Gas Station Stories

General Update

A lot has changed since the last time this blog was updated, I worked at subway for about 10 months and most of my time was spent there, making sandwiches for undeserving cunts.  But that’s a whole other blog.  I only worked a couple days at the gas station a week, so I wasn’t experiencing much that was actually worth updating about.  But about a month ago my friend Michelle got offered a better job down state, so she had to quit the gas station.  This fortunately opened up full time hours for me, which I gladly hopped on because fast food really is the worst job I could ever hope to have.  People are mostly rude and ungrateful and they treat you like you have the IQ of Lindsay Lohan, because you’re the one behind the glass making their food.  So I’m glad it’s over, because now I have my sanity back and stuff to write about.

I don’t really have a specific topic to talk about, just some interesting people I have encountered over the past two weeks.  First I would like to to talk about the crazy lottery lady that treated me like I was a casino dealer.  I seriously have never seen this lady come into the store before, but I’ve had the pleasure of seeing her like 3 times over the past two weeks.  It’s funny because when she comes in she is actually driving this giant van for her ‘job’.  I put job in quotes, because driving this van is just her side job, her real job is buying multiple scratch tickets from me and scratching them off with pennies she takes from the ‘take a penny, leave a penny’ jar.  She is a shorter woman, in her mid 40’s and she has some kind of crazy zest for the Michigan lottery.  One day she scratched at least 20 dollars in tickets and won like two dollars, always calling me lady as she ordered more tickets from me.  There was also a maintenance guy there that day fixing a cooler door and they were creepily flirting with one another, but that guy also hit on me later, so I’m pretty sure he was just some kind of pervert.  But that’s besides the point, this lady is extremely annoying and too peppy for her own good, I’m scared she might kill me one day if I don’t deliver bigger winners.  More updates on her if she comes in within the next couple weeks.

This next person I’m going to talk about was actually quite a little gem.  A taller woman in her mid to late 40’s comes bursting in the door demanding to use the bathroom.  Her clothes were from the mid 90’s and her hairstyle was in full mullet prime.  I pointed to around the corner and told her someone was in there.  Then she proceeded to turn to me as she held her crotch saying “But I really have to go” and she then wiggled and almost jumped up and down, it was bizarre.  She then went on to talk about how she always stops her before she goes to the casino for a pit stop and I continued to just ignore her.  She bitched about how the person was taking forever in the bathroom and the person in the bathroom must have heard her, because she told her to hold on another minute.  And then the crazy bitch was like “Ohh, she heard me.  Oh nooo, I just really have to go to the bathroom!”  as she continued to hold her crotch and rock back and forth on her heels.  I just rolled my eyes at her and continued to try and make myself look busy until she was like, “Ohhh, there’s milk spilled on the floor over here.  Someone spilt milk.” So I walked over there and saw milk on the ground, because apparently some idiot knocked one off the shelf earlier and it busted open everywhere.  So I picked up the jug to go and throw it in the sink and then she pipes in “Ohh, honey, ohhh you’re leaking milk everywhere.”  This is when I snapped, I had heard enough of her.  So I piped back “Thanks, because I didn’t realize it was spilling all on the ground.  You don’t have to tell me, I know, I’m just trying to get it to the sink.”  She just look astonished at this point, like she was trying to do me some giant favor by letting me know I was leaking milk on the ground.  She piped back with “Well I was just trying to let you know.”  After this I just walked around the corner and threw the milk in the sink and she finally got into the bathroom and shut the fuck up.  When she finally departed I just looked over at my co-worker and shook my head.

Sometimes I just don’t understand where these people come from, or what on earth gave birth to them.  But even with the craziness that goes on all the time there, it hasn’t been so bad being back there full time.  There’s a lot more to come, especially since it’s the New Year with plenty of new stories. Adios for now, stay tuned!

An Ode to Shit

As we all know, everybody poops.  It’s just a fact of life, even if guys want to believe we shit flowers or not at all, they are totally wrong.  But women pooping isn’t the real story here, because although pooping is a fact of life, it’s just really disturbing  to me when people don’t know how to use the bathroom properly.  Unless you’re an infant trying to turd on that thing for the first time or someone with the IQ of 56, there is no excuse on not knowing what proper bathroom etiquette is.

I don’t want to walk into the bathroom and see piss all over the floor or the toilet seat. How hard is it to get it into bowl???  I don’t have a dick, but I can be sure it’s safe to assume that it’s really not that hard to aim your piss into the toilet.  Now don’t think I’m sexiest here, because girls do some pretty nasty shit too.  Some which revolve around their special time of the month.  Ahem, some things AREN’T meant to be flushed down the toilets ladies.  Get a fucking clue and throw that shit in the trash.  It’s really not that hard to comprehend since we were all forced to take some sort of sex ed in the 6th grade to learn about our monthly visitor.

