A 2nd Job Part I of II

If you’ve been following this blog for any amount of time you’ll know that I’m terrified at the prospect of parenthood. So my defense mechanism is to make fun of parenthood. But this isn’t about parenthood (sort of). One of the prospects that I find frightening is the loss of one income (the wife’s – who actually makes more than I do) and the addition of an expense (Junior Jr.). Yes, I just referred to my future child as “an expense.” And I will certainly remind him of this when I’m bailing him out of jail.

Instead of waiting to end up in the negative, I decided to get a second job and start saving for the bail bond now. The easiest way to a second job is to work for my sister, Vicky (only I can refer to her as “Vicky” and everyone else has to call her “Victoria.”), who took over our beloved mother’s 7-11 store. I don’t need to be trained because I worked there as a teenager. I also remember absolutely hating working there and having to convince my mom NOT to leave the store to me by threatening her that I would sell it for pennies on the dollar when she passed away.

Vicky was always better at managing the store anyway. I never had the stomach for all the nonsense that goes on with running a store. Actually, that was one of the reasons why I went to college, to get out of that hellhole. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciated how the Lord provided everything for us through that 7-11 but I just hated working there. At this point, you might be asking, “If you hate working there so much, why are you going back?” Good question. The first reason I mentioned- it is the easiest job to get without any additional training involved. Secondly, I can spend more time with my sister. Although she’s consistently going 100 mph and worrying about 45 different things all at once, it’s still nice to see her. Finally, I felt that it’s been years since I last worked there and had hoped my maturity (if any) would help reign in my pure hatred for working there.

If you’re wondering why I hated it so much, it was because I was a lazy teenager who didn’t like to work at all. In addition to that mindset come along annoying and evil customers. Now, not all customers are annoying and evil. Actually the vast majority of customers are just average-hard-working-Americans-with-decency. But it’s those few that make my skin crawl. For example, there’s always that 70-year-old lady who holds up the line by wanting 57 different types of lottery scratchers because she has nothing better to do with her time. I love the fact they only come in when it’s really busy, too. Or, how about individuals who want to have their Lotto tickets checked but their tickets looks like they’ve been through the washer so the machine can’t read them? Here’s the thing that bothers me, if you truly believe that playing the Lotto might win you millions of dollars, wouldn’t you guard that ticket accordingly instead of allowing it to become so damaged the machine can’t even read it? Now if you don’t believe you’re going to win, then why play it at all? Most people who play the Lotto play it regularly. What they don’t realize is that if they simply invested that same money they would probably be wealthy.

Lotto sheets can print out 10 draws on one sheet. But there’s always THAT GUY who wants to have them printed out in single sheets. The dialogue usually goes like this:

Me: “Hello, how can I help you?”

Customer: “Yes, I would like a $5 Lotto ticket but instead of printing it on one sheet, saving time and paper, I would like you to print them on 5 single sheets thus holding up the line and annoying everyone around me.”

Me: “No problem, sir. Would you like a punch in the face with that?”

Not everything bad is Lotto related. Consider, for example, the customer who gets caught stealing and begins to become defensive and says, “I don’t know how that got into my pocket.” Or the homeless person laying in the parking lot that you kindly ask to leave and tells you to “Eff off, this is a free country!” Okay, technically the homeless dude isn’t a customer but still.

Or the person that insists that the coffee must be fresh, which apparently means made at the time of his arrival instead of 20 seconds ago. We definitely have different ideas of what “fresh” means.

I remember the time when we used to have to serve the Big Gulps and Slurpees behind the counter. Now the customers serve themselves. You would think pouring soda into a cup or turning a lever to fill a slurpee cup would be easy. Apparently for some customers it’s very difficult. The slurpee, when overworked, needs time to recharge and has a light indicating it. It’s a big flashing red light that says, “DO NOT USE IDIOT!!!” But do they see it? Of course not, so the slurpee isn’t quite as “slurpeey” as usual and they leave the half-filled cup there without saying a word. The station is always a mess even though we have trash dispensers all over that area. I haven’t even mentioned the hostile customers like gang members, beer runners, and robbers but that goes without saying. Those are some of the reasons why I hated working there. But since I’ve been back, it’s been great to see my sister and an opportunity to meet some of the new workers at the store my mom helped build.

For Part II Click Here.