It’s the early eighties. My mother-in-law is managing a convenience store and gas station/carwash. She needs help. I am between jobs, so she hires me.

The area is upper-middle-class up to rich with steady traffic passing through. One kid who lives in the area figures out there’s one pump that’s out of our view. The policy is to just turn on the pump allowing anyone to pump gas and then pay at the window. This one kid drove off on both of us.

We knew who did it each time. I just bide my time watching and waiting.

Eventually, he tries it again. I won’t turn the pump on. After several attempts, he comes up to the window.

Customer: “You didn’t turn on the pump.”

Me: “That pump is out of our sight, and we had some drive-offs, so we’ve been told from now on that pump is prepay only. I apologize for the inconvenience, but there’s nothing I can do.”

Customer: “…okay. Thanks.”

He hands me $20, and off he goes. A few minutes later, he’s back.

Customer: “Why haven’t you turned the pump on?”

Me: “Well, you haven’t paid.”

Customer: “I gave you $20.”

Me: “Yup. Sure did. That paid for the gas you got last week. To get any more, you will pay for it in advance.”

His shoulders slumped, and he went back to the car to go find somewhere else to drive off from.

A guy is buying gas and a couple of snacks.

Coworker: “Would you like your receipt?”

Customer: “No.”

My coworker throws it away and starts helping other customers. A few minutes later, he comes back in.

Customer: “I changed my mind. I want my receipt now.”

A bunch of people had been helped since he was rung up, so his receipt is no longer in the system, and we can’t reprint it. My coworker explains this.

Customer: “Then you’ll need to sift through the trash to find it.”

My coworker is clearly frustrated by this.

Customer: “I know you’re upset, but just think about how I feel waiting for you.”

Meanwhile, I have decided to handwrite his receipt.

Me: “Sir, tell me everything you bought.”

I start to write down what he bought and how much money he spent, then added everything up. I even included the date and the name of the store. I hand it to him, and he gives me an almost offended look.

Customer: “Is that the best you can do?”

Me: “Yes it is, since my coworkers aren’t going to go through the trash to find your original receipt.”

He just glared at me and stormed out.

Related:
Not In Receipt Of Any Empathy

I work at a gas station that isn’t in the best part of town. We often get customers who are drunk or high, and many of them are rude. Alcoholics get upset with me if I refuse to lend them my money to cover the cost of their beer when they don’t have enough. People addicted to gambling have cussed me for selling them scratch-off tickets that didn’t win after spending the last of their money, and heaven forbid if we are out of promotionally priced tobacco products and someone has to pay regular price for a pack of smokes.

I have many more pleasant customers than rude ones, but out of all the customer service-related jobs I have worked, I have never had to deal with so many rude customers daily as I do being a gas station clerk. I usually take all rude comments in stride, don’t lose my cool, and try to resolve any matter peacefully. I’m a very friendly person, and I hate conflict.

Another part of my job that can cause problems is asking for identification for the sale of alcohol and tobacco. I am required by law to ask for an ID for every purchase of alcohol regardless of age, even if I have seen their ID before.

I have some customers I card three to four times a day. I have the date of birth of many regulars memorized. For tobacco, I am required to card anyone who appears to be under the age of forty. Not only would I lose my job if I failed to follow the law, but I could face criminal charges and penalties, so I make sure I do my job correctly. Thankfully, most people have no problem with this, but some do.

A young man comes in who looks under the age of twenty. He places a soda and a bag of Cheetos on my counter, which I ring up.

Customer: “I need a pack of Swishers, white grape.”

Me: “Okay, can I see your ID, please?”

Customer: “NO.”

Me: “I’m sorry, sir, but I cannot sell this to you without seeing your ID.”

Customer: “B****!”

Me: “Excuse me?”

Customer: “You heard me, you b****! You’re not going to sell me that?”

Me: “I’m sorry, but no I am not. No ID, no sale.”

Customer: “You’re a stupid f****** b****.”

I pull his bag off the counter, set it on the floor beside me, and snap:

Me: “I’m not selling you s***, and I am not going to be disrespected like that. You need to leave.”

Customer: “Oh, you’re not going to sell me my stuff, you f****** b****? I’m paying for it; give it to me.”

