I once worked at a musical instrument shop. The owner was known for his crazy temper, and pretty much everyone that ever worked there was insane. Some of my favorite stories were:

1. A guy bought a guitar we donated to a PBS drive. When he came to pick it up, he said he felt ripped off. My boss took the guitar and smashed it into pieces in front of the guy, opened the register, and threw $200 in his face.

2. One time a pastor of a church kept saying he should get a church discount. Our sales people did all they could to get him a great deal, and spent hours dealing with his tediousness. When he chose a keyboard, an XP-80, he received his total and freaked out, saying he should get an extra 10% off of the price because there was some sign that said there was a 10% discount. Since he had already received more than this, the manager got the owner to come downstairs. The pastor began browbeating the owner, so the owner picked up the keyboard and threw it across the room, leveling a few drum sets that were stacked vertically. He said, "We're out of stock," and left.

3. We had a guitar teacher that was on some sort of drugs, and near the end, before he was committed to a mental institution, he was telling the students (we're talking about 12 year old girls and such) that there were monkeys living in his backyard that were taunting him and throwing stuff at his window, and there were nudists in his trees. Needless to say, the parents began complaining, but the guy simply disappeared before he was fired.

4. One of the salespeople was a crack addict. One time, he had the store delivery van and went home for lunch. When he got to his apartment, there was a fat drug dealer sitting in his La-Z-Boy, wearing his Hawaiian shirt, and eating his steak. The drug dealer took all of the items from the van to make up for money he was owed and the employee said the van was "stolen." The truth came out a few years later.

5. The same employee pissed off another drug dealer, and there were gunshots outside the store. When we went outside, there were bullet holes in the guy's car and windshield and a note on the wiper that said, "Wish you were here."

6. This same guy used to curse out customers that didn't buy anything and left his crack pipe sitting around on his desk.

7. Two of the employees were dating and would, uh, do things in the back room.

8. One of the employees used to talk about how he used to get sensual messages from children in his home country. Ugh.

9. The WORST saved for LAST - a certain Governor that was running for office in 1992 needed to rent a saxophone for an in-town rally. One of our employees supposedly... uh... took liberties with the mouthpiece, notably... uh... It is just too gross for Mahalo. Use your imagination on this one.

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