He was on the back end of Dutch Village—meaning the asshole of Baltimore County.
I go there with his food delivery. It was probably 9 o’clock in the evening and get order and it’s $12.17.
It was a ground floor place. He was a big, stocky dindu with a beard. He was about six-foot, 260-280 pounds, a big well-built guy.
So I’m out there with his bag of shit to eat and I rap on his door and he comes to the door and I say, “Here’s your food. It’s $12.17,” and this dumb asshole hands me12 dollars and I say, “It’s $12.17.”
He says, “You mean you ain’t gonna let me go on the 17 cent?”
I said, “No, I need that seventeen cents.”
He says, “How ’bout I take dat 17-cent out yo ass?”
I said, “Okay, Step out here.”
He was holding the interior door open and I was holding the storm door open and I’ve got him bottle-necked. If he wants to do anything he’s got to throw straight or charge out and I have all kind of room to do what I want to do. I also had it in mind if he runs back in the house I have to get the hell out of there, because he’s going for a gun. But the way I looked at it, I had him trapped in his house at that point,
He said, “Really, you gonna fight me over 17-cent?”
I said, “Yup.”
He said, “White-boy, dat’s crazy. You need dat 17-cent more than me!” and he gave me an extra dollar and slammed the door shut.
So, I got an 83-cent tip out of this idiot.
Thriving in Bad Places Kindle Edition
"OK. Step out here."
If more of us (me included) had the training, the motivation, the situational awareness, and the balls to make that response and mean it, the problem that drives the "take dat 17 cent out yo' ass" response that we hear would be gone, done, in a year ....