confessions of a...

gas station attendant.

Tonight some shocking and saddening news was tossed my way 'round about 10:08pm. Apparently Pierce Manufacturing is laying off over 100 employees, and starting tomorrow my (very) regular 10pm customer friend is going to be laid off for an uncertain amount of time. As I pondered the cuteness of him actually taking the time to share this information with me, we discussed how strange and sucky it's going to be not to see one another every evening and his future plans to live off of unemployment and my future plans to sell gas until my hair turns grey (or until I get a job in my field). As he walked out the door and wished me a good night and said he'd see me tomorrow, I knew instantly what I had to do.

Yep. I baked him cookies. I mean, let's be honest...
who doesn't want you're-getting-laid-off-cookies from the girl at the gas station!?!?

Exactly.
So I gathered supplies and dug out the cookbook my mom made for me last Christmas which houses my (McGuyvered) cookie recipes. No, I won't give you the recipes. They are secret. I will tell you that I made coffee cookies (to the left, awaiting their turn in the oven) and double chocolate chip cookies and then put a little twist on my mint double chocolate chip cookies...

Yes. Yes. Yes, you're seeing that right, they're filled with chocolate. Dripping, oozing, melty, delicious chocolate. They are minty and fresh like a thin mint, but oh no, these suckers would never ever be called thin. You can just go ahead and drool for a minute.                                                 

I ate this one to test it out and needed a full glass of water to be able to breath again. Monster cookie of delicious chocolately goodness, welcome to my tummy.

So anyhow these wonder-cookies will be delivered tomorrow night, the last night that 10pm will mean a guaranteed sale complete with smiles and stupid laughs.

Of course I'll be sharing the rest of the batches of cookies with my other favorite customers:(aforementioned) Heath, Kevin Smith (really! but ok... not the famous one), Rick & Kathy, Dave, my fellow employees and maybe you!

(EDIT: Cookie delivering went uproariously well. He was delighted and in a bit of shock that I baked cookies for him. It was pretty much the cutest thing ever. After I convinced him that I did indeed make cookies for him by handing him a bag full of delightful mounds of awesome he got a little silly.

Me: Do you like coffee?

Him: Whattt? Yeah! Yes. 

Me: These are coffee cookies. And these are double choc. And these are mint double choc with choc chunks inside...

Him: What! No way. Woahhhh! I'm going to be shaking from a sugar high all night tonight.

Me: It's okay because these cookies are amazing. You'll see.

Him: I can't....believe................for me? 

Me: Yes. 

His regular smiley demeanor was especially smiley tonight. I love that. I'm just bubbling along tonight...how fun!)

confessions of a...

gas station attendant.


tears. (teerz) noun. -fluid appearing in or flowing from the eye as result of emotion; grief, sorrow.
They rarely fall from my eyes, but sometimes a girl just needs a good cry. This one was inflicted by a combination of the following: irritability, the price of chocolate, pen throwing, law-abiding-ness, other women's pms, the cost of gas, other woman's crappy day.
I go in waves at the store, there will be months that go by that I thoroughly enjoy work and am able to tolerate customers and treat them amicably but every once in awhile I just feel over-loaded and it seems that if I have to fake nice for one more customer that I will spontaneously combust (which is pretty much the worst possible thing at a gas station).
I get tapped out of nice. Out of being cordial. Out of being welcoming and homey. Out of being a little ray in sunshine in someone's day. Rude customers come and go...they bum me out for a few minutes but I'll get over it as the night moves on.
For the first time the other night, a rude woman left with her goods she complained and grumbled and threw pens (at me!?!) over and I felt myself welling up, so I walked in the back room, turned on the buzzer for the door, and started to cry. Those emotional-girl thoughts started racing though my head..."I don't deserve to be treated like that!" "I cannot believe how rude some people are!" "Jeez I'm like the nicest person ever and I'm freaking crying!" "Why am I crying...I'm such a nerd." "I AM SO LAME NOBODY LIKES ME!" "Oh my gosh nobody likes me I'm never going to get married!" ....and on and on and on. Luckily nobody came in during my dramatic tear escapade, but I quickly realized it was nearing 10pm. Shortly after ten bells walks in a great customer friend dude guy who offered to beat up the woman who hurt my feelings and made me cry. Life was alright after that. 

Seriously. Don't forget we're not robots. We have feelings.

confessions of a...

gas station attendant.

hot dog buns v. brat buns: the great debate.

Last week I had 3 customers leave without buying anything because we don't sell brat buns even though we had a shelf full of fresh and cheap hot dog buns.
I do not understand this kind of dedication to a meal component. To be fair, brats are much better on actual brat buns, but if you've already taken the time to drive to a store and arrive at that one store and they offer a very similar product to what you're looking for, why wouldn't you just buy that stand-in product instead of driving to another (and maybe yet another) store to find your beloved brat buns?
I'm puzzled. I feel I cannot offer any more insight on this issue, so I'd like to leave it up to you, the reader, to give your insight/feelings/opinions on the great debate.

Thank you in advance.

confessions of a...

gas station attendant.


