That time I lost $2k cash in the middle of the road.

One of the things I hated most about working at Pizza Inn was our nightly deposit routine. Every night after close (my shift of choice), I was expected to put all of the store’s nightly earnings into a bank deposit pouch, walk out of the store with it in my pocket, drive to the bank five miles away and deposit it. It was not uncommon for me to walk out of our store alone at 2AM with anywhere from $2,000-$3,000 on me. Some of that money was in checks, but an awful lot of it was in cash. The bag sat at the bank overnight; whoever opened the store the following morning was responsible for going by the bank and retrieving the cash.

I was so paranoid about leaving the store with that much money that I would greatly vary my post-work routine in order to throw of any would be thieves casing the joint. Specifically, I never drove straight from work to the bank. Sometimes I’d go through Taco Bell’s drive-thru and order a Coke just to make sure no one was following me. Sometimes I’d turn left coming out of our parking lot, and sometimes I’d turn right. Sometimes I’d stick the money bag down the back of my pants; other times I’d hide it in an empty pizza box that I would carry out to my car. This may sound like paranoia to you, but our store wasn’t exactly located in the best part of town. One night while I inside working someone broke into my car and stole not only my stereo, but also all my speakers. We also had to regularly paint over fresh gang graffiti in our bathroom stalls and on our trash dumpster.

So one night right before I was about to lock up and head to the bank, my friend Josh called the store to tell me he was having a party at his house in Yukon, about 20 miles away from my store. I stuffed the money bag down my pants and headed out the door toward Yukon, skipping the bank altogether.

Now, I wasn’t completely comfortable with carrying around $2,000 in cash all night, so I decided to hide the bag in my car. My first two ideas (on top of the sun visor and underneath my floor mats) seemed to obvious, so instead I stuck the bag down in between my seat and the door.

When I was almost to Josh’s house, I heard a funny noise coming from my car. I pulled off of Main Street (Route 66) onto a side road that runs parallel to it. (If you’re from the area, it’s the road that runs in between Main Street and the Bowling Alley.) I got out of my car and checked my tires — nothing. Maybe I was just paranoid? Everything looked fine so I got back in my car and headed over to Josh’s.

The party was like all of Josh’s parties. There were a dozen or so friends of ours, along with a few female co-workers someone had bamboozled into coming (they never stayed long). A lot of those parties have run together and I don’t remember which particular one this was. It may have been the one where Chebon made us watch Led Zeppelin’s Dazed and Confused video a hundred times in a row. It may have been the one where we laid on Josh’s back porch, pouring salt on slugs. It could have been the one where we drank too much — wait, that was all of them.

Around six in the morning, it hit me that sometime before 8AM, someone from Pizza Inn — most likely, the owner — would be stopping by the bank to pick up last night’s deposit, which was still in my car. After shaking off the cobwebs, I went out to my car and found … no bag.

It wasn’t there. I searched next to the car seat. Nothing. I searched on top of the sun visor. Nothing. I searched under the floor mats. Nothing. I searched all the places I had searched before just to see if I had missed it. Nothing.

Somehow, I had lost a bag full of cash. $2,000 in cash, to be exact.

The thing that didn’t make sense was, not only had my car had been locked the entire time I had been at Josh’s, but my alarm had been set! It seemed impossible that anyone could have broken into my car. No one even knew about the money bag! At this point I both sobered up very quickly and began freaking out. My friends suggested that I retrace my steps — but there really weren’t any! I had come straight from the store to Josh’s. But, wait — I did stop in the middle of the road.

Oh, shit.

I popped the clutch and burned rubber like you wouldn’t believe a Ford Festiva could. I ran through every stop sign in the neighborhood. The knot in my stomach tightened as I imagined what would happen if I had to come up with $2,000. At the time, my net worth was nowhere near that.

I flew out of Josh’s neighborhood and hung a left. It was almost 7AM now, and daylight. I cut across another intersection and turned on to the frontage road. And there, lying in the middle of the road, was the bright red money bag. And I mean, bright red — I could see the thing from across the intersection. The pit worsened as I slammed on the brakes and leaped out of the car to retrieve the bag. Could the money still be inside? Or had someone taken the cash and tossed the bag aside?

But it was all there. Every dollar. For a moment I just stood there in the middle of the road with my car still running, wondering if this was really happening.

But the fun wasn’t over yet — I still had to get across town, back to the bank and get the bag deposited before anyone showed up to pick it up. I don’t know what the top end on a 1993 Ford Festiva is, but whatever it is, I hit it. Oh, the speedometer may only go up to 85mph, but that needle was buried.

I did, for the record, make it back in time. I dropped the bag off at around 7:30AM. Seeing as though someone had to pick it up before 8AM, I can only imagine that they were just minutes behind me.

I worked at Pizza Inn for a few more months, and while I continued to vary my nightly deposit routines, I never again left that kind of cash in my car.