For NaNoWriMo, I intend to write a story involving a character who works at a QuickStop or 7/11-esque convenience store. However, I’ve never done so myself, so I have come to you brave souls for advice:
What don’t most customers know about your job? What especially gets/got under your skin on the job?
Any other information or anecdotes happily accepted. 
Thanks!
I highly recommend doing some research reading over here. 
Change Freaks- This is my #1 least favorite thing in the world. You know how sometimes you get a bill for seven dollars, so you hand the cashier a ten and two ones so you don’t break the five? This is okay, especially if you can do it quickly. It’s a little less okay when you are doing it for quarters. We all need quarters and don’t want to sit there for five mintures while you dig around in your purse for a dime so you can avoid the horrendous fate of not getting your perferred change.
But what gets me is the people that will go to insane lengths- totally ignorant of the long line piling up behind them- to avoid breaking a nickle. You’d swear that carrying around a few pennies is a fate worse than death. Apparently these people have been cursed by satan to never have a change jar and must carry any coins they get for the rest of their lives.
This is why I take all the big change out of the “take a penny leave a penny” jars. If I leave a nickle or dime there, it won’t go to the poor kid who is just a bit short. It’ll go to some middle aged lady that will sit there staring dumbly at the counter for five minutes figuring out how she can use them not to break a dollar. I even had one person walk back and solicit everyone in line for pennies so she wouldn’t end up with the dread loose change.
Folks! Thats just not cool! We are a store, not a bank. If you need quarters for parking we might be a bit sympathtic, but if you waste everyone’s time because you “hate change” it’s gonna piss me off. That big line that is growing behind you while you turn your purse inside out and interrogate your kids for pennies is going to be mad at me. We’re running a business here. Pay for your stuff, take your change and leave. Don’t make us suffer through your wierd change voodoo so that you don’t have to carry four freaking pennies around!
I used to work at an Orlando convenience store.
At night.
By myself.
3 guys came in. They didn’t even ask for the money, they just beat me senseless. I couldn’t work for the next 9 months. Every time I went out in the hot, Florida sun, I fainted!
Never again.
I will never do anything that involves a cash register ever again! :mad:
I moonlighted in a convenience store in college, during the graveyard shift, in a college town, near Fraternity Row.
It didn’t last for long, but I tell you two weeks was enough.
In those 13 nights (I got one night off), I had to deal with:
Frat boys pissed off that they missed the beer sale cutoff by five minutes. So they threw their last can of beer at me.. It takes real brains to do that…
Sorority girls with fake breasts and fake IDs. Every one of them. Not that I asked to see their IDs… I really wished that they were as eager to show me their fake boobs as they were their fake IDs.
Stoners who would come in and forget what they came for. (In fact, some of these stoners were my friends…)
Lotto and scratcher players. The lotto players weren’t bad, since I was the late night shift and most of the lotto players were diurnal primates. The scratcher players, OTOH were consistently a PITA. Typical scratcher player would come into the store with a handful of winning tickets, and select a small piece of merchandise, like a pack of mini donuts or a soda or coffee. Then they’d pay with their winner, and then spend fifteen goddamned minutes making the selection of what additional games to play with the balance of their winnings. It amazed me that these people, who all knew every winning combination of every game, hadn’t already decided on their choices or developed a habit or routine. Nope, they had to decide right there, while people lined up behind them and got irritated at the unexpected delay in their cigarette and caffeine purchases.
Cigarette smokers. You wouldn’t freakin’ believe how many brands of cigarettes there are. I’m a smoker, and at the time I smoked Camel Filters, which wasn’t all that common back then. But I was amazed at how many brands there were and how many customers each of them had, and how impatient some of them could be if you couldn’t immediately recognize and locate their brand among the dizzying array of packs, all presented to you with their smallest faces showing… God help us if we didn’t stock Tareyton ultra 100’s one night, because sure as hell, that’s the night that some drunk frat boy’s father would come in, not look at you, and demand his pack of Tareyton ultra 100’s and get pissed if you didn’t have them.