Anyway, the real story here is about shit and one epic shit in particular.  One time my old co-worker had to clean up a turd that had been skewered on the metal bottom part of the toilet.  Like, who has that kind of aim?  Or did they actually place their turd onto the metal bolt???  That will remain a serious mystery to the both of us.  So, I’m just minding my own business at the counter as this guy in his mid-40’s comes up to me and says this “I missed the pot in there.”  Dumbfounded I just stared at him, because I wasn’t fully comprehending what had just taken place in the bathroom.  Before I could say anything he scurried out of the door without even buying anything, mind you.  Like, you just shit on my floor, the least you could do is buy a pack of gum.

I originally had thought something suspicious was going on in there, because it literally smelled like dead body in there when I had passed by to go and do something else in the store.  I was thinking we had a clerks situation going on in there for a minute, but no, the guy came out completely alive to ruin my day.  Because guess who was going to have to clean up the shit?  Well, it wasn’t going to be the bosses wife, that’s for damn sure, because that’s who I was working with that day.  So after I had let it all sink in, I plugged my nose and went into the bathroom to see the damage.  It was bad, really bad.  Diarrhea was all over the floor and smeared on the seat, like he had tried to clean it up, but changed his mind half way through.  I had to put on a pair of plastic gloves, because if I were to mop it up right away it would have completely ruined the mop ahead.  So, I literally had to take paper towel and shovel up shit into the trash for minimum wage.  MINIMUM WAGE PEOPLE.  And this is a grown man, a 45 year old man shit on the floor.  Like I’m wondering, could he not make it to the toilet in time, was it trying to squat over the toilet and just decided to shit all over the place?  Or what? What was going through his mind?  Has he done this before?  Is he some kind of mysterious gas station floor shitter that is famous in Isabella county for his bowel movements?  Or is he just a dumb ass that decided to ruin my day because he doesn’t know how to use a toilet properly?  Whatever the case may be, he was definitely the worst one I have ever had to encounter.  And there are some pretty nasty people that frequent inside that place that smell of rolled cigarettes and urine.

So people, if you ever go to a gas station to just use the bathroom, please don’t shit on the floor.  I really don’t care if you buy anything, because you’re one less person I have to deal with, but if you’re gonna shit on my floor then you need to be giving me something.  I didn’t know something as simple as going to the bathroom could be so difficult for some people, but that’s Oil City for ya.

Sasquatch Exists

So, as many of you know, I got a job at the old subshack on Pickard, which now limits my amount of shifts at the gas station.  Since Subway is closer to my apartment and allows me to make a little more money with tips, I no longer need to be a complete slave to the pump n’ dump.  But that doesn’t mean that I’ve given up on it completely, because how can one give up on a place with comedic stories that will last them a lifetime?  See, my logic for keeping the job makes total sense.  I get paid to hear people talk crazy, albeit it can be frightening at points, but for the most part these people are harmless.  Which leads me to the Sasquatch story.

About 3 weeks ago I was working a Friday night and a man in his mid to early 40’s came in.  He had slicked back hair and was decked out in all sorts of bone necklaces.  An interesting character to say the least.  I can’t even remember what he was buying now, but somehow he got on the subject of how he sees Sasquatch in his back yard.  Because apparently Isabella county is a hot spot for the mythed beast.  He also told me he is a shapeshifter and anytime he would get close to him he would turn into something else, like a swarm of bees.  At this point of the conversation I am just nodding along and prodding him for more information, because let’s be honest here, this shit’s hilarious.  Sometimes you need to act interested to get the real story.

Okay, so you know when soldiers die in battle and they fold American flags in specific shapes and place it on top of their coffin as they are lowering them into the ground?  Well this wonderful nut job was telling me that Sasquatch folds old pizza boxes into the same shapes and leaves them all over his backyard.  Like, how the fuck do you even fold a pizza box into the shape of an American flag?  And how much pizza do you have to eat to have them all over your backyard? So at this point of the conversation I’m just really trying to hold back from laughing, because this guy is actually convinced that Sasquatch is leaving actual evidence behind of his existence in the form of old pizza boxes. After about 5 minutes of him rambling he finally left the store and I barely had time to process what just happened before the next customer needed to be checked out.

