The Case Of The Missing Yogurt

Attention, Shoppers. Employees Only is an improvised podcast about a fictional superstore. Any similarity to a real store or real people is completely coincidental.

Way does the breakroom smell like fish? Was Victor microwaving SeaBASS again? I told him this is a common area.

Okay, Now that I have y'all in the breakroom, I just want to make some lunchtime announcements. Okay. First of all, we have completed one sixteenth of our sales goals for the quarter.

Hell yeah, all right, that is a whole cup out of a gallon.

That's a good way to look at it, Arnold, And I think we have two more days, so I think we're gonna hit the goal, all right. Second, y'all, we are missing a lot of shopping carts and we think a local gang is using them to do street races.

So a local gang, Yes, sounds like coded language a little bit, Jerry, what do you mean by a local gang?

Teenagers?

Yeah?

I just mean teenagers, Liz, I don't mean a certain ethnicity or anything like that. Well cool, I don't know what color, Robert.

Does anyone know what astrological sign? If there are cart racing batties out there. Somebody has to.

Tell me they're out there, Shilah. They're out there, and they are not the kind of boys you want. I've seen them out there. I've seen them out there on my smoke break because you can see where they're doing it.

They take all four wheels off or they lock.

Them up, and then they're sparking down the parking lot. Okay, and they're just jumping around. They're doing tiktoks.

You don't want boys like that. I've done it. I did it. Of course, back in my day, it was a mustang.

Do don't go watch them race the carts.

They tell us what to watch.

I can ask you to as an employee of this store, Jerry, then you've got to give people something else to watch.

You turn on the TV and it's closed circuit. What else are you watching? It's the same thing we go as.

Thank you for bringing up the TVs. That brings me to my final announcement. Okay, someone keeps going into electronics and making all of the TVs play the movie Venom Let there be Carnage. Okay, that movie is rated King thim Uh Liz. Something wrong.

Someone has taken my yogurt that I just put in the fringe this morning. Oh lord, this is a major betrayal of trust. This is my Activia probiotic yogurt that I eat after lunch to keep everything moving. I need it, Okay, Shila, Robert Arnold, you were all in here before we all got in here, So it's one of you.

I'm gonna find you.

Honey.

You can put that arthuritic puff knuckle back in your holes throw, okay, because you know it ain't me. You know it ain't me. You know I'm a total top with me. It is fruit on the top.

Okay.

I'll honestly take that, Arnold because it is a fruit on the bottom.

Shila, Do you have an excuse? What's your alibi?

I don't eat yogurt. Yogurt is old people food. Are you sure you didn't eat it and forget it? I mean that happens to my grandma all the time, Shila.

Isn't there like a TikTok tutorial about hair extensions you could be watching right now?

Oh my god, that's such a good idea, Robert.

You're gonna blame it one black person in the break room. Black people don't even eat yogurt?

Is that true? Is that true that black people don't eat yogurt? Because I had never heard that.

Jerry, How to hell? You're gonna tell me what black people do and don't do?

Mm hm, Well, I got a book for you. It's a book written by Thomas Sole where he says that black people should be eating yogurt.

I don't.

If I were to eat a yogurt, it would be ad animal or a yogurt. I'm not eating no old white lady yogurt.

All right, guys, this is really serious, Okay. When someone has their lunch stolen out of the fridge, we take it very seriously here at Bywell, so, Liz, I am on the case. Okay. When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Jerry, what is that? What are you talking about?

That?

It's Sherlock Holmes. It's something Sherlock Holmes said.

Okay, but like, how does that even apply here?

Okay, that specific quote might not apply to this situation. Can you know, can you just let me do my thing and find your find your yogurt thief?

So oh, okay, yoga goes missing and it turns into a whole episode of Scooby Doo SVU. But when they ate my lemon pepper wings, nobody knew nothing.

From mistakes to right on lewis nothing. We don't sound everything by.

Ooh DC, sweet carbonated heroin running through my veins.

I love this stuff. Anyone need me to cover their shift?

This week, they're ending all the COVID era relief, so my uh student loans are do again for the first time in three years.

Oh my god, Liz, you went to college. What did you major in grocery cards?

No, Shilah, I was a woman studies major with a minor in art history.

I also studied women in college, but I filmed it, so I made money.

Well, honey, I posed for pictures, and some of them were even in black and white.

I posed for pictures.

I am so glad that there is no AI bringing that to life.

Well, I'm on track to pay off my loans by twenty forty eight, and I figure by then I don't really even have to worry about it because the world will have been destroyed by climate change.

So well, work is good, work is good. Everybody should be working. I in my opinion, they never should have made everybody stay home because of that COVID. It was just an excuse for laziness. It was laziness from the top on down. You all know when I had COVID. I came into work, y'all remember.

