THE CUBICLE YEARS

When The Candy Store Was Mine

The shootings were a problem, I guess

When they told me I was hired, I wept with joy. I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of teaching.

The government building was in a strip mall and soon enough, I couldn’t wait to relocate from that place either, home to hoodlums who circled the parking lot like hungry sharks. Solo afternoon walks during office breaks were not recommended.

The rhythmic thump of club music bled through our shared walls, drifting into my cubicle as I pored over a bottomless well of medical records.

All I wanted was a respite from bad neighborhoods, but my new job processing stacks of paper came with other perks.

The Candy Store sat like a friendly uncle on a park bench, at the intersection of two wide and busy streets, where it had been doing steady business for decades. Legend had it that occasional soccer moms or old ladies craving sweets would wander in seeking a Whitman’s Sampler, and who could blame them?

The ladies at The Candy Store were entertaining gentlemen all day as I tried to decide if Joe Blow needed an x-ray or a psych exam, or both, and tossed his file on top of more files. Hijinks at the strip club extended deep into the night, but because I worked for The State, they let my less athletic, less exposed ass go home after dark.

Then they changed the name to Venom, one of the most boneheaded business decisions in the history of Tucson, Arizona.

A few months later, four men were shot outside the club on a perfectly ordinary Friday in broad daylight.

Who would do such a thing when the exterior of strip club formerly known as The Candy Store resembled a building from The Game of Life?

We finally moved to a new glitzy building — located in a former Honda Motorcycle dealership the size of a stadium — but I missed the strippers and shootouts and crack pipes and the presence of security guards.

The updated, modern office headquarters had obvious advantages. You could trot over to a nearby mega-convenience store that stocked 43 beverages and row upon row of energy drinks. There was tons of space, and access from the highway was excellent. You could wander around a neighborhood for your mandatory 15-minute afternoon break without fear of bullets.

But The Candy Store — I refuse to ever call it Venom, just like I refuse to call National Airport “Reagan International Airport” — always had a dark side.

It wasn’t full of gentlemen.

The Candy and the Pistolas

The first shooting happened during training, a 13-week paradise during which I was paid to show up to a building, sit at a desk, and learn about medical science.

Yes, they paid me good money.

The kicker was I knew the job from a prior engagement in Colorado, so I was already ahead of the material. On top of that, I’d come from a gig teaching high school which left me exhausted and doubting my ability to accomplish anything worthwhile. This attitude made me the perfect government employee.

It was obviously not our job to accomplish anything worthwhile.

I watched a couple of trainees drop out and wanted to shake them and scream:

“Don’t you realize this class is the pinnacle of your career?!?”

During week 10, Charlene, who had recently moved from the mean streets of Los Angeles and given up a job in worker’s comp, told our trainee clique she hadn’t gotten home on the previous Friday till way after dark.

We gathered ‘round, wondering what drama was about to unfold.

Charlene reported she left the building a little after five on a sunny afternoon, walked to her car, and heard multiple gunshots very close by. She ducked. A car peeled away.

She peeked over her vehicle. Three bodies were lying in the parking lot.

Sirens soon followed, then the police wanted to interview her as a witness.

Another guy got shot inside the club. He later died, and so did two of the dudes in the parking lot.

It was 5:10 in the afternoon. The birds in the nearby, long-suffering neighborhood went silent, and Charlene re-examined her decision to move out of L.A. to a safer city.

It turns out the slightly tipsy middle-aged men who lined up at the circular table around The Candy Store stage during the day shifted to a younger and more violent crowd at night. The gangstas did their business next door, after dark.

Except for that Friday, when the shooting started early.

I blame the gunfight and murder on club management. My co-workers didn’t think renaming the club Venom was the brightest idea. Sure, it would cut down on stray soccer moms seeking gift boxes of candy, but a giant sign with a purple cobra flicking its tongue was asking for trouble.

It wasn’t the first murder, and it would not be the last.

The Exotic Bowlers

During this sweet 13-week paradise of my working life, I would awaken each morning and bound off to work. I grinned with enthusiasm and every day felt like summer, but not Arizona summer. Summer in the Poconos.

As I drove across town and into The Candy Store/Venom parking lot, I sighed. I found a spot and gazed lovingly at our strip mall building — from the back because that’s where they made us park.

“I can’t believe they’re paying me to learn something!”

