"Bandits in Your Grocer's Freezer" is a 2021 comedy short story by Andrew L Bergman
Pete Keller works at his local small-town market where he's the assistant manager and Only Sane Employee. Then one day he finds that a small gang of generic fantasy bandits have encamped in the market freezer section. The Police Are Useless and the bandits kill the manager for attempting to remove them; yet somehow it's an Unusually Uninteresting Sight for the staff and customers still coming to the market. So Pete is left trying to figure how to save the market from leather-clad thugs.
This short story provides examples of:
- Beleaguered Boss: After Dale is killed by the bandits, Pete finds himself acting manager of the store; leaving him to handle disinterested and lazy workers, upset customers, and the bandits.
- Black Speech: Pete has no idea what language the bandits speak and describes it as being guttural and "generic villain"; having no idea if they're speaking a real language like Mongolian, or something fantastic like Orcish or Klingon.
- The Cavalry Arrives Late: After Pete defeats the bandits, a car drives up with the Rabbi arriving with a golem to fight the bandits.
- Cloud Cuckoolander: Ted is fairly lazy as an employee and absent-mindedly mentions skipping work in front of both of his managers. He comes up with the idea of writing a prophecy to get a hero to kill the bandits.
- Golem: While brainstorming a solution to the bandit problem, David recommends speaking to a rabbi to have a golem made. Pete shoots it down but at the end of the story Rabbi Levine arrives, after Pete already killed the bandits, with a golem riding in the passenger seat.
- Horny Vikings: One of the bandits wears a stereotypical horned Viking helmet so Pete dubs him "Viking".
- Humiliating Wager: Pete loses a bet to Sarah and had to go to work with fake elf ears and a Figwit nametag.
- Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me:
- Subverted when the want-ad hero arrives with gear, including a shield, and gets shot by the bandits before even trying to use it.
- Pete ends up using the dead hero's shield to battle the bandits, desperately blocking Boss's blows with the mace and manages to Shield Bash him.
- Only Sane Employee:
- Pete is seemingly the only employee taking his job seriously; Ted being lazy and Kathleen not caring about it.
- Mary Stevenson is the market butcher and the only one at the brainstorming session to suggest calling the police until they finally come.
- Police Are Useless: Pete calls the cops but apparently the Oasis Market is in-between counties so the police won't come arrest the bandits.
- Renaissance Fair: Dale's first response to seeing the bandits is to question if there's a Renaissance Fair going on; Ted absently mentions that if there was he'd be Out Sick.
- The Slacker: Ted tries to do as little work as possible. Pete knows that his "patient waiting" is him basically taking an unofficial break.
- Stock Scream: When Pete hits Viking in the back with the spear, he swears his death shout was the infamous "Wilhelm Scream"; his ex-girlfriend Sarah introduced him to it and was a "fan" of the sound effect.
- Take Up My Sword: An almost literal case; the hero summoned by Ted's want-ad gets killed by the bandits almost immediately, leaving Pete to take up his weapons and save the market.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Both the customers and the staff of the Oasis Market are amazingly tolerant of the leather-clad bandits camping out in the freezer aisle. When they're mugged or otherwise harassed they only complain about it to Pete.
- Wouldn't Hurt a Child: A seven year-old boy gets sent down the freezer aisle to get groceries. The bandits don't bother him and instead they play together. He tells Pete that they're nice but smelly.
