Creepy - You Don't Want to Talk to the Manager

Episode Date: May 11, 2020

Just let it go...***Written by DevilJuice***Check out our reward tiers at patreon.com/creepypod***You can also subscribe to us on YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/creepypod***Produced by Steve Blizin***Title music by Alex Aldea***Intro/Outro Narration by Joe Stofko Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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You don't want to talk to the manager. Written by Devil Juice. Like most people, I had my first job in my teens. I wanted a little extra pocket money for buying stuff for myself, hanging out with friends, and all the other sorts of things, much like any other teenager. It was a very typical scenario for a very typical kid. Well, for the most part, anyway. I applied for a bunch of different places.

But out all the ones I got job offers from, I settled on a convenience store just down the road from my family's apartment building. Not the most interesting choice, I know, but it's not like a teenager looking for minimum wage work as plentiful options. The simple fact that it was within easy walking distance from home was more than enough reason for me to choose it over the others. It was a pretty standard sort of place. It's all the usual trappings or a run-of-the-mill convenience store.

I think it used to be a 7-Eleven since I found a couple of other old signs in the back of the storeroom. By the time I was working, there was privately owned and went by the name of Ricks. Or it may have been Nix, or something else generic like that. I can honestly never remember. I dropped there a few times myself, since the place was so close and all. And I hadn't noticed any sort of major red flags.

The particular part of the city it was located and was relatively low traffic and safe, and the employee seemed happy enough. There were only ever one or maybe two people, remaining the store at any one time, and it seemed like they were generally left to their own devices. Overall, it seemed like a normal and relatively pleasant place to work. And it was, except for one little, very abnormal detail. It didn't come up until the end of my training, which was pretty standard fair as far as part-time, minimum wage work goes. I met a guy in the store in his early 20s by the name of Mike, who I previously spoken with at length

over the phone. While another employee was taking care of customers, he showed me around the place, got me acquainted with all the machines and procedures, went over all the rules and such I had needed to follow, and helped me with all the legal stuff and paperwork I needed to fill out as a new employee. As I said, pretty standard stuff. After all that, though, Mike had one final thing he said he needed to talk about with me. You see, I'd simply assume this whole time that Mike was the manager,

assistant manager or something like that. However, that wasn't quite the case. Mike was simply the most senior employee at the time. And though he was trusted to handle training new employees and other such things occasionally, outside of that, he was just another worker. The manager slash owner, the place was a man by the name of Mr. Downey. Mike led me to a room at the back of the building,

which appeared to be something of an office of sorts. I say it was an office, but the only thing that distilled, The room as such was a small metal desk that was pushed up against one of the walls. On top of the desk was a two-way radio sitting in its charging dock and nothing else. Other than that, the room was completely barren. The only feature of note being a set of stairs that went up to the second floor. Mike went on to explain that Mr. Downey lived on the second floor of the establishment. Though he handled all the necessary responsibilities of owning and managing a business,

he hated to be disturbed and never came downstairs during business hours or any other time anyone other than him was in the building. The radio was there if he needed to talk to him, but it was for emergencies only. Mr. Downey apparently wouldn't even bother to respond if you tried to contact him for any other reason. Obviously, I was a bit weirded out by this. But Mike reassured me that, though it was a bit strange, there's never really much of an issue. Despite being reclusive, Mr. Downey was very good about managing everything. Deliveries were handled on time, repairs and other servicing was requested promptly, and everything that was required to the employees was promptly communicated through written notes left in the store at the beginning of the day.

It was unconventional, sure, but it worked. Apparently, in the couple of years, Mike had been working there, he'd never spoken directly to Mr. Downey even once. As far as he knew, no one had. I wasn't entirely convinced by this. However, I didn't see it as something worth refusing the job over. So I just ended up shrugging it off. Honestly, though, Mike was right.

Despite having never seen or even spoken to the person I was working for, everything generally went rather smoothly. I've had managers since that I've seen and spoken to almost every single day that couldn't manage to run things even half as well as Mr. Downey. I'd go so far to say that convenience store was one of the best working environments that I've had in my entire life. I won't lie, though. Every now and then, the strangeness of it all would make me a bit uncomfortable.

There were security cameras in most of the rooms on the main level. They bothered me a bit, and there were no monitors or anything that we had access to. Logistically speaking, this left only one person who could be monitoring the feed. Every now and then when I was working, I'd glance up with those cameras and shudder a bit. The idea that I was being watched, maybe even constantly, was unsettling to say the least. I only ever thought about this for brief moments, though. Mr. Downey didn't seem to be the nitpicky sort.

There's never really any sort of performance review or much in the way a feed-beye. back. One of the workers got busted for stealing once, but that was really the only indication I ever got that Mr. Downey might actually be paying attention. As such, it was pretty easy to forget about the cameras for the most part. There wasn't much of anything else to complain about, really. All in all, it was a very laid-back and pleasant sort of gig. Of course, it wasn't all good times.