Attitudes. Not everybody was a jerk, but if you want a good cross section of the Ugly American At Home, work a night at a convenience store. Maybe it was different on University Hill, but about half the customers were elite Frat/Sorority brats who would regard a convenience store clerk as approximately the same order of life as a slime mold or algae mat, and not even look at you as they demanded their Copenhagen or Marlboro Lights or Zig Zags, and then throw their money at you, and react as if contaminated if you touched them when you handed them change.
An owner who reviewed the security tape every night, ostensibly to make sure I wasn’t eating anything without paying for it… and then ragging on me for things like picking my nose, scratching myself, reading the magazines, and doing my homework. All while no one was in the store, at like 3:47 am or something.
Beggars. Smelly, persistent, petulant, relentless, opportunistic beggars. I drew the line at them begging inside the store… The worst part is that few of them were actually handicapped or otherwise disabled and unable to hold down a job. They were just total slackers, and even obeying the simple rules about where they could panhandle was too much authority for them to handle.
I especially recall this one guy. He was in his early twenties, and quite probably limited to a two-digit IQ, but considering the other people who worked at the store, he certainly was qualified himself. The most memorable thing about him, aside from his vacant, imminent-drool stare, was his short legs. They were stubs… the rest of him was proportioned normally, but the legs were half the length they should have been. He had one pair of pants, and they were at least a foot too long in the leg. The only thing I don’t remember about this guy is his name. So let’s call him Stumpy.
Stumpy’s standard practice was to show up at first light (he must have slept somewhere nearby) and pour himself a fountain drink, and nuke himself a burrito, and hang around at the soda fountains and microwave and beg change from people in the store. I can still picture him, shuffling gait, vacant stare, mouth working like a toothless man gumming a jawbreaker, wiping burrito filling from his mouth with his sleeve and asking casually, “got a spare quarter?” until he collected enough to pay for his burrito and soda.
The owner’s policy was that the clerks were not to confront beggars or shoplifters in the store. Instead I was to either call the police or call him. But after the second call to the police about Stumpy, I realized that they knew his game, and were tired of shooing him out of the Quickie mart… And after one call to the owner at home at 6 AM and I knew better than to call him about a beggar again.
Once I got a paycheck and payed the rent that month, I was outta there. I talked my financial aid office into increasing my work study grant and was able to put in an extra 20 hours a week building suborbital x-ray telescopes for the astronomy department at three times the hourly rate. The worst I had to deal with was smelly, petulant, imperious grad students.
I have still never seen the movie Clerks, but it is in my Netflix queue right now…
I worked for a convenience store for about six months and didn’t have that rough a time of it. Of course, I also worked at Wal Mart and got all my breaks and money too, so maybe the job fairy gives me decent working environments if crappy pay.
Anyway, my biggest complaint would probably be, like bughunter said, the dizzying amount of cigarette brands and trying to keep them straight. As a non-smoker, it was tough as hell for me to do… especially when someone came in and told me they wanted something like marlboros when there’re about half a dozen different kinds, lenghts, packages, and everything in-between. It’s ridiculous.
Stocking the cooler when no one is around is a bitch too. As is mopping the floor. Please, people, if you see someone sweeping or mopping a floor, AVOID THAT AREA if you can. There were a few times I felt like sodomizing customers with the full length of my broomstick when they decided to walk down the aisle I was cleaning to get to another one.
And, if it’s a gas station, READ THE SIGNS on the pumps. Some are prepay and I don’t care how trustworthy you are, I’ve been told not to run it without being paid first due to any number of reason, and no amount of profanity will get me to change my mind. My job is more important than your convenience.
Also, please buy a phone so that you’ll stop coming in nightly to ask to use mine. Once or twice is no big deal but when you’re in there that often nightly and are on it for ten minutes at a time, you’re being a nuisance. It only costs about $20 a month to have a basic phone plan and you can’t be that broke if you’re wasting more than that a week on beer.
I lasted 3 graveyard shifts at an AM-PM. I think every weirdo in a 10 mile radius would descend upon the store at midnight. I decided to quit after watching a drunk probably 14 year old girl puke all over a candy display and I had to clean up the mess. And I had to wear a purple and pink smock. And the owner couldn’t understand why I wanted to quit.
Wow. I was going to say I’d been robbed twice at knife point but, hey, you win.
I wasn’t hurt or anything. Just scared.
