We Never Forget...

Well, the customer that stole the propane tank from our dumpster area still hasn't come back yet.

But he will.

And when he does, we'll catch him.

People do this all the time. Especially the regular customers that owe us money.

I once had a customer not come in for 2 years because he owed us for a pack of cigarettes. And the day he came back in again was the day I got him. I even charged him the current price for cigarettes even though we still had his old receipt taped up on our windowsill. The current price was $1.50 more than what he would have paid if he had given us the money for them two years ago.

Some customers never come back though. One of our regulars, who only had one arm, would always come in and buy a can of beer. One day he asked if we could spot him the $1.07 for his beer and I said okay. He said he'd come in the next day and pay us, but it's been about 6 years now and he hasn't been back. I probably won't pursue that one...he probably moved or is in jail by now.

My point is, if you owe your gas station something, they WILL wait until you come back in. Don't think we forget about this stuff after a few years. Well, at least my store doesn't forget about things like this.

Taking Something That Isn't Yours

We have a dumpster area that is enclosed in a fence. We have the dumpster out there, but we also store other things like shelving, signs and other stuff. Sometimes we will occasionally stick things like propane tanks back there if we don't have room in our propane cage.

The other day, a customer wanted to drop off a propane tank and was going to come back later to pick it up. I think he thought he could bring a propane tank to our store and get money for it, but we don't just give money for propane tanks, so he left it there and was going to pick it up the next day or so. So we stuck it outside in our enclosed dumpster area.

Well the other night, our night shift guy was going around and emptying all the trash from the garbage cans. He left our gate back there wide open, which normally wouldn't be a problem because he's in and out of that and then when he's done he locks it back up.

Well while he was going inside to get a new garbage bag for the trash can, one of our regular customers went in the dumpster area, picked up the propane tank, stuck it in his car and left.

I swear we can't leave ANYTHING unattended around here or else some dumbass will walk away with it.

So, now we are waiting for this customer to come back in sometime this week so we can nail him. I would personally love to be the one to do it, but I am off the next two days. However, if he doesn't come in during those two days, he's all mine over the weekend.

And now we wait. Which sucks, but we have no idea what this customer's name is. All we know about him is that he's extremely annoying and is always trying to get his son a job at my store. Why, so he can have his son rob us blind? I don't think so.

I'll let you know when this dickface comes back in. I just hope I'm the one that gets to yell at him about it. I seriously live for this stuff.

Reporting the Wrong People

The other day we got a phone call from the police department and they wanted to speak to my dad, the owner.

So he gets on the phone and is told that a "concerned citizen" called the police to inform them that we are selling alcohol to drunk people.

The police didn't give many details, but asked if we sold alcohol to a guy driving a white car.

My dad looked it up on the security cameras and sure enough, a guy with a white car came into the store and bought stuff. But he wasn't drunk. And he didn't buy beer.

The guy with the white car has some kind of disease where he walks hunched over and wobbles around a lot. I'm not sure what he has, but he's a nice guy and I've helped him out before when his credit card wasn't working. He only comes in to buy a 25 cent Little Debbie snack cake and cigars. He's never bought alcohol from us. I'm actually not sure myself how he's even allowed to drive, but whatever.

So apparently this "concerned citizen" thought he was drunk and that we were selling him more alcohol because all he saw was the guy wobble outside to his car carrying a white plastic bag.

So this "concerned citizen" decided to call the police and report US, but failed to get the license plate number of this potentially drunk person he saw driving.

My dad called the police department back. He was pissed off because they had been accusing him of selling beer to a drunk person, instead of actually asking questions and finding out exactly what happened.

He told the police the situation with this guy and they ended up apologizing to him for accusing him.

Still. This pisses me off. Why did this "concerned citizen" report us to the police? I'm sure there's some law where we get in trouble for selling alcohol to a drunk person, but why didn't this concerned asshole report the "drunk guy"???

We could see this "concerned citizen" on the security tapes, but none of us recognized him and have never seen him in the store before.

Seriously, if you're going to call the police on someone, start with the DRUNK PERSON first!

Bathroom Etiquette

I've said it before and I'll say it again:

If you have to take a dump, PLEASE don't do it in a store that has a bathroom inside.

Go to a store that has their bathrooms in another building outside of the store.

Or even better, there's a cemetery behind our store. Go take a dump out there!

I can't stand it when a customer smells up the store with the massive shit they took in the bathroom.

It's hard to get my work done when I'm distracted by my dry heaving.

Plus, I don't like the dirty looks the customers give me when they think that smell came from me. It's embarrassing, dammit.

It's PAY at the Pump!

I've been working a lot of night shifts lately because our regular girl is out sick.

It's UNBELIEVABLE the amount of drunk people that come in.

This past Saturday I was working the night shift with my mom. (She didn't want me working a weekend night shift by myself, so she came to help out).

We had two older men come in wearing tuxedos, and one of them was very drunk. The drunk guy told me that his daughter had just gotten married. So obviously they were coming back from the reception. He was asking me for directions on how to get to the highway. As soon as I knew he wasn't the one driving, I tried giving him directions but he was fucking up what I was telling him because he was so drunk. I didn't really care much, I thought it was funny and not my problem on how they got home.

The two men finally left to go pump gas outside and my mother and I are laughing about how funny the whole exchange was.

All of a sudden, this big beefy customer who was also getting gas outside comes running in.

"Uhh, there's a guy urinating at the pump!" he yelled.