As anyone who's ever worked in any sort of service industry job can tell you, there's one uncontrolled aspect of the job that can turn any reasonably good day into a bad one at the drop of a hat. The worst part of any service industry job. The customers. Of course, I had my fair share of awful customers working at that convenience store as well. However, one of them stands out in particular. It was a woman that I generally referred to as Karen. Not because her name was Karen, but because she was a Karen in just about every way you can imagine.

I think her name was Christy or something like that. But I never really made the effort to try and remember. Frankly, I wanted to spend as little time thinking about interacting with her as humanly possible. She, however, seemed to want the exact opposite. She usually came in at least once per week and she always had something new to complain about. Maybe we were out of something

or just didn't have something she thought we should have. Maybe it was because the store was too hot or too cold or perhaps the lighting was too bright or too dim. Or maybe it was the poor service. No matter what, she'd think up something to gripe about, and no matter what, she would always be back. I frankly suspected that she came in specifically just to blow off steam by laying into whoever happened to be working at the time.

And I absolutely despised her for it. However, her behavior isn't the reason why I still think. think about her to this day. You see, Karen had this thing. She always wanted to speak to the manager. It was sort of a running theme for her. After every single complaint, she asked, no, demanded to speak with the manager. Now, you see, knowing what I've told you about Mr. Downey,

it's probably pretty obvious that this was never going to happen. We employees gave her just about every excuse in the book. It was out, sick, etc. We tell her that we would take a note of her complaints and let the manager know. And she'd begrudgingly accept that that was the best she was going to get. However, she never gave up asking. And eventually, our excuses were no longer good enough. I had the misfortune of being the one and only person working when she finally reached a breaking point.

I forget what her initial complaint was, and honestly, it doesn't really matter. But this time, she wasn't taking no for an answer. If the manager wasn't available, and she was going to wait until he was, was a bit taken aback. But I figured that this new thing of hers can only last so long. However, after two hours of her hanging around in the store, I realized that things weren't going to be that easy.

She wasn't just quietly standing there either. She was getting angry. Her random inane outbursts were even starting to scare off other customers. I was debating calling the police and having them handle it. But I paused, second-guessing myself. Glancing up briefly at the security camera that was angled towards a counter, I thought to myself that I probably shouldn't be the one to decide. I quickly ducked into the back and grabbed the two-way radio holding it up to my corner.

my mouth. I was never really the type to get nervous about phone calls and that sort of thing. But I had to take a deep, calming breath before I could bring myself to press the button on the side of the radio. I sad my voice shaking a bit. I trailed off. My mouth was feeling weirdly dry. I waited for a moment to see if I'd get a response but continued after being met with only silence. Emergency, per se, the police involved in... For a while, there was no response. I stood there for several minutes in silence, feeling like some sort of idiot. I was beginning to writing myself for the absolute ordeal that this would turn into once I had to call the police. When I heard something, a sound from the radio.

It wasn't a voice or anything immediately recognizable. I listened closer, holding the device up to my ear. I realized then that what I was hearing, It was background noise mixed in with a slight amount of static, as if the person on the other end was holding down the button without speaking. I could just barely make out a few noises through the static. But they were so faint that I could have maybe just imagined them. There was a low hum, a sort of intermittent clicking, and what I thought was bubbling? Before I could spend much more time trying to analyze these noises, my thoughts were interrupted by a dry, raspy voice of a person who could only be Mr. Downey.

He said, I stood there for a moment, just sort of processing that. The whole situation was just a bit outlandish. I felt uncomfortable about Mr. Downey's request, but I figured that it was still better than getting the police involved. I made my way back out to the storefront, trying to figure. out how I was going to present this to Karen in a way that was as reasonable as normal sounding as possible. Oddly enough, Karen took it in stride. Without giving me the chance to really explain about Mr. Downey, she simply jumped to the

conclusion that he was probably some sort of invalid or something like that. Not that it mattered, as she was still going to give him a peace of her mind either way. Not really wanting to go through the effort of trying to correct her, I just sort of meekly agreed. Besides, Mr. Downey could have actually been seriously ill or otherwise disabled for all I knew. I don't know if her self-assurance came from confidence or simple irritation, but she followed me into the back office and stomped up those stairs without batting an eye. She tried to twist the handle of the door and let herself in, but the door at the top of the stairs was still locked. She turned around to give me a snide comment about this, but I cut her off before she had the chance.

asking her to give me just a second. I looked around the office to try and find a camera to wave at to get Mr. Downey's attention, but there didn't seem to actually be one in that room for some reason. I hadn't had many reasons to spend much time back there, so it wasn't entirely surprising to me that I hadn't noticed. Lacking any real direction, I apt to pick the radio back up. Pressing the button down, I muttered into the receiver. Without even two seconds of delay after having spoken into the radio,

there was a loud click as the door at the top of the stairs swung open on its own. It was a bit... Weird, to say the least. The door itself was old and wooden, like it had been in use for 30 years or more. It certainly wasn't this sort of door you'd expect to be automatic. I could see the mechanism now that the door was open, even from the bottom of the stairs.

but it was perfectly concealed when the door was not in use. It was as if the door was set up with that specific intention in mind. All that could be seen through the now-open door was a sort of hallway with another closed door at the end of it. It's almost like an airlock or something like that. Karen looked back towards me overshoulder, the first traces of unease leaking into her confident expression. I shrug non-committally in response.

