My Job at the quickie mart

Several years ago I had the displeasure of taking a second job at a convenience
store to try to make ends meet. I had a pretty good Management job during the day but there never seemed to be enough money to pay the bills.

I soon realized that there is a whole subculture of convenience store employees.
Dealing with the public in this capacity makes people weird. Ever see Clerks?
It's kind of like that.

My manager had control over a couple of different stores and was running some kind of scam.He would walk in during my night shift, grab a couple of cases of beer, condoms and dirty magazines and tell me that his other store was short these items and he need to take them so he could re-stock. LOL yeah right.

One of the assitant managers was a real tool. Chris never took shit off the customers, he was an asshole. One lady came in and tried to buy beer with a sock full of pennies. I'll never forget his response "What the fuck? You break your piggy bank bitch? Get the fuck out of my store!"

It was kind of funny at the time but I could never bring myself to steal or act mean towards customers.

My favorite part of the job was restocking the cooler. It was quiet, cold and I got to organize all the beer and soft drinks. I must be part obsessive compulsive because I would spend hours in there arranging and rearranging.

It was kind of nice just doing menial labor after working my brain all day in my office job. Dumping trash cans, mopping, making coffee, refilling the slurpee machine etc...

Which reminds me, don't drink those frozen drinks at convenience stores. The bottle of mix that we poured into the top of the machine had a skull and crossbones on it and a warning not to get it on your skin. I can't imagine what it does to your insides.

For some reason I took shoplifting personally. It was an affront to me as an employee of the quickee mart. I was really big and mean looking so I could scare the hell out of the assholes that would come in and start filling their pockets with loot. We were not supposed to confront thieves and at minimum wage it was probably a dumb idea to do so.

Beer runs were another thing that pissed me off. Some kid would walk in and try to buy beer. Invariably, they would have forgotten their ID at home. I would tell them no and take the beer off the counter.

They would leave for a few minutes and then come back in while I was helping a customer, grab as much beer as they could carry and run out. All we could do was write down what they stole. The cops didn't give a shit and couldn't be bothered with such trivial nonsense.

After this happened a few times, the beer run thieves would become even more brazen, knowing full well that we weren't supposed to call the cops or confront them.

Finally, sick and tired of watching these ass monkeys rob the store blind I would start locking one of the double doors, often alternating which door I locked each night.

One night, one of my regular beer run thieves came running in, grabbed his beer and ran full speed head first into my locked door. About a dozen cans of beer were smashed open and the thief was lying on the floor dazed, bleeding and covered in beer. He tried to get up and just end up slipping and falling several times. He had broken his glasses and the the blood running into his eyes was making it difficult for him to see.

This was all great fun for me. His accomplice got scared and drove off without his partner in crime. Finally, the dazed and wounded thief crawled out the door and wandered off into the night.

It was totally worth it mopping up that mess.

I didn't last too much longer at the convenience store. Working 16 hours a day seven days a week began to take its toll. It was however, an eye opening experience.