Yeah, we remember, it was a full outbreak.

Wait, is COVID actually done? Because I was planning on having COVID next Wednesday unless somebody can cover my shift. I got invited to be a part of Post Malone's harem and I will be a Sunday.

Well, I can cover your shift. I need the money. Oh perfect.

I know it's gonna hurt you a little bit, Liz in the short term, but I think it's good that we have work requirements to get food stamps. You can't just lay around coffee and say I'm fat and sick.

If you can.

Survive any virus, I think you can survive forty hours a week working at Burger Kink.

Yeah, the loans was cool and everything, and everybody ran through those and eight crab legs for two months straight. What's messing me up now is the price of stuff going up. Daycare costs more. You know, they were getting government relief and now I gotta pay more for to wash the kids.

Now they they in the car.

Could you crack a window?

You think I left them in there with the window rolled up? No, of course I cracked a window. And I gave some of them little ice packs that you put on your injuries when you hurt yourself as soccer. They'll be good. It's expensive, man, everything went up. Why did eggs go up? If I pay this much for eggs, some chickens better hatch out these bitches. You hear me, Why do cereal go up? It's a Crunchberry shortage. Cap'm Crunch died of COVID. I guess huh.

I knew Captain Crunch back in New Orleans.

And let me tell you, he pretends to crunch, but when you get down to it, he is soft on the inside.

By Arnold, your boy Trump got indicted for the January sixth riot.

No no, no, no, no, no, no, he's not my boy. I leaned towards him. I leaned towards him, and if he was in the room, I would lean forwards for him. They're saying, oh, he did an insurrection. Honey, it didn't work. You can't hold somebody accountable if it didn't work.

I love that. I love that so much. We should apply that to my criminal record.

You try to murder somebody, you go to jail for attempted murder.

Yeah, honey, it wasn't attempted murder. It was just they were playing a game like.

It was redneck Freaknick and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed watching it at the house. I saw people trying to crime walls where there were stairs, and.

Some of them were black. Some of them were black. You can't deny it. One or two or three of them were black. You saw what he had people doing. Them dudes went down there and took a dunk on the floorida Capitol. They went and dookie for freedom. That's ridiculous. And it was the first thing they did too. That shouldn't be the first thing you did. That was terrible planning. You don't go in somewhere and doodo on the floor first.

They probably ate Lisa's activity yogurt.

Yeah, Shilah, it's effective.

If that man goes to prison, I'm gonna need a couple days off because it's just gonna be me and my magic wand and MSNBC for a few days at home together.

Mmm, Mike can kiss choking.

Okay, Shila, you need to respect yourself, Honey.

We all do it.

Honey. There's there's five hundred ways I've been choked. I used to live in Ashville. They used to choke me all night long in Ashville. And let me tell you, you can get choked. But don't ever let them shut you up. They're trying to shut Trump up, and I just can't go for it. He never even said to storm the capitol. All he said was that they stole an election and Mike Pence could fix it, and he was in the Capitol building and they need to fight

Didn't he say, I see y'all down there. I'm on the way.

There was different sentences, Robert. I know you're just hearing it. You're not seeing it printed out in the transcript, honey, But they were separate sentences. He said, these guys are down there, Let's go down there. He's in there, he can fix it. They stole it, period paragraph. And then he said I'm gonna see you down there. Maybe that's a different day, honey, he's talking about picnic.

I just can't believe this man will still be allowed to run for president.

I mean, they wouldn't hire you at by.

Well, if in the job interview you go, oh, by the way, I might be indicted on a few federal charges.

That's not true. I literally said that.

One time I was in Jacksonville and there was a very strong man and we disagreed about politics. He was a liberal, a Democrat, but he was strong and he kept me overnight, two nights in a hotel room.

I couldn't leave. It felt like prison.

He tied a T shirt around me, and he'd made me play Hungry Hungry Hippos for him for about forty eight hours. Right there in Jacksonville.

You told me you were going to your great aunt's funeral. I covered your whole weekend.

Well, honey, she's in the ground.

Bye.

All right, everybody, squeeze into my office here. Please close the door behind you. Okay, take a seat, folks, Shilah Arnold Robert. Now, Shilah, that's my seat. Don't sit in my that's my that's my wheelie chair. Don't sit there. Okay. Now, I've brought you in here to question you about the case of the missing yogurt Arnold. Let's start with you, my friend.

Oh, I know you're gonna start with I am gonna start with you, Arnold, because I know for a fact that you have been looking for ways to promote better gut.

Hell.

