An Innocent Trip to the Store

Two days ago, around midnight, my sister and I were bored and I wanted a bag of chips so we decided to go to the gas station right around the corner from me.

Once in there, my sister went to the coolers to get a drink and I went to the chips aisle. After getting the chips I wanted, I headed up to the register to pay for them. As I was walking up to the registers, I saw a mouse come crawling out of the candy, go up to the registers, run along the ledge and disappear behind the counter. Oh, and it was also carrying a big blue gumball in its mouth.

I stood there watching in shock, not sure what to do. I quickly turned around and headed back towards my sister and told her. She immediately started to bolt out of the store (as she is deathly afraid of mice and raccoons) but not before she stopped and considered the fact that I might be lying to her. So to prove I wasn't lying, she made me go tell the cashiers what I saw.

"Um, excuse me," I said to the lady at the counter. "I just saw a mouse run behind your register there."

The woman looked at me and started chuckling. "Oh, you must have seen Stewart," she said, still smiling.

"Stewart? Is that somebody's pet?" I had seriously thought for a second that they kept a pet mouse there. If so, I could safely get rid of the heebie-jeebies I was feeling. Actually, I wanted to throw my bag of chips at the cashier's face and run out of the store in case the mouse decided to run over my feet or something.

"Yeah, that's Stewart. He's been around here for awhile."

"Oh, well he had a blue gumball in his mouth," I informed her.

She started laughing again. "HEY JENNY! THIS GIRL FOUND STEWART!" she yelled.

Just then a cashier came from the back of the store carrying deli sandwiches. "You did? Where is he?" she said as she looked around.

"He ran over behind the registers," I pointed to the area.

"Oh good, maybe he'll go into the trap over there." I was hoping she'd set down the deli sandwiches, but she didn't, and started looking over at the area I had pointed to.

"He was also carrying a blue gumball in his mouth," I repeated, desperate to know why a mouse had taken a gumball.

"Oh that wasn't a gumball. Stewart likes coconut M+M's," she proudly informed me. So that explained why I had seen "Stewart" run across the candy. He was chewing through the bags to get to the M+Ms.

I was so grossed out that I bought my chips and we left. It was probably out of shock that I shoved all the chips into my mouth as soon as we got into the car and started munching on them. (At least I checked to make sure there were no mouse holes in my bag before I ate them).

I have a few problems with this:

1. They were LAUGHING about it. If we had a mouse problem in my store and a customer had seen one and told me about it, I would pretend that I had never heard of a mouse in our store and I would act shocked and/or disgusted. I would also apologize profusely and promise we would take care of it ASAP.

2. I would not name it.

3. I would put a coconut M+M in the mousetrap in order to catch the damn thing faster.

4. What if a customer bought a bag of M+Ms that happened to have mouse poop in it? They would think they were eating a chocolately M+M!

5. I would definitely not fucking name it. And if I did, I wouldn't tell customers about it.

In conclusion, I will never be back to that store because that seriously grossed me out. I mean, problems can happen with mice and other rodents, but I think it was the way they handled it with me that made me want to never go back there again. How would they like to wake up to a "Stewart" in their cereal bowl?

Picking and Choosing

We're always taking applications at our store and when we are hiring, we look over all of them and decide to call the ones that sound the best.

A word of advice. If you are putting applications in at places, make sure the voicemail on your phone is professional.

I called someone the other day to schedule an interview and I got her voicemail. Normally I would leave a message, but when I listened to her message, I decided otherwise.

Her voicemail message was of a baby crying the whole time. So instead I just hung up and won't be calling her back.

I think it's unprofessional and it just makes me think that she will call off a lot due to a crying or sick baby. That may not be the case at all, and she may be very responsible and a hard worker, but I didn't get that impression from her voicemail.

If you want a job, don't be an idiot.

That girl just ruined her chances of having the privilege of working with yours truly. Oh well, her loss.

Teenagers Dress Like Assholes

I can't believe some of the things that teenage girls are wearing out in public.

I can't believe their parents let them leave the house wearing what they wear. Although, most of them probably leave the house wearing something normal and then change into their slut-tacular clothing at a friend's house.

At the carnival, at first I didn't want to stare, but after awhile I just couldn't help it. The clothes some of these little girls were wearing was atrocious.

