I spent 4 months as an ‘Assistant Manager’ of a Scumberland Farms after I finished high school, and before I went to college. The difference between being an assistant manager and a clerk was $0.25 an hour, the combination to the safe (so I spent late night shifts wallowing in the knowledge that, unlike most clerks, I could be forced to let all the money out of the safe…). I was fairly glad to get out of that job.
The things that most pissed me off about the job was that the state I was in had just passed a tobacco restriction law: No sales of tobacco to anyone under 16. I got such crap for being one of the fools who actually carded for it. (Though one 23 yo woman was thrilled to have been carded.) But what pissed me off were the smokehouse parents who would sit in their cars, watching me, and send in their 6 yo child to go through the rain to pick up their tobacco. Now, not knowing them from Adam, or Eve, I’m not about to make a sale to a minor while someone, who might well be a cop, is watching (Not that I sold to minors ever, I just mean it goes beyond immoral to stooopid in that circumstance.) waiting for me to ask for that fine. Then, when I would sell, and pointed out to the mother or father, the signs about it not being legal to sell to minors, I’d still get crapped on.
Another were the people who were so special they couldn’t park like real people, and, during early morning, or late afternoon, hours would park across two or three spots. No matter how you’d ask, or kvetch, they’d never actually go move their car to park like a real person. And invariably, they were the ones looking for the right pack of chips, or 16 oz soda.
Though, the gas station manager managed to learn one of them assholes one fine day. This yutz parks across three spots, and just after he did, one of Mark’s friends pulled in to go to the donut shop in the same strip mall, about 3 inches behind the offending car. Mark notices this, tells me he’s taking his 15 minute break, and then asks his friend how long he’s going to be there. Mark’s friend says he just got off the night shift, so he’s willing to sit around chatting for an hour or so. Mark says, “Perfect,” and goes to get his car, and parks about 3 inches in front of the offending car. Then joins his friend in the donut shop for a break. Meanwhile, asshole notices Mark parking his car - after all, Mark had made himself noticable by asking asshole to inconvenience himself, and actually park like a real person - and goes stalking into the donut shop demanding “Why the {Censored} do you have to be such an asshole?” (A comment, by the way, that Mark, and I when Mark told me about this, found rather ironic. 
)
Mark looks at him and just smiles, and says something like, “Oh? You have a problem with the way I’ve parked?” After about three minutes of pure invective the guy goes out to take a look at the other vehicle blocking him in. After he leaves the donut shop Mark’s friend asks, for the record, I presume, “That’s the guy, I take it?”
After having checked all the other stores in the strip mall, the guy comes back into the donut shop, and demands, who has the black pick up truck, license plate number umpty-squat. Mark’s friend raises his hand, and keeps talking to Mark. Asshole’s face gets really interesting looking at this point, from what I’ve been told.
Asshole asks Mark’s friend if he’d be so kind as to move his truck, since asshole would like to be able to leave. Mark’s friend says, “Sure, as soon as you apologize for all the things you said to my friend, here.” Visibly swallowing bile, the asshole does, and Mark’s friend pulls his truck out long enough to let asshole leave. Asshole gets to the exit of the parking lot, sticks his arm out the window of his car, yells “Fuck you!” and peeels out.
Unfortunately for asshole, there was a town police officer in the supermarket parking lot across the street.
After issuing the citation, the officer, who was also a friend of Mark’s, comes into the donut shop, and asks what the Hell they did to make that guy so mad. After Mark explains, the officer, laughing madly, offers to be the second car in any sandwich in the future - and let the asshole get verbally abuse with him.
The other thing that pissed me off about the job was that Scumbies had a ‘loss control’ team sitting across the street in their car, watching the store almost as many hours as we were open. I didn’t know what they thought they were doing - our store, so far as I knew, wasn’t suffering major shrink. Certainly not on my shift. I’ve since found out what they were doing - Scumbies had since gotten into hot water for a practice of targetting suburban kids for shakedowns: They’d get proof of a teen worker doing a five finger discount, and then meet with them and their parents, showing the proof of the theft, and then the loss figures for that store during the time the kid had been working there. Then management would make an offer: If someone were to recompense the store for all the losses they’d suffered during the tenure of the kid working there, they wouldn’t press charges, just before junior was supposed to head off to college. :eek:
One of the odd things about the job - about three times a week, I’d get a long distance trucker coming into the store about 3:30 in the afternoon, and he’d always ask how long the coffee had been sitting on the warmer. The first time this happened I was embarassed to have to admit that the pot had been basically made at 8:30 AM. He smiled a bit ruefully, and said he’d take it, but he’d been hoping for older: his idea of good coffee was stuff that had been thickening for at least 8 hours. :eek: Eventually I got to know his schedule well enough to be able to put on an extra pot for him about 6 AM. Since he was filling up a large thermos, we always did well off those pots.
All in all, I can’t say I enjoyed the work, but it was a huge step up from my previous job: JOAT at K-mart, aka the Temple to the Great God Murphy. Because we weren’t a 24 hour store, I was never robbed, not even while making the nightly deposits. And because we had a good relationship with the cops.