I had no words of reassurance to give her. Not that I would have given them willingly even if I had them. This was as much new territory for me as it was for her. She stepped forward and I watched as the first door slowly swung close behind her, latch snapping back into place a few moments later. I waited there for a few moments to see if the radio would crackle the life with further instructions from Mr. Downey, but it remained silent. I'd left the counter and attended long enough as is, so I simply took the silence to me and get back to work.

I busied myself with attending to my daily tasks, helping customers, and by messing around to my phone during my downtime. However, I couldn't get my mind off what was going on upstairs. Why had the reclusive Mr. Downey decided to actually meet with someone after such a long time of presumably having no contact with anyone? Like Karen of all people. Sure, he may have just wanted to do his duty as manager and calm down the angry customer. But some small, paranoid part of me was telling me that this wasn't as simple as that. What in the world was going on up there? One, two, three hours passed.

And Karen still hadn't returned from the second floor. It was nearing the end of my shift. As I was stock in one of the shelves, I debated how I was going to go about explaining the situation of the next shift. That was when all the sudden I became aware of a presence behind me Whatever it was hadn't made a single sound It was just there Whipped around

Stimbing back a bit and letting out a slightly embarrassing Startled Yelp It was Karen I had no idea how long she'd been standing there watching me Somehow she'd wander downstairs And out into the storefront from the back office Without being seen or heard

I hadn't even even and hurt her breathing. Was she breathing? I quickly lost track of that train of thought, though, when I saw her expression. The leathery sun-dried skin on her face, wrinkled with years of constant frowning, was twisted into the widest, most unnatural smile that I ever seen. Every single one of her teeth was exposed all at once. It was truly ghoulish to behold.

It looked forced so much so that it must have hurt to twist her own face. that extent. But it almost seemed stuck that way. Before I could steady myself and ask if she was okay, she thanked me for my time through clenched teeth and left the store, walking at a stiff, brisk walk. I stood there for a while, not quite sure how to process what had just happened. Karen's sudden change was jarring in far too many ways. What had happened upstairs to bring about this change?

whatever it was, I hoped it wasn't permanent. Serving her as a customer like this would be much, much worse. Fortunately, but also far more unfortunately, this would be the last time I saw her. That day, Karen got home, she beat her two young children to death with her bare hands. Afterwards, she waited for her husband to get home before promptly stabbing him through the neck with the kitchen.

knife at the front door. Neighbors who witnessed this call to police, but by the time they arrived, Karen had already hung herself. Murder isn't exactly uncommon in large cities like mine, and it rarely gets the attention it probably should. However, this particular instance of it was the talk of the town for quite a while, and still is in some circles. Though the sudden severe violence of this crime,

along with the apparent lack of motive, dead play a part in the case's notoriety. It wasn't the main reason it was talked about. Rather, it was the information that would leak out during the course of the investigation that really drew people's attention, most notably. The various bits and pieces that were found to be missing from Karen's body

during the autopsy, all seemingly with no wounds to account for the extraction and no reasonable explanation. about a fourth of her circulatory system, three inches of her large intestine, and the entirety of her parietal lobe were some notable examples. Throughout the investigation, the convenience store was never connected to the crime in any meaningful way. For a long time, I thought about going to the police to tell them what had happened. I almost did, but then something. happened to change my mind.

You see, when I got my next paycheck, Mr. Downey had sent me a little note along with it. It read, in dark red ink. It would be best for both of us if you never speak to the police about what happened. Along with this was a little crude drawing of an eye. The message was clear enough, but the meaning of the eye was a little bit less so. I thought at first that simply meant he was keeping an eye on me.

which it probably does impart. However, I had soon convinced myself that there was more to it. The cameras, the footage, wherever it is, shows me taking Karen to the back office. But that's it. There were no cameras inside the office, and I seriously doubt that there would be any on the second floor. It'd be far too easy to implicate me,

to make me out to be an honest. accomplice, if not the culprit. Lord knows it wouldn't be hard to establish motive. Sure, the police could believe my story, but I wasn't willing to gamble on that. Besides, it may be harsh to say, but I wasn't in any way willing to risk my own well-being and the well-being of my family over some self-righteous sense of justice. Call me a coward. But I sure is hell, I'm not an idiot.

I didn't stick around working. at the convenience store for very long after that. Years have gone by. I've long moved away from that city, worked many other different jobs. And even served a family of my own. I haven't ever spoken to the police or anyone else in my life about what happened.

I likely never will. I do think about it all every now and then. And ownership of the building passed to someone else. There's no. real record of Mr. Downey having existed before or even after that. All there is to prove you is real as the name on an old deed. I still have no idea who or what Mr. Downey was. Hopefully I never will.

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