Hell, honey, you're I know what you're I know what you're saying. Is that because I need to clean it out more than everybody else, I'm gonna be eating eating yogurt with fruit on the bottom.

I would never use the term fruit even to describe bananas or apples or anything like that. So that's now, that's why.

I use the term fruit. Don't come at me like you don't ever say it. There's fruit on the bottom and there's nuts on the top. I know how it works. One of these days, I'm gonna slap you with a civil rights lawsuit.

That's why I don't want to get into to fruit and nuts and things like that with you, Arnold, because every time we start talking those words, you start you start threatening lawsuits.

So, honey, I do not need to be stealing yogurt from lez and refrigerator.

I work in the dala.

If I'm hungry, honey, I just take a little slap of that turkey. I put some mayonnaise on it, right on my hand, and I just put it right in. How do you think I make it from three pm to seven?

All right?

I think I'm satisfied with your answers for now. Arnold Robert, what let's talk about yogurt?

Robert, what about yogat? You accusing me of stealing yogurt?

Well, I just know that on a couple of different occasions you have accidentally eaten something that belonged to somebody else in the fridge. Specifically, one time you drank a sunkissed orange soda that I had specifically earmarked for myself in the fridge.

You put a soda in the fridge of a break room of a store that employs over one hundred damn people, and you expect that same soda to be in there when you come back.

I did, right.

You don't even be running around like that, like you don't even lift nothing. I ain't never seen you really grab nothing heavy, and you want to talk about it. I know if I was to steal something, I would take it out the register. You have to understand my stealing is prioritized.

Don't say that you would steal out of the register. I have to as a manager. I'm not allowed to hear that and just be cool with it.

You're saying I stole. I'm telling you, if I were to steal, it wouldn't be No damn Yogurt.

I'm out of here, all right.

Okay, don't leave, please, you can't. All right, he's he's gone. Okay, Let's let's talk, Shilah.

Jerry, why are you sweating.

I'm you know, it's a it's an interrogation situation.

People sweat, Jerry, wipe your forehead before you talk to me.

Oh my Godna, just eye up here just a little bit now, Shilah. I gotta be honest. You are my number one person of interest because according to your employee record, you have been caught stealing from the store five times.

Oh wow, Okay, so we're just gonna bring up old shit. Can I bring up how the old general manager told me I how to really fit bod.

Yeah, and we all agreed we weren't gonna bring that up again. We talked to the administration, and we talked to corporate and we're not We're not gonna get into that anymore.

Jerry, Yogurt is old people food? Are you calling me old.

Uh No, I'm just saying you.

You're saying I'm young and supple. Jerry, that's disgusting. What's wrong with you?

I wasn't saying. I did not use the word supple at any point.

I mean, go look at my locker right now, open my bag. The only things I've stolen are two things of eyeshadow and a watch. I bet you feel stupid.

You just gave me an idea. I think a thorough search is a good idea, Shilah. So you know what, I'm just gonna go and see if it's according to the rules. Okay for me to do that, And when I get back, we are gonna go through all of these lockers and find out what's really going on here.

Bye bye, Hey man, y'all gonna have to start cleaning up after yourselves. This don't make no sense. There's no clean cups. It's looked like an episode of Hoarders in here. And who the hell is eating spaghettios out the coffee bugs? This ain't even spaghettios, This spaghetti loops. This is the Bywell brand. They have got to stop playing Taylor Swift over the pa man.

I'm a hater and I hate, hate, hate, hate this song.

Listen, Robert, she's having a moment. I mean, the Era's tour is happening. It's huge, and I read that she just passed Barbara Streissan for female artists with the most number one hits.

Yeah, it's the Errors tour, all right. You get that ticket price that you'd be like, there's an error. There's a financial air right here. It's ridiculous.

Yeah.

My daughter's Tory and Annie wanted to go to that Era's concert, but I told him we don't support Taylor Swift because she was notably silent on political issues early in her career, which honestly just sounded better than saying I can't afford one thousand dollars per ticket, get out.

Of here with that. I saw her am Pittsburgh and it was five hundred dollars, but it was totally worth it just for the Instagram alone. Oh my god, anytime I can make white women jealous, I am on boy.

Did you even watch the concert or did you just look at it through your Instagram?

Fee?

Oh?

I did?

I tape the whole thing on my phone? I got my money's worth. You guys want to watch look, she's that little whipe blert. No, that's my finger.

Now you're not gonna see me there. I'll be at home watching a Strisand video. I'll just watch Funny Girl on a loop rather than go waste any money on Taylor Swift. Damn girls, probably damn near thirty five years old, still trying to look like she's doing sleepover parties. She's got no pool with gay people. You know that gay people don't go for Swift like we did for Barbara Strice's hand. Hell, Tinky Winky from the Damn Teletubbies has more gay icon status than Taylor Swift.