Trying to stock the back and run the front cash register was a major pain in the ass. I’m incredibly glad to be out of convenience stores.
The customers that bugged me were:
The early morning cup of coffe crowd. They always came in, spent a buck on coffee and a paper, and hung out by the register to talk for 30-60 minutes. :dubious:
The lottery people. Every bloody one of em had their own set of rules that had to be followed so they could win. Ya know, if ya haven’t won yet, maybe you should find new rules :dubious:
Tourists without change. “Could you tell me how to find this place? Oh and so I’m not completely wasting your time, I’d like this pack of gum. No I don’t have anything smaller than a hundred. Why?” These people always came in first thing in the morning :mad:
I worked in one for about six months.
I missed being robbed twice. Once it happened about 30 minutes before my shift and once a couple of hours after.
One night the place was packed with two lines of people from the counter to the back of the store. A guy walks in, goes to the beer cooler, grabs a 12-pack and calmly walks out, smiling all the while. I looked at my cow-orker, smiled, and kept on ringing up customers.
I did have a superbitch for a manager (one of a string of 5 during that short period of time). I had asked for a day off way in advance. When that week’s schedule came out, I was scheduled to work that very day. I told her I wasn’t going to be in that day since I had plans. She told if I didn’t, I might as well not come back at all. I ended up switching places with someone else. That Friday, I started a new job (which also blew chimps) even though I was scheduled to work.
I called the bitch about five minutes before I was supposed to be in. She asked me what was wrong (in a condescending voice that deserved a punch to the head), I told her I couldn’t come because I was at my new job and I hung up on her.
Due to some other reason, she was fired about two weeks later.
Definitely not worth $3.35 an hour.
I did 9 months, first on graveyard (by myself) then on swing as shift head. The worst:
Oh, yes, stocking the cooler at night while working alone. No damn way I was going to do that. If I am not allowed to lock the front door, I am not leaving the front of the store and placing myself at the furthest point from an exit. The cooler can wait until another worker shows up.
Your relief decides to quit, with no notice. Just doesn’t show up. Your manager and assistant manager aren’t answering their phones. You lock up and close a “24 hour” store or pull a surprise double shift.
Being the crisis line for a worker at another site while they wait for the cops, because they were just robbed. And the same managers aren’t answering their phones. Twice in 9 months.
The marquee lighting shorted out one night. Flames and sparks shooting out over the doors and the customers still want to come in. “I just want some beer, man. It’ll only take a minute.” Read above about the managers.
My brother worked at the same store I did but, aside from the robberies and the already mentioned obsessive lottery players, nothing really weird happened on my watch. So I’ll post two things that happened to him (on the same day, poor guy).
Lady places gas hose into tank, pays inside, drives off with hose still in car, rips hose from pump (this isn’t allowed anymore at most stations in the area; you have to replace the hose before they’ll let you pay)
Man with a van (and a very bad plan, as it turns out (I crack me up anyway)) comes in and wants a car wash. Brother says, “Do you have a sun visor?” See, if you have a sun visor, you shouldn’t go into car washes that have giant, swirling brushes (you just shouldn’t anyway, but whatever). Same with a front antennae that doesn’t go down (I’m not sure why). Anyway, guy says yes, I MEAN NO! or something. I’m not sure, I wasn’t there. Either way, he wound up taking his van in anyway where the windshield was promptly smashed and the visor ripped off. Too bad you didn’t happen to catch the signs EVERYWHERE, along with the verbal warning the clerk gave you, informing you that the store isn’t responsible for damages. Whoopsie!
When I got there (he called me, totally freaked out), the car wash was shut down, the van was parked by the side of the building with all the people standing around, lookin’ all :eek: , my brother was standing in the front chain-smoking, and all the doors were locked. That was a fun day.
I worked in a deli/liquor/convenience store in Las Vegas, mostly on swing shift, for about half a year.
