Dave Stalling is a gay Veteran with PTSD and he wants you to feel bad that he wasn’t treated like a prince at a local grocery, so he wrote an op-ed about what happened.
Dave Stalling didn’t approach Yolks to shop for food, it was to beg for help after this Veteran left his house with no shoes, no wallet, and a barely-charged phone that ran out of power shortly after his car ran out of gas. It was in this sorry state of total retardation that Dave Stalling tried to get help from some local working stiffs on West Broadway:
I’m the guy who runs out of gas. The guy who forgets his wallet. The guy who somehow ends up barefoot in places where shoes are apparently required. My son once told me that hanging out with me was like living inside a Seinfeld episode.
He’s not wrong.
Yet somehow I’ve managed to build a pretty good life. I’ve become a successful writer. I’ve led wildlife conservation organizations. I’ve become a popular public speaker on grizzlies, wolves, and other wildlife. I’ve met with senators and members of Congress. I’ve testified before the U.S. Senate about climate change and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
People know I’m a little crazy, and mostly they laugh with me.
Lately, though, something feels different.
Maybe the world has changed. Maybe people have become less patient. Less willing to see the human being standing in front of them. Maybe I’m becoming more crazy. I don’t know. But something feels different.
I also have PTSD.
With this introduction, Dave Stalling is setting up the reader to sympathize with his sad plight, when the reality is he expected to be treated like a special little toddler who should get the red carpet rollout by a grocery store manager who has to deal with dangerous insanity and real violence every day, since Yolks is in the homeless war-zone near the location where someone was literally stabbed to death in the early morning hours yesterday.
Despite this harsh cultural reality, here’s how Dave goes on to describe his sad plight of being a retarded gay Veteran with PTSD who ran out of gas and found himself on West Broadway with no wallet, shoes, or a functioning phone:
So there I was.
No gas.
No money.
No phone.
No shoes.Just another day in the life of Dave.
I decided the first priority was getting my phone charged so I could call someone for help.
I walked across the street to the gas station connected to the nearby grocery store, Yolks (formally a Safeway). Before I even went inside, I stood in the doorway and called out,
“Sir, I know I’m not supposed to come in without shoes, but I’m in a real jam.”
The employee couldn’t have been kinder.
He listened.
He understood.
He had empathy.
He wanted to help.Unfortunately, he didn’t have a phone charger. He suggested I try the grocery store.
Dave walks directly to the main store, burning his feet because he’s retarded, and almost gets compassion until the mean upholder of rules arrives to explain to Dave something the military should have drummed into his retarded head years ago: rules are rules, and you are NOT a special snowflake, Dave.
I guess he didn’t the memo.
Inside, another employee listened while I explained that I knew I shouldn’t be in the store barefoot but I was in a real bind and just needed to charge my phone long enough to call for help.
He was incredibly kind.
He found a charger and even let me sit near the entrance while my phone charged.
Then the manager walked over. His name is Rich Thornock.
Before I could explain anything, he told me to leave.I tried.
“Sir, I’m in a jam…”
“I don’t care. Rules are rules. Out!”
“I’m a Marine Corps veteran…”
“I don’t care. Rules are rules. Out!”
“One of your employees was kind enough to…”
“I don’t care. Rules are rules. Out!”
Over and over.
He wouldn’t let me finish a sentence. He wouldn’t let me say a word. Nothing mattered but the rules.
At one point I even joked,
“I suppose that’s why they call them rules… because they’re rules?”
It must have been REALLY TOUGH for Dave Stalling to use the phrase “I’m a Marine Corps Veteran…” and STILL not get special treatment, but that’s what happened. Then, after his smart-ass joke routine also fell flat, Dave eventually resorted to a verbal assault like a toddler throwing a tantrum:
I was exhausted.
My feet were burned.
I had no gas.
No money.
No phone.
I wasn’t asking for money.
I wasn’t asking for special treatment.
I was asking another human being for help.
Instead, all I got was,
“Rules are rules.”Someone later told me the store is near the homeless shelter and store employees deal with people experiencing mental illness every day.
So what?
If the manager thought I was homeless, so what?
If he thought I had a mental illness, so what?
Is that a reason not to listen?
Is homelessness a crime?
Is mental illness?
Is desperation?Because if that’s the standard we’ve adopted, we’re in deeper trouble than my dead phone, empty gas tank and shoeless feet.
Eventually Rich threatened to call the police. I told him to go ahead.
Yes, I got angry. But my anger didn’t come first. It came after being given absolutely no opportunity to explain my situation.
I knew the rules.
I even knew that the rules are rules.
I wasn’t asking him to pretend the rules didn’t exist.
I wasn’t asking him to let me shop barefoot.
I wasn’t asking for special treatment.I was asking him to listen.
For thirty seconds.
He wouldn’t.
Actually, Dave, you WERE asking for special treatment because apparently you think you ARE such a special guy that the rules SHOULD HAVE BEEN suspended for you, and, when that didn’t happen, you put a grocery store manager into the position of calling the police.
