Of course, this was in Florida.
All content has been edited for clarity.
I Can’t Believe She Won
“This happened a couple of years ago in Florida before all restaurants started recording their seating areas. Even with the camera on my phone, I was not aware enough to start video recording the entire sequence of events.
My friend and I were sitting in the back of a fast-food restaurant just talking one evening maybe ten minutes before the store was closing. We were the only ones left in the seating area when a young teenager walked by us and ‘accidentally’ spilled some water on the floor. He continued without stopping and walked towards the side entrance of the restaurant. There was an exit-only door that could not be opened from the outside. There was nothing unusual about this thus far, but what caught our eyes was that the young boy (maybe 13 or 14 years of age) stopped and was just looking outside of the door for several minutes. Our initial thoughts were, that maybe he was waiting for a ride home.
He eventually opened the door and a visually pregnant woman entered the restaurant through the open door with another younger child (maybe five or six years of age) and said something to the teenager. Again, we thought it was odd that she entered through this door, but nothing to make me think to turn on the camera at this point. She just sat at one of the tables and said something to the teenager. He then went back to the soda machine and refilled his cup with some additional water and handed it to the woman.
What happened next was truly amazing. We were the only ones in the dining area, and since we were on a business trip killing time, we were just sitting without any rush. As we sat for another maybe five minutes, the woman kept looking at us during this time and kept looking out the window. From where we were sitting we could not see what or who she was looking at in the parking lot. However, she never went to order anything or even go to the restroom, it was as if she was just waiting for us to leave. Again we were on a business trip and were going to leave when the store closed but were not in a rush.
Now the fun part. After several minutes of just sitting there, she eventually took the cup of water poured it on the floor and sat down near the puddle, and started screaming. She didn’t fall, she literally just sat on the floor. The teenager then ran to the front of the store seeking help from the workers. We sat there laughing until we saw the frightened look on the young night manager’s face. She had an employee call emergency service and tried to calm the woman until the police and fire department arrived a couple of minutes later.
Now the funny part. The lady laid on the floor crying in pain until the ambulance arrived. Apparently, there was a station nearby and they arrived very quickly. Amazingly, the woman’s husband arrived at the same time. The rescue service offered to take her to the hospital but she refused. She didn’t even allow them to help her up off the floor or to take her blood pressure. She only wanted her husband to help her, and the whole time the husband is screaming at the store manager for having a ‘dangerous environment’ and the police had to calm him down. They only wanted the name of the manager and a police report. After refusing medical assistance, they signed and received some paperwork from the fire department and left the store.
We provided our statement to the police that we witness the entire incident. We also spoke to the night manager, who was a recent college graduate in her first job. Unfortunately, she was visibly shaken by the whole event as it was only her third night on the job alone. We told her not to worry because there was no water on the floor before the lady poured it on the floor. She hadn’t come through the front door of the restaurant. The boy didn’t order anything either. He asked for water and they gave him a small cup. We thought we had ruined their ‘slip and fall’ plans by being witnesses.
We didn’t think anything of it and almost forgot about it until about a month later we were contacted by the restaurant’s attorney providing us with an update. The company had decided to pay the woman $5,000 to settle this claim rather than defend itself. The attorney said that would cost them much more to fight this case in court than to just make it go away. My friend and I were willing to return to Florida to testify, but I guess with our travel expenses and the legal fees I can see where the costs would not be worth fighting. The woman would probably not show up to court, but their attorney would just keep extending the case until eventually, it would cost the restaurant more in legal fees than to just pay.”
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