This honeymoon consisted of a series of lectures about the human body punctuated with learning a totally logical software program we would never use in the outside world. In this state of unfettered bliss, I first encountered Dr. Silverstein.

He was a short fellow inclined to dress in denim overalls. We would soon tumble into conflict, but during training days he was just another psychologist explaining how head injuries work.

Of course, I loved everything about hematomas and concussions. Tell me more!

Dr. Silverstein was heavily into bowling, so he’d recruited another psych doc into a league, along with two other guys who had nothing to do with Social Security Disability. Before he was my enemy, then frenemy, then good friend, he gleefully regaled me one day about how the team had bowled with strippers the night before.

It turns out The Candy Store had its own bowling team. Two of their ranks were dancers, two were management. They competed in Silverstein’s league and they’d all met up during the competition.

He and the other doc were over the moon about this fact, having competed against them down at the Cactus Lanes. Now he knew their names.

It was not the first time I’d witnessed a man going ga-ga over chatting with a stripper, and it would not be the last.

The Stray Crack Pipe Incident

I and the other trainees were eventually released into the wild, where we attempted to adjudicate disability claims while overcoming the disappointment of having to work like all the other schlubs.

They stationed us in units, but we’d bonded during our shared boot camp.

I was assigned a fabulous supervisor named Karl who was not only impossibly handsome but gay as a Christmas tree — meaning I would never develop a crush on him — and against all workplace odds, he knew how to manage people.

Karl may have been my only boss in the history of the Peter Principle who was a skilled manager.

His exceptional supervision was no match for what happened when I stumbled outside the building one day, for his wing of protection offered no shelter as I tried to fly from the nest.

The quartet of trainee lunch buddies would split up soon because one of us wanted to walk during lunch, but today we were whiling away our one-hour lunch break enjoying the weather.

We’d been using the back patio for lunch since we were new and naive. The space came with a concrete picnic table and a shade cover because in Arizona it’s illegal and immoral to put furniture outside without a roof. The whole setup resembled something you’d find in a prison yard. Our table overlooked the parking lot we shared with The Candy Store/Venom.

I slipped onto the concrete bench to unpack my sandwich and sat down on a crack pipe.

First, they made me graduate from the training class. Then, I discovered I would never be part of the bowling team. Now, my ass had met with drug paraphernalia while I was serving the people of the Great State of Arizona.

The crack pipe shattered into several pieces.

“Did I just sit on a crack pipe?” I asked the group, gingerly pulling the shards off my jeans.

Charlene slowly nodded her head while chewing her sandwich. She was jaded from already having survived bullets whizzing by her car. Everyone else glanced over.

“Is that what that is?” asked Ellen. “I saw it out here earlier.”

We accepted the reality of having government jobs. Regular paychecks, free parking, and paid training were swell, but it was obvious why the veterans ate indoors.

The salad days weren’t over yet. Karl was still handsome and gay, no injuries were sustained, and it was becoming obvious I couldn’t get fired if I tried.

Summer gave way to fall, then glorious winter, then the usual windy Spring. Soon enough, I was no longer new or grinning and most of the trainees were history.

Summer came again, and management got its act together. They squeezed some funds out of the feds and we all schlepped across town into a less crappy neighborhood next to the highway.

Their decision had zero to do with our compromised safety in a sketchy neighborhood. It happened because a bunch of money got freed up after several decades, sort of like when road-building projects finally get funded. For a while, everyone thought we would expand and become better at cutting checks to Joe Blow and everyone else who desperately needs disability.

Yeah, that didn’t happen.

The new building was cavernous and strangely sterile as if it were haunted by the ghost of Anne Coulter. It’s as oversized now, ten years later, as it was then. They can’t get people to work as Social Security Disability Examiners. Of my training class of 12, one was left when I departed. He’s still there, which is a testament to the fact that he has a high school diploma.

“Hey, it’s better than serving burgers and fries,” he told me.

He was not wrong.

Venom is still entertaining gentlemen gangstas, but whenever I drive by that corner I shake my head at how anyone could be dumb enough to rename something called The Candy Store.

I miss the ten-foot-high words, with their candy cane striping and welcoming sheen and promise of something fun. I knew it was full of half-drunk men gawking at half-naked women, but I could always pretend it had candy, too.

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Jean Campbell recently started her first Substack newsletter to laser focus on getting her book, City of Lies: A Street Hustler’s Omaha Journey published.