Excuse Me Sir, You Dropped Your Drugs

I could seriously become a drug dealer with all the drugs we find around the store. I'd be a successful one, too.

If I go outside to clean up the parking lot, I can usually find quite a treasure. Besides all the condoms and puke laying around, sometimes I will find money. Most of the time though, I will find baggies with drugs in them.

I don't work in a bad or dangerous area; these drugs are mostly dropped from teenagers whose parents buy them brand-new expensive cars when they turn 16 and run around town thinking they can do whomever or whatever they want.

One time a young punk came in, and on his way out he dropped a bag of weed. I went and picked it up and threw it out. A few minutes later, the punk comes back in and you could tell he was searching the ground for something, but there was no way in hell he was going to ask us.

Now I'm no drug connoisseur, but I'm thinking I could get a pretty penny for some of this stuff. But what do I do with all of it? I either throw it out or flush it down the toilet. We don't need any whacked out druggies coming in here in the middle of the night shooting us for money to get their next fix.

Doing Drugs

We get our share of drugs in the store. There have been many times I've found little baggies of weed on the floor, or near the pumps, or even in the bathrooms.

A lot of our customers come in smelling like pot, probably because they just got done smoking it in the car before they came in.

Saturday night, however, was a first.

We have one of those lottery machines by the front door, where you can insert money and play tickets from it.

Well, there were three young guys, probably in their early 20s, that had been there for awhile playing those instant lottery tickets.

After about a half hour, my co-worker started noticing that they kept staring up at the register. So, he decided to keep an eye on them from the cameras.

They would put their money into the lottery machine, get their tickets, and scratch them while talking to each other. They looked like they were drunk or something.

After awhile they ended up leaving, but we were curious as to what they had been doing over there and why they had kept watching us.

So we look on the camera and rewind it back to when they were in. After catching them staring at us, we noticed what they were actually doing.

While playing tickets, one of the 3 guys had gone around the corner to where our bait cooler is, which is on the floor.

We then see him take something out of his pocket, put it on top of the cooler, and start making 'chopping' movements. While he was doing this, he kept watching us at the front counter, while trying to hide what he was doing.

What was he doing? He was cutting up his cocaine so he could snort it.

Because then we see him bend down and do it. All on camera.

It makes me mad to see this because people should keep their drug habits at home, not out in public. Also, what would you say to this person? He may be so high on drugs that he pulls out a gun and shoots one of us for confronting him.

So we just have to take it and hope it doesn't become a bigger problem.

Calling the Cops

I don't usually hesitate to call the cops on people. Most of the time, when you say you're going to call the cops, they just look at you and stand there. But once you pick up the phone, dial, and start speaking to a dispatcher, that's when a majority of them run. And why are they running? Probably because they did something bad, or were about to.

But I don't know why you guys run, the cops always catch up to you. For instance, I came in one morning, only to have this weirdo kid standing up at the register talking to the night shift girl. He kept asking to use the phone or something like that. When he walked away I asked her what that was about, and she said he's been in and out of the store all night for hours, wanting to use the phone. Normally I would chalk this up to him not having a phone and needing a ride, but moments before I had seen him talking on his cell phone.

So he makes the mistake of coming back in when I'm there. He's going on about how he needs to use the phone, so I tell him he has to leave or I will call the cops. He's like 'Go ahead, I need to make a phone call.” So I did.

I got on the phone, called the police, and started describing him to them. As soon as I mentioned that I thought he was on drugs, he bolted out the front door. We watched as he ran past our windows heading towards the church next door.

Soon after, the night shift girl prepared to walk home. She called me when she got home and said they arrested the kid down the block a little. Apparently he was on methamphetamines or something.

So yeah, while some think I was hard on him for calling the cops just because he wanted to use the phone, it wasn't just that. I could tell he was on something, and who knows, he could have pulled a knife or gun on me in his drug-induced state.

A few hours later, we watched the video surveillance of when he came in, and he was there for about four hours at the store. Three of it was spend on the ground, in the grass outside, talking on his cell phone and swinging his legs around. No wonder he needed to use the phone, his was out of juice!

While these types of freaks aren't all that scary, the ones that ARE scary are really scary. As in, what are they going to do to me scary. Those types of people usually stumble in around 2 or 3 in the morning and look at you like they want to kill you. They bring up their purchase, and then don't say a word to you. While most of the time I would consider this rude of a customer to do, it's actually fine by me even though it scares the hell out of me. I don't want to make them angry in any way, but if they do try to start some shit, I will be on the phone with the police in a second.

It's normal for a convenience store to have some type of protection, namely a gun or some sort of pepper spray. And don't be surprised if a cashier uses it. We're here to work and get paid our daily wages, not to be robbed or beaten.

I sometimes think its a requirement to be a freak before entering a convenience store at night. I mean, we get our share of weirdos during the day too, but almost all of the ones are night are strange. I guess there really is something to be said about needing the sunshine to be happy.