At that time (and maybe still today, I don’t know) one could buy alcohol 24 hours a day, as long as one was 21 or older. I was always amazed at how many kids kept trying to buy booze from the same clerks night after night, after we kept asking for ID. One guy, in particular, used to tell me that he was able to buy beer in his home country. I kept telling him that he was in Las Vegas now, and subject to LV/Nevada laws. After I’d refused to sell him beer, he’d wander over to the slot machines, which were another vice restricted to those over 21. So I’d have to chase him off from those. We didn’t sell just wine and beer and coolers, we sold hard liquor, too. We kept the small bottles behind the counter, and the bigger bottles on the floor in a sectioned off area. We had quite a few regulars who wanted their daily half pint or pint of the cheapest vodka or gin or whatever that we had, and got pissy at the clerk if the clerk didn’t know EXACTLY where that bottle was. Because, you know, that bottle is the Center of the World.
Again, we carried an incredible variety of of cigarettes. Marlboros, red, green, light, ultra-light, long, regular, unfiltered, box, soft pack, and the pack with 25 instead of 20 cigarettes in it. A lot of smokers expected us to know WHICH kind of Marlboros they wanted when they barked “Marlboro” at us. One guy chewed me out for 5 minutes because I gave him a soft pack instead of a box. Sheesh. Here, too, the kids would try to buy cigarettes while underage.
The owner didn’t carry rolling papers. He said that the main purpose of those papers was for rolling joints, and he wanted no part of this. He had no problem with having slots and booze and tobacco in his store, though.
There was a laundromat in the same strip mall which never had any quarters in its change machine. People would come to us to try to buy a roll of quarters, and get pissed when we couldn’t sell them any, because we were low on quarters ourselves. And the managers of the convenience store got pissed at us if we DID give out too many quarters.
There was a lot of theft, both by customers and staff. I knew one woman was helping herself to a pack or two of cigarettes every night, another one was fixing herself a couple of meals from the deli section every time she worked, and one guy made sure he had a pint or two of booze for each shift he worked. The manager said that she had to catch them doing it…she couldn’t take my word for it. Oh well.
I could go on and on about this place, but you really have to work in one to understand it.
I’ve been fortunate enough to avoid working in convenience stores, but my brother has done it. He said one of his least favorite parts of the job was taking money from skanky women who would rummage around in their bras and pull out a sweaty wad of cash. :eek:
Did this for a while many, many moons ago. Mostly it’s boring, but you normally have magazines or something to read. Sometime you don’t have time to do that, just man the til. There’s always something to be cleaned up. You get a very scary brand of character depending on the store. Some are fine, just local folks. The younger teen girls from the nearby trailer park would come and hang out and flirt with me (I was only 18 or 19 when I did this line of work).
Some amusing/scary incidents:
[ul]
[li]One time a guy in a small pick up truck came through the drive through. Only there wasn’t one. So it pushed all of the shelves into one another and I had to clean up a rank mixture of glass, ketchup, oil and pickle juice.[/li][li]Another time one of our locals who would come up and buy rolling papers got hit by a car while he and his friend were sitting on their motorcycles in the middle of a six lane road without any lights on about 10 pm. His friend was seriously injured, local dude’s brains were leaking onto the pavement. I tried to give him CPR but I couldn’t get his jaw open. It was pretty horrible.[/li][li]I was in the store one night after my shift playing the video game (maybe Phoenix or Stargate) and these three girls had just come in and bought some beer. They got back into their car and were revving their engine. For some reason. Suddenly the car came flying through the air and through the plate glass in front. Apparently they were so drunk/stoned, that they didn’t realise the car was in drive and not reverse and couldn’t understand why it wasn’t backing up. So they gunned the engine until finally the car bent down the “barrier pole” (installed after previous incident) far enough to turn it into a ramp. Then whoosh, they went airborn. Fortunately they didn’t have much forward momentum. As the car came through the glass it also ran into the video game I was playing. Being a good geek I kept playing for a few seconds while the game was being hit by the car. Hey, cars coming through the window were old hat for me. The funniest part was the clerk who was working, a short, plump, middle aged woman had been standing next to me talking while I played the video game. Next thing I know she had teleported herself to cowering behind the counter. I was amazed at the speed with which she was able to move. After I finished up the game I checked out the car that was about 3/4s of the way into the store. The car was still running and in gear while the three drunk chicks, noticeabley more lucid, were discussing “who was driving the car”. This being the days before MADD and SADD I gallantly removed the six of Michelob from the car and put it back in the cooler before the police arrived.[/li][li]Once I had a new employee (I was not technically her boss) who decided it would be fun to shag me in the back room during the late shift. That was fun.[/li][li]At least once I had a female customer come in because she was eager to see herself in the new Hustler that had just come out.[/li][li]One store I worked in was on the way home for several of the women who worked in our counties only fully nude club. They generally didn’t look as good in the harsh light of our store.[/li][li]Another store we once had someone drive over the gas pump. That made me more nervous than the people coming through the “drive-through”. [/li][li]I had some tough looking kids once steal a case of beer with a look like, “What are you going to do about it?” I let them walk out, of course.[/li][/ul]
But for the most part it was mundane.
