I am a cashier at a gas station. A man comes up to the counter with two young girls. I’ve seen them before, so I know that they are his daughters, but I’ve never talked with them.
Customer: “Do you wanna buy my daughter off me?”
Me: “Excuse me?”
Customer: “I need to get her off my hands. I’ll give you a good deal!”
Me: “Um… I’m okay… Thanks, though?”
He turned around with his items and his two daughters followed. Neither of them reacted or said anything.
I work in a twenty-four-hour gas station. I should note that we’re only “technically” twenty-four hours. We have to close for fifteen minutes between 3:35 am and 4:00 am in order to for the system to calculate daily totals and reset for a new day, so I guess we’re a twenty-three-hours-and-forty-five-minutes store.
One night, while we’re closed and I’m doing paperwork, waiting for the system to reset, I see headlights out of the corner of my eye. I make no move to the door since I’m not allowed to open for anyone but the newspaper vendor. I half-watch the guy as his car weaves into a parking space, parks diagonally across it , and stumbles his way to the door.
He completely ignores the closed sign that is eye-level with him and starts pulling on the locked door. He pulls harder each time it doesn’t open. When this fails, he presses his face to the glass and starts banging on the door.
I finally go to it with a piece of paper I’ve written.
Note: “Sorry! We’re closed for just a few minutes!”
I press it to the glass so he can read it, maintaining my customer service smile.
As soon as he reads it, he absolutely Hulks out. He slams hard on the glass with the side of his fist over and over, screaming.
Customer: “F****** BULLS***, YOU’RE CLOSED! YOU’RE TWENTY-FOUR-F******-HOURS! LET ME THE F*** IN RIGHT THE F*** NOW! YOU UGLY, FAT C***! I NEED SOME F****** SMOKES NOW!”
Where I live, there’s a plethora of drunks and addicts. I’m used to this type of behavior. Completely deadpan, I walk back around the counter and take down his license plate number off the camera before I grab the phone and go back to the door. He’s still screaming and banging, threatening me with things I won’t repeat here.
I make a massive show of dialing 9-1… He takes off before I can even finish, doing a massive burnout at the entrance before peeling out down the street with his car threatening to spin out the whole way.
I still called the non-emergency number to report his car make, model, and plate number for a DUI. Hope he got what he deserves.
I’m working at a gas station on the overnight shift. Our company policy is that we ID everyone. Forty-year-old police officer? ID. Eighty-year-old grandmother? ID. I get in the habit real fast to ask for everyone’s ID when they’re purchasing alcohol and tobacco.
A guy comes into my shop. I’m being trained by a coworker until her shift ends. This guy sets a case of beer on the counter. I greet him.
Me: “May I see your ID, please?”
He seems irritated but pulls his wallet out and hands me a driver’s license. It looks pretty beat up. There’s a crack all the way down in the center but it’s still intact. I check to make sure it’s his, and I know he’s old enough, so I just check the expiration date. His license expired over two years ago!
Me: “Sorry, sir, I won’t be able to sell you this case of beer since your license has expired.”
He’s obviously irritated and berates me for not making the sale.
Customer: “Why don’t you just grow up?!”
I informed him of the state’s law. He then opened his wallet again and handed me a brand-spanking-new license. I complied because I just wanted this guy to go. As I handed him his change, he looked at the coins I had just given him and dropped them on the counter, making a mess. Instantly, in my mind, I was like, “What the f***, dude?!”
The girl training me picked up his coins and handed them back to him and apologized. As he walked out the door, he glanced at me and told me again to grow up.
Before the health crisis, our store had a gap in the shelving of our queue area so that customers could come straight to the till in a shortcut if they didn’t need groceries and were merely in the store to pay for fuel or buy tobacco products or confectionary. To help enforce social distancing in the queues, we’ve blocked the gap with two cardboard stands, and we have a sign clearly stating that this gap is inaccessible and to turn right to join the queue.
I’m serving a customer at the till when I spot a man trying to push his way through the partially-closed gap.
Me: “Excuse me, sir, but that area is closed. Would you please continue to your right and join the end of the queue?”
The customer waves a ten-pound note, still trying to push through.
Customer: “It’s okay. I just need to pay for my fuel.”
Me: “I understand, sir, but you need to back out and join the queue to pay for your fuel.”
Customer: “But I have the money right here! Just take it! I am on pump two! I just want to pay for my fuel!”
Me: “There are several people in the queue right now who are no doubt paying for fuel, sir. Please back out of the gap and go right to join the end of the queue.”
Customer: “Fine, then!”
I hear him mumbling and swearing to himself as he finally backs out and disappears. A few customers later, who should appear before me but the queue jumper. He slams his ten-pound note down on the counter.
Customer: “Ten pounds on pump two! Bloody ridiculous making me queue when you could have just let me pay and leave!”
Me: “I am sorry, sir, but we are in a global health crisis. Everyone has to social distance by law, and if you had come through our clearly blocked-off gap, then you would be in the personal space of the lady that I was serving and therefore breaking the law. Thank you, sir.” *Cashes out his fuel* “Have a good day.”
He stormed off.
He was wearing a mask, he had disposable gloves on, and he was carrying a bottle that clearly contained hand sanitizer, so he clearly knew about the health crisis and the measurements we were all taking to avoid infection.
I work for a convenience store. We have a state of emergency for our area. An oil refinery that services our area has been taken out by storms, so we are facing a fuel shortage. People go insane trying to fuel up. Every gas station in the city raises their prices in response, and we’re unable to keep up with the demand, running out of fuel.
My station is in a neighboring town, and our prices lowered shortly before the emergency was declared. When people realize this, they respond by flocking to us. It’s to the point that we have security outside, directing traffic to gas pumps to keep accidents from happening. Around 90% of all transactions we do are purely for gas, and the store is packed full for nearly my entire shift.
At one point, I have a customer call and frantically ask:
Caller: “Are you out of gas?! I’ve heard the police are out there because people are getting into fistfights at the pumps!”
Me: “No, ma’am. As we’re talking right now, I’m watching our fuel truck top our tanks off. We’ve still got fuel, and we’ll probably not run out for quite some time at this rate.”
In the end, not only did we make the most money in the area on gas sales, but according to the news, every station in the neighboring city ended up being heavily fined for price gouging. For every customer they gouged, it was a $1,000 fine.
They might as well have closed their doors for the entire thing, because I’m pretty sure they lost more than they made in sales for that.
