“Where the hell is everybody?” Leanna’s resistance to armed robbery ‍and negative social responses

Abstract

Leanna (thirty-five) and Jane (sixty-four) were robbed at gunpoint while closing a department store for the night, with “the take” for the day in hand. Two months later, Leanna phoned me to arrange counselling. We met six times over about six months while Leanna recovered and made some important life decisions. I found Leanna’s descriptions of her experience especially compelling and, two years later, asked if she and I might record a conversation about the robbery. She agreed and allowed me to use the interview for training purposes. This chapter centres on a twenty-minute segment of this interview during which Leanna and I develop accounts of her responses to the robbery and to the series of negative social responses she experienced afterwards. As we explore Leanna’s responses in detail, using active grammar and descriptive terms, Leanna emerges as an upright person who showed courage and composure while resisting the robbery and is justifiably indignant about the negative social responses she received.