I worked at a gas station once. It was one of those that had a small enough building for the register, 2 aisles of snacks and other stuff, a small back room office, and 2 bathrooms on the side.
Like ShibbOleth said, it was a pretty boring job. My shifts either were from 6 PM to Midnight on select weekdays, or 5AM until 1PM on Saturdays. I read more novels in my 6 months there than any other time in my life. When I wasn’t reading, I was doing my college homework.
Cigarettes were the single biggest sale next to gas that we had, and our manager was religious about making sure we kept count of the cigarrettes we had left after our shift. During my cig learning curve, most customers weren’t too bad about me getting them the wrong box. I couldn’t believe how many different brands we had in stock.
Since we were a small gas station, we didn’t have beer or booze to sell, so that probably helped in keeping us relatively safe from robberies. I was never robbed when I was there.
Something that I haven’t seen touched on here is that most places like this have a safe that the attendant can put money into but cannot open to get it out. This is used to help keep the amound in the till down (Usually between $50 and $100) so that if we do get robbed, the majority of cash is still safe. I was religious about doing this.
Me too!
I did convenience stores for a while in and shortly after college.
The cigarettes are a pain in the ass… and God forbid that you only have soft packs of Marlboro, and not the boxes (some people adamantly believe that they taste different… as a smoker, I never noticed any difference myself).
The biggest PITA for me though, were the people who would come in, buy something, and ask if they could take a few cups from the soda machine. “But we’re going on a picnic, and forgot to bring cups!” Well, sorry, you can’t take 20 cups for free… those cups are the only thing of real value involved in the soda machine, and my boss doesn’t like to lose money! (for those of you who don’t know, the Coke, or whatever, comes in a box as a syrup. It is mixed with the carbonated water inside the machine as you dispense the product… the boxes of syrup are pretty cheap, and your 64 ounce Big Gulp contains only a few pennies worth of syrup. The cup is the major expense involved for the store.)
The overnight shifts really are an education! Every weirdo/freak/pervert/etc. you can imagine will show up in the middle of the night. That part was kinda fun, actually. 
Did my time in a neighborhood market owned by a fraternity brother.
It was in a relatively high rent district here in town, and directly across the street from a great Italian restaurant. I swear I gained 50 pounds working in that place between eating the stock and getting spaghetti nearly every night I worked.
We also would get high as loons in the walk-in cooler, watch porn on the rental VCRs, read everything on the magazine rack, and walk out with a case of beer at the end of every shift.
Wonderfully good times - if someone had come in to rob us I’m sure we would have said, “Hey, take whatever you want - we do.”
I liked the guy that came in when I was working the night shift at a 7-11 in Boulder. It was dead slow; he was the only customer so of course I knew exactly what he was doing the whole time.
He nuked a burrito for a long time - I can’t imagine how hot it must have been - then stuck it down his pants! When he came up to the counter to buy cigarettes, the expression on his face was priceless. He had to have been in such pain. Well, I figured if he needed it that badly, I wasn’t going to interfere. Sadly for him, he paid for his smokes in small change. I perhaps didn’t count as quickly as I could have. 5… 10… 20… 45… The entire time he’s standing there, trying to smile, hopping about gently.
One of my co-workers came up with the line I wish I’d thought of, “Is that a burrito in your pants, or are you just happy to see me?”
Clerking is like getting your soul sucked out through a straw. Most clerks I’ve known come home feeling emotionally drained after a shift. Spend enough years at a job and it can lead to depression.
I spent 4 years working a magazine store (really a glorified convenience store) in Montreal. My duties included the cash register, security (preventing theft, throwing people out), cleaning, inventory, accounting, etc.