Me: “H*** no, I’m not selling it to you. I have the right to refuse the sale, and that’s exactly what I’m doing. You’re not paying for s***, because I’m not selling you a d*** thing. Get the h*** out of my store before I call the police.”

Customer: “Call the police, you f****** b****. They won’t do nothing!”

I picked up the phone and called dispatch. Once the guy realized I was actually on the phone with the police, he quickly swiped something from the counter and held it up in the air as he walked out the door.

My report changed from a disturbance and a customer harassing me to a report of theft. I walked out the door of the store to give the officer a description of the vehicle the guy got into, and as I was standing there, he drove towards me and nearly hit me. I quickly stepped back, and as he drove past, I was able to give the officer a tag number and the direction the guy turned once he pulled out.

About ten minutes later, an officer showed up at the store and informed me that they had pulled the customer over about a mile down the road and that he had been arrested. He then told me that he had only stolen a candy bar and asked if we (the store) wanted to press charges. I contacted my manager, who said that she wanted him banned from the store, but since it was only a candy bar, we weren’t going to press charges for the theft.

The next day, my manager asked me to tell her exactly what had happened, and I did, including how I’d responded. Her response was that had she known the whole story, and how the customer had spoken to me, she would have pressed charges.

The officer came by a few days later and told me the guy had two charges of failure to appear in court and driving on a suspended license. It makes sense now why he refused to show his ID.

Never forget that people can be really dumb at times. At a gas station where I worked, we had two doors — entrance and exit — and they opened about how you would think.

One day, the wind was really howling, and it kept blowing the “in” door open and banging it against the wall. We were afraid the glass would break, so we locked that door and put a sign on it saying, “DOOR LOCKED. USE OTHER DOOR,” with an arrow pointing to the exit door.

I had people repeatedly come up and shove at the locked door before reading the sign, but the winner of the day was the guy who came up, pushed against the door, then did it twice more, THEN read the sign, and then tried twice more to open the locked door!

One of my first jobs is at a gas station. One of the managers gets demoted, and we get a new manager. She starts on my day off, and I’m due in the next day. But apparently, within her first hour of clocking in, she’s completely changed the schedule. And she has told. Freaking. No one. 

So, I go in the next day, and to my surprise, one of the other cashiers asks if no one has told me about the schedule change. Nope. But sweet, extra day off. I check the schedule again. Heard that? I CHECK IT AGAIN, and I see that I am also off the next day as was originally scheduled. Coolio.

I go home, make plans for the next day, and carry on with my plans in a city two hours from home the next afternoon.

At about three o’clock, I get a call.

New Manager: “Where are you?”

Me: “Um… sorry, who is this?”

New Manager: “[New Manager]? Your boss?”

Me: “Oh! Oh, I’m sorry! I’m still not really sure what’s going on. I checked the schedule,and it said I was off to—”

New Manager: *Interrupting* “Yeah, I changed that.”

Me: “Uh… Okay, that’s fine, but no one told—”

New Manager: “It’s your job to know your schedule, not mine to tell you!”

Me: “Okay, I get that, but if you’re going to change it when I’m not there to see it, you should probably—”

New Manager: “It’s your job to know the schedule. You were scheduled for 2:00, and you need to get here.”

Me: “Unfortunately, that’s not going to be possible. I am sorry, but I’m over two hours away in [City]. By the time I get to the train station, get the train, and get back, there’ll only be a little under an hour left of my shift. I can’t—”

New Manager: “So, you’re just not coming?”

Me: “I’m sorry, but there’s no possible way for me to even get there on time to even work the—”

She hangs up.

Okay. Whatever. I go about my day, and go in the next day, as scheduled.

[New Manager] is sitting in the office waiting like a spider, shoving a write-up for a “no call, no show” in my face.

New Manager: “You need to sign this. This is just not a very good first impression of you.”

I declined to sign it and took a picture of the schedule with all her pencil marks from changing it. I told her if she tried to make me sign it again, I’d be taking it to her boss. 

She spent the rest of my time there making my life miserable. I was written up for having water spots on the OUTSIDE of the roller grill. I was written up for “being out of uniform” because I didn’t wear my hair up “high enough”? She wrote me up for putting my head on the counter to STRETCH when no one was even in the store, and we were freaking CLOSED.

My last straw was when she tried to write me up for reading on my break, saying I wasn’t allowed to have books at work at all.