So, the moral of the story is that Sasquatch totally exists.  And he totally loves folding pizza boxes into the shape of the American flag.  

Introduction #2

Alright, so now that I have a steady internet connection at home I’ll be able to update this thing a lot more.  So I wanted to do another introduction entry, because the first one doesn’t really give a background of how I got the job and what the store is kind of about.

I’m originally from Warren, Michigan where I’ve had numerous shitty food related jobs.  I was a hostess at a failing BBQ restaurant back in Highschool, I made pretzels in a mall for a year or two after that, and I worked at Panera bread for a summer.  Panera was probably the best out of those 3, they were the most organized and the shifts always went by really fast, because we were always busy.  Plus the employee discount was awesome, nom nom nom.

Okay…getting back on topic now.  Two summers ago I stayed in Mt. Pleasant because I wanted to take a few classes and enjoy what the pleasant mountain town had to offer without the barrage of college students flooding town.  So in turn I needed to get a job to pay my rent, bills, etc.  I applied to quite a few places, but wasn’t getting any bites until my friend Michelle told me there would be an opening at the gas station she worked at.  Michelle was going to leave because she moved out of Mt. Pleasant and didn’t want to drive back and forth to Gladwin almost everyday, so I was going to be her replacement.  Michelle ended up staying because my boss loves her and blah blah blah, they struck a deal.  Even with her staying, I still got to work there as well, not knowing what would be in store for me over the next 1 and a half years.  She told me it would be brutal and it wouldn’t be glamourous, but I was desperate to have a job and some steady income so I decided to stick it out.  Plus, how bad could it really be, right?

There’s about 8 of us total that work there, 2 people work in the morning, 2 in the afternoon and 1 person works at night.  I strictly work afternoon shifts, which usually go from 2-10, but if they are being dicks that week and want to cut my hours they will schedule me from 4-10.  This really annoys me because it takes me like 20 minutes to drive out there and 20 minutes to drive back, unless I’m doing 90 down broomfield.  During these shifts I don’t get any breaks, unless I smoke a cigarette.  So, I usually try to smoke a lot of cigarettes.  Sometimes I eat there, but I usually don’t because there is no where to sit and customers watch me.  This can become uncomfortable when I’m shoving a hot pocket in my face and they are trying to tell me about their latest sex romp.

Apparently like 4 years ago the store used to be owned by some rich white dude who was pretty awesome, but then my boss ended up buying the store.  My boss is an Indian American who has owned the store ever since then and the white trash in the area don’t take too kindly to him, because his skin is a different tone of color than there’s.  They often call him towel head, referring to middle easterns, who they all think are terrorists because of 9/11.  What they don’t know is that the middle east and India are two very different places and they are also two different cultures, but trying to explain that to them is like trying to get a dog to talk…they somewhat grasp the concept, but are too ignorant and stupid to ever fully understand what is really going on.  

I usually spend my shift doing most of the work because everyone of my female co-workers, besides Michelle, have gotten pregnant and think that they can’t life more than 10 pounds because it will kill the fetus.  I would consider myself a weakling too, but I still somehow manage to get things done by deciding I don’t want to be a lazy piece of shit that day.  I would love to go back to just pressing buttons and bullshitting with the customers, but things do have to get done when Michelle isn’t there to pick up the rest of the slack.  When I’m not in the cooler or trying to organize things that get messed up on the daily I’m interacting with the many customers that come into the store.  We have a lot of regulars, I’m talking people that come in everyday…sometimes like 3 times a day.  I’m sure these people would like to go to meijer or walmart to buy brownie mix, sugar, peanut butter, etc.  But by the time they get into town they will have spent more in gas to get there, than what they will save when purchasing the product at a larger superstore.  So really it’s just a shitty situation for them to live out in the boonies, especially since they also can only get dial up internet.

This introduction has turned into a lot longer than I expected it too, so I will end it here and if I think of anything else I’ll add it later.  Other shorter entries will follow, relating more to specific customer stories and funny happenings.  I just figured I’d give some background of how I ended up here and what’s it’s like on the daily. 

Introduction

For everyone who doesn’t know, my name is Erin and I work at the ever so lovely and never dull Citgo gas station in a tiny town in Michigan. I have decided not to use the party store name for more privacy reasons, but people close to me know where I’m talking about.

I decided to make this blog to record the crazy happenings that often take place here, for the enjoyment of my friends and whoever else may stumble across it.  I may not update it everyday or even every week, but when I do there will be customer conversations, possibly pictures, always hilarious and disturbing stories.  This is it for now, but there will be a bigger update in the near future.  Cheers everyone!