If you’re worried about how the cops treated Dave, don’t be, because we’re NOT talking about Brandon Bryant here and the violence visited upon HIM last August after he didn’t make those cowardly Missoula cops who beat him up on the sidewalk feel safe by putting his big stick down fast enough so they could assault him.
No, since Dave Stalling really does appear to be a special case, this is how our fine law enforcement officers put the kid gloves on and dealt with him after he lost his temper and started verbally assaulting the grocery store manager:
After a while it became obvious that he wasn’t responding to me as a person anymore. I had become a problem to remove instead of a human being standing in front of him.
That was frustrating.
That was humiliating.
And yes, it made me angry.By then my Marine Corps vocabulary had returned in full force. I told him exactly what I thought of him. It included a lot of profanity.
I’m not proud of that. Losing my temper didn’t help anything.
But pretending it came out of nowhere wouldn’t be honest either.The police arrived cautiously. I don’t blame them. But here’s what happened next.
They listened.
They asked questions.
One officer smiled.
“What rank were you
In the Marine Corps?”
“Sergeant.”
“I can see that,” he said.The police understood.
The police had empathy.
The police helped me.
They asked me to leave the property, which was perfectly fair.
Then they called the crisis response team.
Isn’t this nice? Instead of killing him, like the cops did to Ross Robertson, or beating him up, like they did to Brandon Bryant, they called some crisis ladies to pat Dave Stalling on his retarded little head.
Two wonderful women showed up.
They listened.
They understood.
They had empathy.
They helped me.
They gave me a gas card.
They got me back on the road.
They wished me well.Imagine that. Human beings helping another human being.
That’s all I’d been looking for.
Dave finally got what he had been looking for in the paid response of crisis ladies arriving on-scene once the paid response of cops was no longer required, and once the crisis ladies were able to deal with this grown adult man incapable of putting some flip-flops on his fucking feet before leaving the house, Dave was able to calm down and start reflecting on the larger societal ramifications of his retarded plight:
This story isn’t really about one grocery store manager. It’s about a society that says it supports veterans, people with PTSD, people experiencing mental illness, and people in crisis—until those people actually show up.
We put “Support Our Veterans” magnets on our cars. We hold mental health awareness campaigns. We tell people to ask for help. Then, when someone actually needs help, we hide behind policies.
Rules matter. But compassion matters more. Rules exist to serve people. People were never meant to serve rules.
What Dave might not understand, since he appears to be quite retarded, is that rules derive from taboos, and taboos derive from observing and adjusting behavior based on seeing and understanding undesirable outcomes, like how fucking members of your own family makes retarded babies. That’s why, Dave, in order to AVOID producing retarded babies, we turned taboos into rules and laws, and we did this to improve society. Based on your story it’s obviously more needs to be done.
Is Dave done bemoaning his treatment and what this means for Missoula and for America? Nope. He’s got a few more rounds left in the chamber to fire off before hopefully packing a go-bag in preparation for his next excursion into the wilds of West Broadway:
No one was asking Rich to abandon the store’s policy.
He could have asked me to step outside while my phone continued charging.
He could have spent thirty seconds listening.
He could have found any number of ways to enforce the rules while still treating another human being with dignity.Instead, the rule became more important than the person.
Maybe I am a little crazy. Maybe I always will be. But I believe the measure of a community isn’t how it treats people who have everything together. It’s how it treats the people who show up with burned feet, a dead phone, no wallet, no gas, and nowhere else to turn.
Because someday that person might be you.
And when that day comes, I hope you meet someone who understands that sometimes the most important rule isn’t written in a policy manual. It’s simply this:
Listen first.
Help if you can.
Remember the person standing in front of you is a fellow human being.Show some understanding.
Show some empathy.
Show some kindness.
Since Dave doesn’t get it, let me explain what he’s missing.
West Broadway is the ugly transportation corridor in Missoula that really showcases what TOXIC empathy has done, and it was done to this town by some very toxic people who have been exploiting Missoula’s kindness for many years.
To better help Dave have some understanding, this is the part of town where drug addicts burrowed beneath the literal road and cost the Department of Transportation $20,000 dollars to patch up the hole.
It’s also the part of town where a CITIZEN was arrested for picking up trash because picking up trash angered those hole-burrowing drug addicts in their natural, meth-fueled environment.
And, last but not least, it’s where I got down and dirty with a like-minded friend to do a homeless camp cleanup and found a fully functional and disgusting homeless sex swing, which I dismantled and eventually got arrested for myself during the state of the community event where I tried making this retarded community LESS retarded through education (but instead got schooled by the University of Lawfare).
One final note before I conclude this rhetorical dismantling of Dave. Since he likes Grizzly bears, and nature, and is pictured wearing a “Trout Unlimited” hat, I’ll offer Dave an opportunity: help me (a fellow retarded person) understand why the Buckhouse bridge landfill isn’t being fully cleaned up, because it’s really stumping me, and doing the research I need to do is a lot more difficult when you’re forbidden from going downtown without permission from your ankle-monitor professional.
Anyway, if you, dear reader, appreciate someone dumb enough to say what others just walk around thinking, please consider donating to my citizen journalist mental health fund. Any little bit helps as I try to mitigate the costs of taking classes at the University of Lawfare.
Thanks for reading!