Categories
Fears & Phobias

Phobia #2 – Closing Time Terror

…I still have this strange fear that I’ll get locked in someplace and that instead of security guards, there’ll be Dobermans….

(Male) This isn’t exactly a phobia but you also ask for “odd aversions.” And I REALLY can’t stand being in a store or really any place for roughly the hour before they close.

If I wanted to make this aversion sound logical and defensible I’d say that I used to work in a shop where I just HATED everyone who walked through the door during that last hour or so because all I really wanted to do was go home and not help people.

But there’s something else working here too, like a childhood fear of abandonment. I still have this strange fear that I’ll get locked in someplace and that instead of security guards, there’ll be Dobermans. I must have seen a movie with this as the premise sometime when I was a kid and it scarred me for life. Y’know a guy locked in a department store who has to survive until the store opens the next day.

Stores that are open 24/7 are a Godsend!