"Excuse me?" I said.

"Some guy is urinating at the pump out there, right by my car!" he said again.

I look outside, and sure enough there's the drunk father taking a wiz right next to the pump. I turned around to go out there and yell at him, but my mom was already ten steps ahead of me.

I followed her outside just in case I needed to lay the smackdown on somebody.

"You can't do that out here!" yelled my mom towards the drunk father and his driver.

"Do what?" the driver asked.

"Urinate! You can't urinate out here!" she said.

"I didn't!" yelled the driver.

"Oh, that was me, sorry!" slurred the drunk father as he zipped his pants up.

I couldn't help it. I was laughing my ass off at this whole scene. First, this big beefy customer is running in our store like a little girl to tell us that a customer is peeing outside. Why he couldn't have said something to the man, who knows.

Second, it was hilarious to watch my mom yell at a customer. She's usually the quietest person on the planet, which makes it even funnier.

Third, all we could think about was how we'd now have to put up yet another sign that says "It's PAY at the pump, not PEE at the pump!"

Seriously, someone get me off night shift soon.

Even Dumber Criminals of the Week

You'd think that people would learn by now not to steal from my store, but there's also dumb criminals moving into the area.

The other day I was in the back room and working on paperwork. I was sitting in front of the monitor and just happened to look up and saw on one of our cameras that a regular customer was in the store. At the exact moment I looked up, I saw him shove something down his pants.

So I went out to the registers and stood there looking at him as he walked up to the counter. He stared at me, I stared at his stomach, but couldn't notice a bulge there from whatever he had stolen.

At that exact moment, my sister came around the corner and I asked her to go look this guy up on the camera to see if he stole anything.

My co-worker was ringing him up, yet he was still staring at me and now I noticed he was hunched forward a little. I kept intently staring but still did not see anything, even though I was 100% sure that he stole something. I was hoping my co-worker would stall him to keep him in the store, but she had no idea what was going on and I didn't want to make it obvious in case I was wrong.

After a minute or so, his sale was completed and he left the store. I was literally hopping around wishing for my sister to hurry up and confirm my suspicions.

Just then, my sister came out of the back room and up to me. "It looks like he took something," she said.

I ran outside to his car as he was lighting up a cigarette. His window was down so luckily I didn't have to yell, but I would have been more than glad to.

"What did you steal?" I asked him.

He looked up at me, his eyes squinting from the sun, but didn't say a word.

"I saw you take something, now give it to me," I demanded with my hand out. Still, he said nothing and just stared at me.

"We have it on the security cameras that you took something from the back. I watched you put it down your pants. Give it to me or I'm calling the cops," I said, getting louder.

I could see him softly sigh and then he reached down into his pants. I was sure he was going to pull out his ding-dong and wave it at me, but instead he pulled out a 24 oz. cold can of Steel Reserve beer.

I ripped it out of his hands, not even thinking about whether or not a pube might have been stuck on there. "If I see you in the store I'm going to call the police. You aren't allowed in here," I said to him as I walked away. He ended up backing his car out of the parking lot and left.

Since this guy was a regular customer that came into the store multiple times a day, we decided to look up the times he usually came in. Out of the two weeks worth that we went through, we saw him steal a total of 8 times. And it was always the same way; shoving a can of beer down his pants. When did our beer become buy 1 get 1 free??

This made me so angry that I called the cops on him. Long story short, they ended up going to his house and ticketing him for it. They told us that he's like the town drunk of the city and is always getting into drunken bar fights with people. Figures.

At least that'll be one less thief in our store. But I'm sure 6 more thieves moved into the area in the time it took for me to write this.

Thief of the Week

Well, this week sure has been the week of thieves.

On Monday we had a regular customer come in. The only thing she buys when she comes in is vodka. The cheap stuff.

So she comes in and goes to grab her vodka then goes towards the back of the store to buy more stuff. We got busy, and then after awhile we noticed that the girl was no longer in the store but that no one remembers ringing her up.

So I go look back on the security tapes, and sure enough she went behind a blind spot and shoved the vodka in her purse and then left.

I thought she had walked to our store, so I got in my car to go and try to find her. Meanwhile my sister was watching the whole thing again on the security cameras.

I couldn't find her, so after 20 minutes I came back to the store. It was then that my sister had told me she'd ridden to the store on her bicycle. A thief on a bicycle. Seriously?

So there wasn't really anything we could do, but we figured she'd be back soon enough. Some days she comes in three or four times to buy the cheap vodka.

Sure enough, she was back very early the next day. This time my sister got her in line.

So my sister rings her up for the vodka she brings to the counter and charges her credit card. She had also ID'd her just so she could get the girl's information to give to the police.

After the card goes through, she has her sign the credit card slip and then takes the vodka off the counter.

"That was for the vodka you stole yesterday," my sister said to the girl.

The girl hung her head. "I'm sorry, my dad's an alcoholic," she said quietly. However, she said this while reeking of alcohol.

"Well you aren't allowed to come back in the store anymore or we are going to have you prosecuted," my sister told her.

The girl didn't say anything, walked out of the store, and sadly rode off into the sunset on her bicycle. Actually, she didn't really ride off into the sunset, she rode across the street to the gas station there and bought her vodka at their store.

We gave her information to the cops, who went and talked to her.

It's sad to see such a young woman already addicted to alcohol. Sad to see anyone become an alcoholic, actually.