I hadn’t been clocked in for ten minutes when it happened. While in the midst of changing trash in the back, I heard my name and poked my head around the corner. It was the assistant and store managers calling for me to come up front.

“Mr. Peepee is here,” the store manager tells me, “if you want to kick him out.”

She meant Mr. Water. The self-proclaimed Guardian of Souls. And this? This was like an early Christmas gift.

“Oh, I’ll kick him out.”

I see him at the far end of the dining room, sitting at one of the small tables. He had ordered no food or drink, of course, but as he unpacked his new cell phone, he was nonetheless making a mess on the table that was spilling to the ground.

“You’ve got to leave,” I told him, but not in an overtly aggressive manner. I try and use the Mitch Approach, which I inherited from a manager I formerly worked with who is now high up in the company. You remain as calm and polite as you can and as they inevitably grow increasingly more aggressive, just maintain your calm, polite approach.

Not only will it keep you out of trouble, but it really, really pisses them off.

He’s talking in that angry, fast-paced, mumbly, verbal-Scrabble kind of way that he does whenever we kick him out, but I managed to make out something he said about him having just bought a 20$ gift card to our fast food joint.

He also used the word “slander” in a way that implied to me that he didn’t really know what the word meant. So I elected to ask him politely if he knew what that word meant and in response, he angrily rattled off an incorrect definition as his eyeballs seemed to bulge out of their sockets. I kindly suggested that when he got his phone up and running he should access an online dictionary. He rattled off his incorrect definition again and kept up his fast-paced, angry, mumble-speak. I just kept telling him to have a nice day until he was out the door.

So that’s how my shift began.

I should just come out and say that I do indeed realize I’m being an asshole here. Relevant to this interpretation of my behavior includes the fact that he has a mental illness and drug problems, as is the case with many wandering the streets in this town, and on top of that I believe he’s currently homeless, and its bitter fucking cold out there today.

But he’s also such a self-entitled, narcissistic jackass. I can’t ignore that, either.

Despite the services available to him — free money sent to him every month, therapy, access to affordable housing — he’s always asking for cigarettes and food, constantly loiters here and presumably in other restaraunts in town, leaves behind a mess (and at least once, a puddle of urine on the floor of the restroom) and keeps getting kicked out of apartments he’s lived in for reasons I’m uncertain of but can easily imagine.

I’m not going to judge him for being insane (after all, I may qualify myself), or for being poor (I’m not homeless, but I only have a paycheck as a cushion between paychecks if I’m careful), or even for drug use (I heart Mary Jane, I think my on-off relationship with booze may qualify as abuse, and I’ve experimented, though mainly with psychedelics and careful attention to set and setting). I will judge him on the basis of his character, however. I will judge him for a total lack of empathy, attempts at malicious manipulation, and how he treats others in general.

And he’s a dick.

So while it hurts me hurting his feelings, I’m willing to take that psychological pain-echo because I realize its entirely justified. And a dark, aggressive part of me does enjoy kicking him out, there’s no fucking denying it.

Don’t bite the hand that feeds. Don’t extend your poverty to the realm of respect. Don’t take advantage in the negative sense of the word. Don’t take things for granted. If he didn’t act this way, there’d be little issue with him hanging in the restaurant. He would still have a place to live, too. He’d have shelter and warmth.

And me? I wouldn’t be cradling these internal contradictory emotionally-laden perceptions in which I feel guilty yet justified in being the guardian of my loathesome workplace with respect to him.