I find myself becoming more and more blog-conscious, meaning when funny things happen at the store I'll jot them down on a note to remind myself to blog about them later. I just pulled a note out of my wallet that I left for myself to find and it's nothing short of a scribbled, mis-spelled, grammarless mess. I must've been busy because I tend to be a grammar nazi with neat & tidy writing.
Here's what it said:
I like living in a place where it's still socially acceptable to drive your tractor to the gas station to get fuel.
People pull up to the pump on all sorts of funky things like tractors, riding lawn mowers, Wisconsin State Trooper motorcycles, antique cars, snow mobiles, powered parachutes, and Can-Am Spyders.
My feelings towards these motor-powered units would definitely be less welcoming if it weren't for small town charm. The guy on the tractor is the owner of the Silver Spur Saloon (cheap drinks, crappy juke box). The State Trooper just finished some training and wants some chocolate and a soda. The guy on the mower has special needs and can't drive a car. A guy is teaching his son how to snow mobile. All the folks with antique cars like to show off their stuff. The guy in the powered parachute, well, who knows...that was just weird. And the guys on the Spyders always have other avid motorcyclists flock to them when they're fueling up. Folks walk in and tell me stories of their motor-powered movers and a emit of glow of pride and a few slices of ego. And this is alright.
I ask how the bar is doing, how long it took to rebuild, how training went, how that thing rides, how do you fly that thing, and if it's alright if I close up shop and come snow-mobiling with you.  I laugh to myself when kids spend more on a soda than they do filling up their moped. I laugh to myself when folks pay more to put gas in their boat then I do on monthly rent. I laugh to myself when moms driving Hummers tell their kids to put something back because it costs too much.

None of these feelings would be the same if it weren't for the small town charm. I never thought, after loving life in Chicago for upwards for 4 years, that I would embrace a sort of know everyone atmosphere.
Eels put it best:
Life is funny
not ha-ha funny
peculiar I guess

------------

Thanks. Have a great day!

confessions of a...

gas station attendant.

Sometimes you have those nights that just make sense to end with a dance party/sing-a-long. This one happened to be brought to you by the Beatles' Sargent Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club album and a few tricky customers.

A new Sonic opened just down the road from the store last week. Apparently this is a huge deal for NE Wisconsin because there has never been a Sonic in or around the area. (In fact, the closest was Indianapolis, Indiana...some friends of mine road tripped there in high school for some Sonic food on a whim. Crazies.) This new Wisconsin Sonic has required the local police to direct traffic, parking lots full of traffic cones asking cars to weave this way and that way to finally reach their destination of pull-up-and-order fun. Waiters/tresses skate around and bring you food and fun whilst you sit in your car and drop a fry under your seat. Of course in order to get here you had to wait in the biggest traffic pile-up you'll ever see in a 100 mile radius of Sonic. It's bizarre.

Late Wednesday evening an elderly gentleman came into the store to pay for some gasoline. He slowly made his way inside and up to the counter as I greeted him and asked how his night was going. (Surely I should've learned by now that to ask how someone's day is is not the safest question.) He grumpily paid for his gas and then began going on an on about how pissed he was about the whole Sonic fiasco.
"They skate to your car!", he grumbled as I questioned (to myself) why this is such a terrible thing.
"You can't even eat inside! You have to eat in your damn car!", he proclaimed.
I responded, "well sir, I think that's just how Sonic's are. It's all part of the experience."
"Well it's a damn lousy experience. What the hell are you supposed to do in winter! It's lousy!", he grumbled again.
Seeing that my conversation with this man was going to be a losing battle, I simply told him, "I'm sure that's part of the reason that they never had Sonic's in Wisconsin before. The whole idea simply doesn't make sense for a good deal of the year."
He got more upset. Realizing he wasn't upset at me I wished him a good night. He wasn't quite finished venting, "And they have those terrible commercials...two HOMOS sitting in a car talking about stupid shit. HOMOS. I don't want to see that. That's terrible. If you're gonna sell food, tell me about the food. Don't show me two homos in a car and expect me to eat at your place."
I think all I could muster up at this point was "uhhhh, ok."
(this is just one commercial with the two guys he was talking about.)

I spent the few minutes after he (finally) left thinking about how generations other than my own react to marketing. Apparently to this man, two men sitting in a car being witty or dumb means two gay men are being terrible role models for the rest of the world. Some people may not understand the type of marketing that they are using. Some may just not like it. I understand these things...but to assume so passionately that you're seeing two gay men interact and have that bother you so much should really make you question yourself and your own morality, not of those actors you're seeing. Social norms and trends are such interesting things to consider, debate, and watch unfold.
(end sociological rant.)

All that to say, I went to my car, got a Beatles CD and turned it up. I started dancing around between customers, replaying my favorite songs, humming along. My bliss multiplied as Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds came on and a man shopping started singing along, which made a guy in line start singing, which got passed on to someone who walked in the door. It was lovely.
The album ends with a reprise of Sargent Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club and a lot of silliness. As the last song played, someone opening up a door to the beer cooler yelled "SARGENT PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUUUUUUUUB BAAAAAAAND!"

It made my day a million times better. I'm thinking about making CDs of the Beatles anthology and having Beatles nights at the store. ...because really, who doesn't like the Beatles.