Regarding Ron...

Ron was (still is) a driver for Mahjong. He was in his 30's, had a degree in both history and education, and an honorary degree in intense creephattery.

Ron seemed to have difficulty with concepts like "get to know someone the slightest bit before you sidle up behind them and massage their shoulders" or "don't continue conversations with me that you started with someone else without offering me any context" or "some people don't play World of Warcraft so this gibberish is completely meaningless to them". Now, rubbing up on total strangers is some USDA grade creep shit, but it was actually speaking with Ron that was jarring to me more often. 

There'd be times when I was cutting pizzas and Ron was talking to Jeremy. I couldn't hear them, but it was always pretty apparent that Jeremy was baffled beyond the capability for response. And when he would take a delivery out, Ron would saunter over and continue the conversation he'd started with Jeremy completely seamlessly.  

"Haha, that was pretty funny, man. Show me the fox." 

"I'm...sorry?" 

"Jeremy was trying to show me the fox." 

"You know I couldn't hear what you two were talking about, right?" 

"Yeah but I just wanted to say I agree. I gotta take this delivery. Make sure to tell Jeremy to show you the fox." 

About a third of conversations with Ron were mind-numbing non sequiturs with you trying to play catch-up in his hopscotch of madness, another third were him telling you all about World of Warcraft, and the last third were in-jokes he rarely shared with other people, like, "Show me the fox." 

After a couple weeks of prying, Jeremy and I found out that, "Show me the fox," was a product of one of Ron's blisteringly insane conversations. He was making a joke based on the idea that Jeremy was getting a tattoo of a fox tail sticking out of his butthole, as though a fox had burrowed into him.  

We resolved to start paying more attention when Ron talked.

But as creepy as he was, there was no denying that he also had a way of making you fear for your life!

One time, while folding boxes in the back, I noticed something tucked behind the electrical box for the store. I asked Jeremy what it was, and he walked over and pulled out an enormous fuck-off butcher knife. He explained that Ron kept it back there for reasons unknown. 



I decided eventually to confront him about it, and here is, as verbatim as I can recall, how that conversation went:  

"Hey Ron...I saw this, ah, knife, behind the electrical box in the back. Jeremy said it was yours." 

"Oh yeah, I always gotta have it back there." 

"Oh...why exactly?"

He looked at me darkly and said only, "Just in case."

At this point my pants were just filling with shit. I knew I was about to die. The smell of shit-fear was his trigger, he was going to strike. I could see how he'd do it, he was so much bigger than me, someone was going to clean the cornmeal-dredged shit off my dead--

"Gotta go! Show me the fox!"