Listen, I'm all for Taylor being a girl boss, but she's not half as good as Brandy Carlyle or Melissa Etheridge or the Indigo Girls. We all have to just realize that lesbians make better songwriters. If huge parts of society can't handle you kissing in public, that's where the music comes from.

Bitch, Now you had to drag this into your liberals shit. You know, The Indigo Girls is the only concert that I ever threw tomatoes at. What I was out at. I was out in Athens, Georgia. I was doing well. The only damn song they have closer to fine. I was out in Athens, Georgia. It was supposed to be a gay festival. We had to sit through that. I threw the tomatoes. They dragged my ass out.

But uh huh, Liz, why did you get him started? You know, lesbian's and gay men is the new age East Coast West Coast rivalry. They are beefed out.

You know, Robert is right. I see that.

I see that it's the lesbians versus the gays, just like East Coast West Coast with that rap stuff back in the nineties. And I wouldn't be half surprised if Melissa Ethrit's got gunned down in Las Vegas and then they blamed Barry Manilow.

Bye, okay, everybody. I checked with corporate and it is completely permissible for me to conduct a locker search. So let's get them open and let's see if we can find that yogurt.

Yeah, pop those babies open. I'm ready to go in. I'm gonna find this yogurt. You guys are not going to get away with this, all.

Right, Liz? Can you back up a little bit? Uh? You know you're supposed to be the walks into my home. You're coming in really hot. Okay, so back up here and I will take care of this. Let's take a look here, and Arnold, you got your locker open here?

Mm hmm, Okay, you can see there's nothing in there you need to worry about. I got my d Culture book. Yeah, yeah, you can see. I just I got, I.

Got, I read, I read, I got the up.

I printed out the Gay Cities Guide, the Fort Lauderdale and Sandstin.

Yeah.

Oh, you don't need to see this, need to see this when this is just something I'm reading it. It's well, it's the gaze of the Confederacy, and I'm just reading it.

I don't agree with it, I'm just reading it.

Sure, there's a lot of drawings in this book, paintings really well.

I love history, you know, I love history.

A lot of anatomy on display, and a lot of Confederate flash.

It is a historical novel, all right.

Yeah, I don't see a yogurt carton in here. Let's take a look over here in Robert's locker. Well, there's nothing in here at all.

Yeah. If you don't bring shit, nobody can steal it.

That's a good point. Guys, listen to Robert. You know, if you don't bring stuff to the store, there's less chance that it will be stolen. All right, Well, well, well what do we have here in Shilah's locker. Here is the eyeshadow and the watch that you said you took. So I'm gonna go ahead and take those back. Thank you.

I mean the case has already broken on them.

You can't really great, guys, shadow Shilah, this is still good and what is okay, let's.

Focus on the crime. Let's focus on the crime. Ahand Jerry just get back there. Look behind all those what are those? What are these photos?

They're not just botos there art. That's fourteen naked pictures of Robert, Donny, ju Derek.

Well, now, very interesting, interesting observations that I am collating in my intellect to try to solve this mystery.

Jerry, can you take the pipe out of your mouth?

I mean, I want to solve this as much as anyone, But you look ridiculous.

I told you the pipe helps me think. Okay, the pipe helps me think. All right, let's see, uh, maybe we could look in Arnold's locker again. I think I saw a white smear in there, right.

Enough of everybody's weird photoshopped chotchkey's they have in their lockers.

Your lockers should look like mine.

You open it up.

It's a backpack. It's got all my stuff in it. Here, look in my backpack, nothing stolen.

But there is the yogurt. Yeah.

Oh damn, I really thought I put that in the fridge. Guys, My bad, My bad. It is definitely fell out in my backpack and it has been there and is quite warm.

Now, well, I don't mind a warm yogurt.

I'm happy to give it to you, Jerry, And honestly, thank you very much for taking the investigation seriously and you know, insinuating that everybody on staff.

Is a thief. It was really really cool of you, and I appreciate it.

Hey, I got your back, Liz, All right, no problem. Let me just take a little congratulatory spoon of this yogurt here. Okay, that has turned that is it's kind of burning a little bit, even by well.

Employees only. Is produced by Imagine Audio and Pretty Fast for iHeartMedia. Produced by Timothy Farnara. The associate producer is Wesley Hayes. It is executive produced by Ron Howard, Brian Grazerkarra Welker, Nathan Kloke and Jared Logan. Editing by Sujit R and Timothy Furnara, Mixing by Jay Palisi, Casting by Sherry Henderson. Original music composed by Troy mccobbin. At Alloy tracks,