Donuts, Coffee, and Nothing Better To Do

Frosted with a maple glaze and creme-filled was my favorite but sometimes it required a coin toss to decide which one would best satisfy my craving;  maple, or one of those covered in a chocolate paste. Sometimes I would get both and then another cup of coffee to wash them down. I was aware of the stigma and the jokes about cops and donuts but I didn't care, I liked them and when I wanted one, or two, I walked into a place that sold them and then returned to my cruiser to head for a quiet spot where I could pause from the rigors of my normal tour of duty and belly-up to the steering wheel and grab a quick energy boost...or two. Sometimes I could actually relax for a few moments and enjoy these short respites from having to answer a call on the police radio to go and try to solve someone else's problem or to save them from one but it wasn't always like that. In fact, I have had to throw away more uneaten stale donuts than I care to remember; what a waste of our tax dollars that was! Yes, I paid them too; some of the taxes I paid went to pay my own salary! I know, that's sounds unfair but I paid them willingly because it was my civic duty to do that also. I used to think that us cops should be tax exempt but no one would listen to me. I mean, I thought I had a good argument for that because of all of the times a citizen reminded me that he paid my salary, as if  to suggest that I wasn't also chipping in to it.

Yet even though I always knew the risks involved with that mark of disgrace that is associated with cops and donuts I was still willing to throw caution to the wind each time I pointed to one under the glass counter and asked for one, or two. I felt the disgusted gazes of some in the store and I felt as if I could read their minds each time the money exchanged hands. "Another cop with nothing better to do"  or  There goes my taxes, hard at work!"  But they were wrong on either count; I could have marked off sick that night and stayed home where I could have found plenty of better things to do but instead there I was: in uniform and a target for all sorts of craziness, including short-sighted opinions from some that didn't always understand our reasons for showing up dressed as we were night after night. I mean, I rarely found something better to do than coming to work when I knew it was the right choice to make; in fact when I retired I had nearly 2000 hours of unused sick time on the books as well as eight weeks of unused vacation time! Imagine all of the donuts and coffee it must have required to keep me up and alert all of those nights that I did show up to earn those tax dollars we paid.

For the sake of argument during every cop's tour of duty when things settle down long enough for him to take a break we will stop and catch our breath.  I confess, I didn't work from 8 to sometimes 12 hours a night straight through without taking a short break if I could get one. After all, street cops don't get a lunch hour like some other jobs allow. We wait and hope for a slow-down if we are lucky enough to get one and then we do the best we can so we don't collapse on the job. Therefore, anytime I took a pause, whether it was to grab a donut or a coffee or both, those tax dollars weren't really working  that hard, just still working! If I had a donut every time a traffic violator asked me if I had something better do than to just pull driver's over to write them a ticket or give them a warning I would be a pretty fat guy by now! I used to get that a lot;  "don't you have anything better to do?"  My answer was always no; "I could be sitting in some quiet spot eating a warm donut and enjoying a hot cup of coffee, but then you came by going like a bat out of Hell and now here we are! Somehow doing this seemed more important because you could have killed someone!"  

One night I answered a complaint that was called in over a neighbor playing his music too loud at 3:00 in the morning. When a clearly intoxicated man answered the door he asked if the donut shop was closed and wondered if I didn't have anything better to do than harass innocent citizens in their homes.
I explained to him that I would rather be down at the shop ordering either a maple or chocolate covered creme filled donut but I felt it was more important to stop by his place and ask him to turn down his music so other people could sleep. I politely reminded him that he was keeping someone awake that might need to get up for work later in the morning. When he asked if it would make me happy if he turned down his music I told him no, that he couldn't do anything for me that would make me happy but it might satisfy the complainant that he woke up. Then he reached into his pocket and threw a dollar at my feet and said : "here, go get yourself a donut!"  I picked it up and thanked him and then he asked if we were all finished. I told him that if he turned down his music we were done but if he really wanted to buy me a donut he was a quarter short. He slammed the door in my face.

It was like that sometimes; me, with nothing better to do but to crave a little junk food and eventually finding the time to satisfy that craving and if someone else generously picked up the tab it gave me a renewed confidence in those I served. But I always wondered why there was that stigma over cops and donuts. If I had one for every time I saw someone who wasn't a cop walk in or out of a place that sells them my fingers might be too fat to punch these keys. If I saw someone dressed in ordinary clothes walking out with a bag or a box full of them I wondered if they planned to eat them all or if they were taking some home to share with their family. But then I wondered, maybe some of those people were right, that everyone that stops into donut shops are cops also, and if they are taking them home maybe everyone there is also a cop. I mean after all, isn't that the real reason bakeries make them?

Cops eat donuts because they have nothing better to do, oh my! Thank God I am retired from all of that now because since walking away I have found better things to do, and every time I visit a donut shop now I am expecting someone to stare at me and wonder if I am a cop, maybe just out of uniform, and then perhaps make a crack about being lazy or eating donuts on the job, but it hasn't happened yet. I think I miss that.