The Subtle Difference Between Glass and Boogers

I’m at work one evening, my assistant manager is in the back room on her dinner break, and I am alone in the store. Car pulls up in the parking lot, the passenger gets out. Guy walks in, buys a bottle of vodka, and gets back in the car. Nothing notable.

Thirty seconds later, the same individual comes back in, with the cap removed from the bottle. About a shot’s worth of vodka is gone. Around the rim of the bottle a good-sized triangular piece of glass is missing.

The guy says, “Hey man, we have a problem here. I just got this bottle and it’s cracked, man. I just swallowed glass, man.”

He said this in his normal voice. No coughing. No holding his chest. No raspy, cut-up esophagus voice. I asked him if he was alright.

“Yeah man, I just need another bottle, you know, I think I need to get something off because I just swallowed glass, this is ridiculous.”

Are you sure you swallowed glass, I said.

“You know how when you swallow a booger, you know how that feels? Well man, that was definitely glass.”

I get my assistant manager from the back room.  She is not pleased.

The guy then explains how he just swallowed glass from the bottle he had bought thirty seconds before, and how he simply wanted another bottle. My assistant manager then says, “So you had an open container in your car?”

“Well, uh, yeah.”

“You do know that’s illegal, right?”

“But I’m just the passenger, I’m not driving.”

We explained that having an open container of an alcoholic beverage in a running automobile is illegal regardless of who is driving.

“Oh.”

He places his defective, presumably glass-filled (or booger-filled?) bottle on the counter, and leaves.