As The Station Turns 8/15

 It's Saturday which means I'm back to my normal schedule. After 24 hours of recovery I'm ready to face the day, but first I'm going to lay in bed for a little while longer and play Angry Birds. That's when my doorbell rang. I live in a small town so this is a pretty strange event, everyone comes to the back door. There have been wildfires in the area and I was hoping it wasn't the fire department telling me I had to clear out because one was burning in my direction. Instead it was the Late Guy, what could this be about? The Boss sent the Late Guy over to my house to pay me a bonus for working the extra shifts. $300 bucks!!!!!! I'm going out to breakfast! Oh wait, since I've been laying around instead of getting up and doing stuff I'm behind on the day and don't have the time. Perhaps I'll take myself out to eat on my day off. When the Boss asks I'm going to tell him the Late Guy gave me the full $100, and then laugh.

There was a big hailstorm in Colorado. Wanna know how I know? Everyone came in to tell me all about it, and a lot of cars were looking for windshield wipers, they must have had them going full speed and knocked them off. I bet that was fun. 

A guy came in and asked for two packs of cigarettes. He waited until I rang them up and then told me that he wanted the 100's. I don't care if you are a regular, I don't always see you and I don't know your brand and style. Come in and tell me exactly what you want.

The clouds were getting really heavy on the horizon so I wanted to run out and check the trashes, except there was a guy hanging around, slowly picking stuff out and when he finally came up to the register he told me he was waiting on the people outside. The problem was the people outside were waiting on him to come out. He finally paid for his stuff and left, and then the people outside came in, which included two small children who couldn't decide what they wanted. 

They were followed by a family that moved into the restroom. Dad hung out and waited for them to come out. Then they wandered around the store. Then they heated something up in the microwave. Then dad went to the restroom for an extended period of time. After a half hour they left, and forgot their umbrella. I was temped to let them drive off without it since they hadn't bought anything and wasted so much of my time, but they came back in for another round of the microwave and found the umbrella. Then they finally bought something, a small cup of coffee. They sat outside for another 20 minutes eating. Seriously, they were there for an hour, I don't know about you but when I'm on a road trip I just want to get where I'm going and hanging out at a gas station is at the bottom of my list.

And then it tried to rain but nothing really happened.

The Professional Mooch is still here, he's still begging for change at the station next door. And he's still avoiding coming in to the Truck Stop. I guess he hasn't found out his pal the Late Guy is working across the street otherwise he'd set up shop there. 

I finally got to go out and check the trash and that's when I discovered someone stole one of the squeegee buckets. Why? They're nasty, they're dirty, the handles are on the verge of falling off and you can buy a new one at the hardware store for $3. Sheesh.

Some guy says he wants a $100 on the pump, so I rang it all out. Then he says he just wants to fill up without a limit. So I had to void the sale and hold on to his card, which he wasn't happy about. I was expecting him to grouch at me the whole time I was ringing out the sale but I guess he was in a hurry so he didn't complain at me, thank goodness for that.

Someone drove up to a pump on the lot, took a good look at it and then pulled up to the next one, turned around and looked at all the others. They finally stopped at the farthest one out and filled up. All the pumps have the same price on them.

I sold a lot of bagged ice and finally got the chance to replace them. It was just then that Skippy showed up so I looked like I was busy. Meanwhile the Part Time Woman was working across the street (which meant that I didn't have to see her at shift change and the Random Woman must have taken this week off) and she didn't turn her canopy lights on. Skippy got his stuff done and then went outside and hung out for a while, occasionally looking across the street. He then got in his car and slowly drove over there. A few minutes after he went inside the lights went on. The Part Time Woman likes to sit in the dark and not have to wait on customers and she got busted for it.

A guy was looking for a nice motel. I told him there were several right across the interstate. He then wanted to know how far away the interstate was. Ummm....right there? And the motels are about two blocks away. You can see them. 

I got swamped with coffee people, that hasn't happened in a long time. Sure enough, they drained the pot so I had to brew up a new one. That doesn't happen very often either. Usually I sell one cup at a time and then don't have to rush to fill it up again so they can all get a cup.

My shift was almost over, there was a crowd of people in the store and the Pepsi machine ran out of CO2. So I did something evil, I put an out of order sign on it and left it for the Graveyard Shift. I hate it when people leave work for the next shift but the Graveyard is always doing that. Besides I want to see if they did it when I go in tomorrow.

A guy came in and wanted to prepay. OK.... He says he's on the "pump out there". Well, I figured he wasn't on the pump in here. I knew which one he was on but his attitude pissed me off so I said I didn't know which pump "out there" so he had to go look. Honestly, look at the numbers before you come inside. 

Speaking of which, a guy piled all his stuff up at the counter, I rang it all out and that's when he realized he left his wallet in his car. He ran out to get it and there was a couple of people stuck waiting for him. I would say he was a jerk for doing that but he offered to pay for the waiting people's stuff as a way to apologize. Great, I wanted to hate the guy but he was noble.

It was a few minutes before the Graveyard Shift was going to show up so I took the Out Of Order sign off the Pepsi machine, and sure enough a guy went charging over there to get a large drink of flat soda. Thankfully he was the last one of the night. 

There was a crowd of people when the Graveyard Shift Guy showed up and sure enough, it took him 10 minutes to clock in and then extra time to count in his drawer. I've spotted his pattern. I guess he runs out the door first thing in the morning too. No wonder he's on the short list of people to be replaced.