Weeks ago, two men came into the place I work. They were full of rage. The older of the two men I knew would be a problem when he walked in because he looked at me from the door and said, "Howdy, ma'am." They pointed to a man in the building and told us he was a child molester. They wanted us to call the sheriff. They also wanted to take him into the parking lot and castrate him.
The taller of the two was a father and a blustering braggart who verbally threw his credentials at me. (People like that are people to watch out for because they get their sense of themselves from outside themselves. They think their affililations, money and perceived "class" make them special and better.) I do realize that at that point the man was desperate for action and using whatever he could to get us to comply.
The second "man" was a bead-eyed little redneck who I could tell was spoiling to do violence. He told the man's name. I recognized that the name he said was not the name of the fellow in the building.
I got my upline bosses to come out and speak to the men in question. I knew that really we had no right to infringe on the privacy of the man they referred to because of the law and our professional ethics. Certainly, if he was a registered offender, we have to take action because children frequent my place of work.
These men were understandably angry. Nobody likes a baby-raper... not even men in prison. It is a most heinous and damaging crime. I would feel the same way if I knew for sure the man had touched a child in the wrong way. The word was that he had approached children in the park. Someone working with me said that someone else had made the same claim on the man.
Standing together, we convinced the men that there was a right way to go about taking care of this problem and even offered them use of our phone to call the sheriff. Had I been the one to call, I would have had to complain about the men making the complaint because they came in making threats to someone I have never seen do anything wrong.
The men went outside to use their cell phone to call the sheriff. The sheriff came and questioned the man to whom the others had referred at length in one of our backrooms. After that, all was quiet, but we have been watching the man against whom the claims were made.
Last night, at the beach, I went to the restroom and there on the ladies room wall was a flyer from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, with a photograph and the name that the men had said that night.
The face on the flyer was very similar to the man we see in our business on a regular basis, but it was not the same face.
Today at work, I will print the FDLE flyer and show it to my co-workers. I will explain that we can stand down. The man who is often our customer is not a registered pervert... but he looks like one.
I have a feeling that at least one person in the room will insist that our guy is the man in the picture, because they have not learned to really look at people. But just maybe, though I feel doubtful, my co-workers will let it go and let our customer move freely, without suspicion.
Moreover, they will know that the whole thing is a case of mistaken identity because they have finally seen the real criminal and if the wild-eyed vigilantes ever return there will be no doubts as to whom the sheriff needs to be called for.
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