This is not the most prestigeous or high paying job in the world, but it has been enough to make ends meet (barely) for a single lady with no children.

So last Thursday morning early she gets a call from the manager of the place, which fortunately went to voice mail and was recorded. This woman says, "I hope you can get the keys without too much trouble, I locked the place and put them back inside through the mail slot. Oh, and Jeremy knows the alarm codes for the front door, you know the rest of them. I'm on my way to Texas and I'm not coming back."

Okay when MJ wakes up and hears this she almost has heart failure, and after she calls me and shrieks about it for a few minutes she decides to call Jeremy, the other bartender, and figure out what to do.

Between the two of them they decide to go over there and check it out and see if they have to break the door down or what. (The main owners live down near Salem, a 4 hour drive.) I told her to be sure and take the tape from the answering machine to play for the police so she doesn't get her ass arrested. For once she thought I might be right.

Well she and Jeremy decided they really do have to break into the front door, so they phone the cops first and tell them what is going on. Naturally the cops are suspicious. They play the tape, the cops make a long-distance call to the owners, and decide send a couple of officers to accompany MJ and Jeremy to the "burglary" site.

Once the front door is opened, Jeremy punches in the correct code for the front door alarm, and MJ punches in the correct codes for the storage room, the freezer and the cash registers, so the cops are convinced that they are probably legit.

The upshot of it is that MJ has been promoted to general manager, and Jeremy to asst. manager, both with hefty pay raises. They are still laughing about having to burgle the place to get a promotion!