Dollar General: A Personal Account

On a warm October day in 2023, I visited a Dollar General store in Charlotte.

In all honesty, I was skeptical to stop … intuition. The shooting at a Jacksonville, Fla., Dollar General, leaving three dead, had just recently made the news. But I only needed bottled water. I’ll just run in and run out, I thought.

Upon walking in, I looked up at the television monitor and immediately felt my stomach drop. Security footage showed me stepping into the entrance, but my mind instantly snapped to a flashback of the armed man with a large gun that had played on the six o’clock news for weeks.

My pace quickened to make the trip as brief as possible. I picked out my bottle of choice and headed to the checkout. In front of me was a man, dressed in all black with a backpack, dusty sneakers, and nothing to purchase in his hand. A few feet behind, I observed as he fidgeted and tapped his foot nervously with a $10 bill bunched up in his hand.

His body language read nervous.

Searching for something to buy, he reached down to the bottom shelf of ‘last purchase items’ and grabbed a cellphone charger. I stood back, watching, cradling my Core Hydration bottles in my arms.

Next in line, he walked to the counter and the cashier scanned the item. He stuck out the $10 bill. The cashier grabbed the bill. The sound of the drawer opening signaled an abrupt motion that happened in seconds. In an instant, the man threw himself over the counter and yanked the cash out of the drawer.

He ran out of the store so fast that smoke could have followed him. So fast that one of his tennis shoes was left behind in the doorway.

Luckily, he didn’t have a gun.