As The Station Turn 6/13

 Tut Tut, it looks like rain, so I took the truck instead of my Bad Hawg. I would have taken the Jeep but the Unstable Guy has been coming around and I know he's pissed about not getting a jump start the other day. 

I walk in to work and some guy blocks my way behind the counter so he can get ice, which he takes a long time getting. I'm standing there, waiting to step being the counter and clock in so I can go to work. Finally he gets done...and another asshole cuts in front of me to get ice. When he gets out of the way I mumble, but loudly enough for him to hear, about what an asshole he is for that crap. He had to rush so that he could be waited on by Mrs. Late Guy before I got in my drawer open. 

The Coke bib, the plastic bag that holds they syrup, ran out. And naturally I got a mob of customers and they all headed to the soda machine. Sorry, nothing I can do until the place clears out. That's the joy of having to work a two person job by myself.

A woman was looking for a non nicotine vape. Ummm...isn't that called a "drinking straw"? Just get one of those and suck on it. 

Two truck drivers, two in a row, heated up their stuff before coming to pay for it, so I had to walk over to the shelf and get one that wasn't super hot and spilling everywhere so I could scan the bar code. The one guy had to wait for the microwave and could have paid before he heated it up. And they are truck drivers, they go to stations all the time, they heat stuff up all the time, they should know to pay before you put it in the microwave. I think they do it on purpose and it's why I don't like truck drivers.

I got a break in the traffic and dumped the restroom trash. Since I was doing that I went around the lot and checked the outside ones too. That's when I noticed that the guy who was living in the vacant lot next door was gone. He probably got tired of all the trucks coming and going all night long, it's a very hard place to actually sleep at. And it isn't just trucks parking, it's trucks switching out trailers and they are very loud. Plus his dog was probably barking at them all night.

A family came in, they filled up, Mom and the kids came in to use the restroom. Dad finished pumping and it was busy so he pulled around to the back of the building to park. Mom came out of the restroom, went out the front door and then wandered around looking for him. I can imagine what went through her mind when she got out there and he was gone.

I had people all day, one minute I would have all the pumps occupied, the next I would have that one person wandering around looking at labels. Meanwhile across the street was empty, nobody was there, the place looked closed. I wonder if the Late Guy is still boasting about what a great job he's doing and how much more they are making over there.

Speaking of which the Late Guy came by, he must have been doing some school related thing because he had his kids with him and they were buying drinks. He was telling me that he had to go to the DownTown Station because the big price sign wasn't working right and he had to mess with it. I guess the Random Woman had worked the afternoon shift on Friday and the regular woman was complaining because the place was a mess, trashes weren't dumped, the restroom wasn't cleaned and the coffee pot hadn't been rinsed out. I was laughing because the Weekend Guy had the same complaint about the Late Guy. And when the Late Guy was working Friday afternoon at the Haunted Station I always had to check everything he had, or hadn't done, on Saturday morning, and there was never a day when I didn't have to do at least two things to start the day. 

A former regular came in, she looks a lot better than the last time I saw her. Back then she was wearing an eye patch and looked like she was at least 10 pounds under weight. I worried why I hadn't seen her in a long time and I had hoped it was because she quit smoking. Well, she's still smoking but is back to a normal weight and has two functional eyes again.

It had been rainy and cloudy all day. When the sun went down it was a grey and gloomy dusk. However off to the east the clouds had parted and there was a bright orange and red patch peaking out through a hole, a perfect photo. Except I had a comparison shopper slowing wandering around the store and reading the labels on all the packages. Of course when the sun shifted behind the mountains and the hole turned to the same grey as every other part of the sky the guy finally came up and bought the first thing he had grabbed out of the cooler, the one and only thing. Thanks pal!

Some guy couldn't figure out how to turn on the diesel pump. I gave him instructions and he still couldn't figure out how to do it. I was just about to walk outside and help him with a very simple thing when he got the pump on, I wondered if he watched a YouTube video. I weep for the future.

The New Guy finally came in at 10 and I met him. For a while I wondered if he was like Big Foot, other people claimed to have seen him but I never had. He seems OK but the standard rules apply, I'm not going to bother to get to know his name until he's been there for more than two paychecks. We'll see.