Head Office had an employee manual explaining my duties (including such gems as “Clerk may not leave the counter when working alone at night, until closing time. Clerk must sweep the floor and tidy the magazines before closing at night”). This manual, in addition to explaining my duties, also had a set conversation that we were expected to follow. Needless to say, we ignored it – robotically repeating the same things and refusing to talk to the customers is a good way to drive people off.
Every once in awhile, Head Office would come up with some new policy, which we could see would drive away the customers. Our supervisor took any suggestion, no matter how mildly put, as insubordination and questioning her authority. So when we brought in the “no cash refunds” policy or “no tobacco on credit card” policy, we couldn’t do anything. Naturally, we got shouted at by customers, as if we personally were responsible for store policy.
The worst aspect of the job are the customers. I’ve gone over mopst of the trully horrible ones before on this board, but just a quick recap:[ul][li]One man wanted to see the losing group loto group – we don’t keep the losing ones. Then I discovered his group loto was for another store (these are store-specific lottery pools). He yelled at me saying, “This is America, and I have a right to see it!” I pointed out he was in Canada, and no, he didn’t have the right. Then I told him that it was for another store, and he said, “Are you calling me a liar? Because that’s disrespecting me, and I know that’s illegal.” I pointed out that no, it would be unconstitutional to make a law against disprespecting people. As he walked out, he spit his gum on the floor, looked up at a disgusted fellow customer, and said, “You can’t prove I did that.”[/li][li]People with despicable opinions will share them with clerks because they know we have to treat the worst people with respect. Extreme racists and the really bloodthirsty ones are at the top of that list.[/li][li]Shoplifters will use some pretty pathetic excuses for theft. I’ve actually had a guy tell me, “How did those get in there?” when a stack of porn fell out of his jacket (porn, cigarettes, and lottery tickets get stolen the most). Another guy accused me of “Only picking on him because he was black” while he was slipping a second magazine into his jacket in plain view. [/li][li]You develop intuition for shoplifters after awhile. Contrary to a disturbingly prevalent belief, you can’t tell a shoplifter by their race. However, you can make generalizations about age and sex – I would estimate they’re 90% males, 13-25. The rest run the gamut – and I really mean run the gamut. You haven’t had your faith in the human race truly broken until you’ve caught a sweet little grandmother trying to lift lottery tickets. Smart shoplifters spread out in groups – they know you can’t look everywhere at once – and one of them tries to distract you with conversation and continuously asking the price of products.[/li][li]I’ve only been robbed at knifepoint once, but I’ve been threatened plenty of times (and mocked, and spit at, etc…). Once was when these people sent their kid to buy a stack of magazines for them – she paid more than my biweekly salary for the stack. But one of them was wrong, and when I told them we couldn’t give cash refunds, the father threatened me with physical violence. It was a big man, bodybuilder by the look of it, so I really didn’t have a choice. I had to pay out of my own pocket when I ccould barely afford to eat, for his daughter’s mistake :mad:[/li][li]Oh, and forget the police. The only time they bother to come is when there has actually been violence – I couldn’t even get them there for a threat of violence, unless there was a weapon involved :mad:[/li][li]When you’re a clerk, people assume you’re stupid. Even though most clerks are using the job to pay their way through university. I actually had a guy tell me (after he went on about the state of the world for awhile) “Don’t get an education. It’ll only ruin you.” Another time, a woman held a playbill for a play entitled “Catoblepas.” I said, “Isn’t that the mythical monster in Pliny the Elder?” And she said, “Very good” in that impressed, cloying voice people use with babies who’ve leaned their first word. Of course, some clerks feign ignorance, because sometimes the only way to reconcile the unreasonable demands of customers and the idiocy of company regulations is to pretend you’re too stupid to understand.[/li][li]Some people won’t talk to you or acknowledge your existance. One man wouldn’t let me touch any of his purchases (who did he think put it on the shelves?). That’s right – to some people, you are an untouchable.[/li]There exist good customers. They’re either clerks themselves, or very regular regulars who know you by name. One woman named Jean used to get me coffee when I was having a rough night, and brought me a tin of homemade cookies every Christmas. These are the vast exception, though – a fraction of a percent[/ul]