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In her 58 years, she hadn’t spent much time interacting with the criminal justice system. She didn’t know what to expect, and she had a fear of seeing Jessie Lee Garrett in the courtroom.

Last month, Garrett showed up at the Schnucks grocery store on Olive Boulevard in University City, where Allen worked. It wasn’t long after she arrived for her night shift at 6 p.m.

Garrett was trying to use the self-checkout lane but had more items than the limit allowed, which at this store was 10.

Allen asked him to use a regular check-out lane.

“He just pulled his shirt up and showed me a gun and said, ‘I don’t play like that’,� Allen told me.

She had seen Garrett before but never had an interaction like this. She was scared and went to her manager, who called police.

Garrett was arrested. Police found the gun hidden behind a box of candy on a shelf. He faces two felonies: unlawful possession of a firearm and unlawful use of a weapon.

He didn’t show up to court this past Thursday, so now there is a warrant out for his arrest and his preliminary hearing has been moved to April.

Allen, meanwhile, no longer works at the store. She says she complained about security for a couple of years. “I just don’t feel safe there anymore,� she says.

The problems she saw at her job are endemic to current society. People are angry, Allen says. And too many of them have guns.

“They’re everywhere,� Allen says. “Everybody should not have a gun.�

Allen suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome from an incident involving a gun earlier in her life. She talks to a therapist to help cope with the changes she sees in society. As it happens, we spoke the same week that many people in the St. Louis region were focused on tragic cases of violence, some involving young people.

First there was the shocking video of a 15-year-old girl slamming another girl’s head against the pavement during a street fight near Hazelwood East High School. The victim has a fractured skull and bleeding in her brain. She remains in critical condition, according to her family’s statements on a raising money for medical expenses.

Then, 14-year-old Justin Brooks died in another fight among young people, after he was stabbed to death near Rose Mary Johnson Jennings Middle School. People who knew him remembered the boy as a leader and star athlete.

Increasingly in recent years, Allen has seen people, young and old, who seem to have lost the ability to get along. Minor inconveniences lead to major confrontations. Maybe it’s the political divisions, or the influence of social media, or the remnants of the COVID-19 pandemic, where isolation limited social interaction. Regardless, people are having a hard time getting along.

“I don’t know what it is,� she told me. “We’re mad. People are not considerate.�

She still can’t believe that a man flashed a gun at her simply for trying to enforce the rules at a grocery store — which were implemented in part, Schnuck’s officials have said, to reduce thefts.

“I was in shock that it happened,� Allen says. “It’s just so sad the way people are behaving. There’s no decency. We can’t keep going like this.