I swear some of them were walking around like this:




Okay, maybe not that bad, but what they had on was pretty short. I have to admit, I felt extremely old as I started to make fun of these girls to my co-worker. Although, I never would have worn something like that when I was their age.

I guess the carnival is the place to be in order for 12-year olds to get hit on by 40 year-old tattooed drunks with no teeth. Because there was a lot of that going on.

I'm honestly surprised I didn't see any of them wearing this:



Isn't that the new fashion?

Life After Hell

Well, I survived the Week of Hell, but just barely.

I've actually been sleeping for the past three days. Yes, it was that rough on me. All of us, actually. I think my sister went into a coma for three days because I didn't hear a word from her once the carnival was done.

I don't know why it's still so rough on us, though. We do have a police officer there now that handles the kids.

We pay the police officer around $25 per hour. We spent around $700 these past five days to pay the police officers.

Pretty much the only thing these kids buy during the carnival is Arizona Iced Tea, which costs 99 cents.

Of that 99 cents we make 25 cents.

Which means, if my calculations are correct, we needed to have sold 3,000 cans of Arizona Iced Tea in order to pay for the police officer in our store.

We didn't sell 3,000 cans of Arizona Iced Tea. We sold about 700.

But, it was so worth it keeping the kids standing outside while only two of the little bastards were allowed in the store at a time.

Plus, our regular customers didn't go somewhere else because this time the cop wouldn't let the kids block the sidewalks to get into the store.

I've got a little bit more recovering to do, but I'll be better soon and back to doing what I do best, which is bitching about shit.

More Carnival Crap

I love how I can just point to a suspicious-looking teen and the police officer will run over and search their pockets.

I wish I could do that everyday.

Carnival Crap

I seriously never want kids after this carnival.

As I've said before, we hire a police officer every year for teen control. Well, these kids don't like that at all, so they decide to mouth off to the cop.

Two kids came in last night (out of the 500 or so for the total night) and were looking around at the candy. Since they were taking awhile, the cop yelled over to them to hurry up and find what they wanted and get out of the store.

So the kid turns to me and says, "Do you have any Reese's Pieces?"

I walked over to the candy next to him and looked but couldn't find any. I walked into the back room and they were sitting back there for some reason. So I brought them out to him.

He looked at them. "Oh, I wanted those really big bags of them," he said.

"We don't have those."

"Oh, well is this all the ice cream you have?" he said as he moved over to the ice cream cooler.

Thoroughly annoyed, I said "Yes" and walked away. Soon after, the cop yelled at him to hurry up and leave, as there were other kids waiting outside that wanted to come into the store.

After this, the two kids left without buying anything. Of course.

So the cop came up to me after they left. "They were planning on stealing, that's why I kept an eye on them," he said.

"How do you know?" I asked. I'm usually a good judge of who's coming in to steal, as I assume all teenagers are in there to steal.

"As soon as they came in the store, I heard one ask the other if he had any money. The other kid said no, and then they started looking around at me as well as you up at the register. So the first one decided to distract you while the other tried to steal, but I was watching both of them so they never took anything. He was asking you for candy but had no money to buy any!"

And this is how it was the whole night last night. The cop would ask the kids if they had any money, and if they said no they weren't allowed in the store. This made for a semi-peaceful evening.

And of course at the end of the night, there was a line of cars in our parking lot. Those were the parents picking up the kids from their free babysitting all night!

I hate teenagers.

Countdown to Carnival

Well, the carnival from hell starts tomorrow. The carnies were setting up for it last night while I worked night shift. It was very busy, as they bought up a lot of our deli sandwiches, candy and drinks. Busy makes the time go faster, so that was good.

However, the carnies must have been fussy last night. Two of them came in and were violently yelling at each other. I honestly thought there was going to be a fistfight, and I was going to do nothing to stop it. Cashiers need entertaining, too!

I'm not positive, but I think their fight was over a girl carnie.

I thought there was a carnie code that they be nice to each other and get along?

I'll try to find out more as the week goes on.

By this time tomorrow the carnival will have started. 6pm. The hour of doom.

The first hour isn't so bad, because the parents drop the kids off at the carnival and they walk around for that first hour.

It's after that first hour that these little shits get bored and come over to our store, thoroughly pissing me off.

Let's hope this year is better, but I doubt it.