Arriving for my shift at a convenience store one summer evening, I was surprised to find the power was out. It turned out that about half a mile up the road, a dump truck didn’t put its bed down in time, and it took out the power lines!

My coworker’s shift was over, so she left. My manager had “other things to do.” I was told to put up signs and lock the doors, and I would still get paid since I had to be there. I put up printer paper signs of. “CLOSED, NO POWER.” on both doors, and proceeded to get paid to read magazines, hang out, and do nothing for almost the next six hours.

Some customers were understanding; some were not. I would like to say I was polite… but that would be lying. “What part of ‘closed’ do you not understand?” frequently came out of my mouth. With no power to the cameras, I easily got away with living out the retail dream: telling people to go away!

About 15 minutes before my shift ended, around 10:45 pm, the power came back on, and I spent the last part of my shift making sure all the machines and systems came back online.

To this day, telling people to p*** off and go away, and getting paid for it made for the best shift I’ve ever worked.

(It’s lunchtime, and I’m running the coffee and specialty drinks area at a convenience store. A smoothie order comes up. I make it and call it… and call it, and call it. I call it about a dozen times, but no one comes for it. After twenty minutes, I start thinking the customer forgot it and left; it happens more often than you’d think. The assistant manager is working the deli, and I hear him do a “last call” for a sandwich. The customer picks it up, and it turns out she ordered the smoothie, as well. She comes over, and I realize that I saw her while I was calling her order… She was standing at our coffee island WITH HEADPHONES ON!)

Customer: *picks up drink, looks at it* “Can you remake this? It’s all watery.”

(I had to remake her drink because she was too stupid to bother LISTENING for her orders! On top of that, I got the distinct impression that she was annoyed at having to wait for me to remake her drink.)

(I ring up a customer’s items and tell him that the total is $7.78. The customer proceeds to swipe his debit card and enter the PIN. The card is declined.)

Me: “Your card was declined, sir.”

Customer: “Let me try again.” *swipes the same card and enters PIN*

Me: “It was declined, sir.”

Customer: “One more time. Third time’s a charm, right?”

(He once again swipes the card and enters the PIN… Surprise! Declined again.)

Me: “It has been declined.”

Customer: “I don’t know what the problem is. Did I enter the wrong PIN number?”

Me: “No, sir. It would tell me if the PIN was incorrect. You’ll have to take it up with your bank. I have a line now.”

(The customer leaves and one of my regulars comes up next.)

Regular: “Did he think it would suddenly not decline if he tried it enough?”

I work in a convenience store. The laws in my state basically cut off all sales of alcohol at 2:00 am. A drunk man comes in at 2:10 and gets angry when he cannot buy beer. He throws a fit and I kick him out.

He comes back about an hour later and parks his car near the edge of the lot, but he doesn’t come inside. I see him get out of his car and go storming out of sight around the corner of the building, with something long in his hands — too distant to see it clearly. This freaks me out, naturally.

The phone is in my hand to call the police, when suddenly the whole store goes dark. I sprint to the front door and lock it while telling the dispatcher what’s going on.

A police officer comes inside to stay with me while two others go around back. Over the cop’s radio, we both hear a request put in for an ambulance.

They find him knocked out behind the store, and a camping hatchet — the non-insulated metal kind — buried in the severed power conduit. One shoe was blown completely off and is sitting, alone, a few feet from his unconscious body. Melted a hole right through it. Somehow, he gets off with only a few burns, rather than a medium-to-well-done cooked heart.

We get to listen to cops trying to figure out whether or not they will need to shut down the power to the area to get the hatchet out, because with evidence sitting right in front of them, they are not going to touch that thing to bring it into evidence until they know it is safe.

The owner has to shut the store down for a full day to have the power cable repaired.

(One of the doors to the store is scraping the floor up, so until we can get it repaired we lock it. It is a double door, so the other side is still usable. We put a sign on the door to please use the other door. A customer comes rushing up to the broken door and slams into it, falling onto her back. I rush to the door to see if she is okay; she stands up and laughs a bit, making a joke about how clumsy she is.)

Me: “Okay, but if you need anything, please let me know.”

(She goes down to the back and gets a carton of eggs after looking around a bit. She comes up to the counter.)

Customer: “What does ‘free-range’ mean?”

(The carton says, “free-range eggs,” so I explain it means that the hens were not put in cages and were allowed to walk around. She smiles really wide and gets really excited, and then asks:)

Customer: “Do you think that the farmers play music for them?”

(I have no idea what to say, but she seems so happy about it I just say:)

Me: “I… am sure they are nice and maybe sometimes they play the hens music.”

(She seems even happier with this.)

Customer: “Do you know the farmer’s name?”

Me: “I am afraid not… They get delivered by a guy named [Delivery Guy] if that helps?”

(She then pays for her eggs and leaves, saying:)

Customer: “Thank you for the free-range, musical eggs from Farmer [Delivery Guy]!”

(I just sort of waved and wondered what the h*** had just happened.)