the bleeping chips, man! I will bleeping kill you!"

JA: "For a bag of chips you want to go to prison?"

Bystander: "Here, Miss, I've got the $1.49. Enjoy your chips."

JA: "Thank you. Have a nice day. Next?"

Or perhaps:

AS: "Wossamatta her card, man? She just deposited money in the bleeping bank yesterday?"

JA: "I don't know. Banks are slow. I cannot charge the $1.49 to her card."

AS: "Well that stinks, that blank bloop bleeping stinks! Here, sweetie-pie, I'll pay for your chips."

Or perhaps:

Girlfriend: "I just put my paycheck on that card! I want those chips. I want those chips!" (Pouts.)

AS: "Well bleeping blank, Trinket, I got no money either!" (Turns out his pockets.)

JA: "Oh for pity's sake. Kids. Take your chips. Pay when one of you's got $1.49 in cash. Another time maybe you won't put your whole paycheck on the card." 

I've seen each of those scenes play out. Many times. It's downright embarrassing for people who pay with cash to dig into a purse or pocket for change. Some bystander is likely to imagine that they don't have enough change, or can't spare it, and offer to pay for them. 

People who don't carry cash, it seems, are a whole different culture.