Gas Station Job

I used to work for a gas station. Let me tell you that job had so many interesting people and I have a ton of stories about that job. Let me just start off and say that if it wasn’t for me needing a job and a source of income, I probably would have slapped quite a few people. Another thing, the customer isn’t always right. No matter how much the customer thinks they’re right, they aren’t. But with this job, I’ve had some creeps come in and be seriously disgusting while I was there. And I mean always talking about sex kind of disgusting.

I had this regular come in a lot and he would always seem to come in while I worked. Well, this one night my manager had asked me to do a smokeless tobacco audit ( I had to take our scanner and pretty much count all the packs of cigarettes that we had on display along with the JUUL pods and devices and chewing tobacco that we had on display on top of the cartons of cigarettes, JUUL pods and devices and the chewing tobacco that we had in overstock behind the register and in the backroom.) Well when I was kneeling down to scan all the cartons of cigarettes that we had in overstock behind the counter, this guy who looks like he’s in his 50’s comes in so I get up from the floor and wait for him to get his stuff and com to the register. As I get up, he tells me that I didn’t have to get up and that maybe we could do some things back there, very much implying sex. I was disgusted and just didn’t want to deal with him making those very lucid comments. So once he got his stuff and came to the counter, I quickly checked him out so he could get the hell out of my store and leave me alone. When he left, I almost threw up. I knew if I told my manager what that customer said, I knew that he would say that it’s normal and to “just deal with it.” I did finish the smokeless tobacco audit that night, but I went home very disgusted.

Another thing about that gas station is that they have really old pumps. The way the pumps work is you have to prepay first then when you get out to your pump, you pick up the handle then lift up the hook then turn around and put the gas handle into your car and start pumping. Before I forget, the pumps at this specific gas station, well they have specific pumps for a specific kind of gasoline. Let’s say you want premium that would be the middle pump for each section or row of pumps. There were 6 gas pumps and the first 3 pumps closest to the building were regular unleaded gas, the middle pumps were premium and the pumps closest to the road were midgrade. That’s how they were.

There were so many times that I had customers come in and get mad because they prepaid for a pump and didn’t work the pumps right. Like I explained earlier, if a customer would come in and prepay for a pump, they would have to go to their pump grab the handle, lift the hook, put the handle in their car, obviously wait until the pump zero’s out then start pumping. If they prepay and don’t wait until it zero’s out and just put the hook down, then they will cancel out what they had on their pump. If they paid with a card then they would have to come back inside and pay again. They would get refunded for the money they put on there the first time. A lot of the customers didn’t seem to understand that so they would get mad at whoever’s working and blame them for the customers mistakes. I had a ton of really terrible customers and if I continue on, this story will never end. I don’t work at this gas station anymore and I’m glad I don’t because the environment there was very toxic. I was overworked and very unhappy. I now have a better job and a better manager. Also, I’m happier where I work now. Yes, there are days where I get frustrated and would like to go off on some of my coworkers for being lazy and seriously stuck up but it’s better than being blamed every single day for something the customer did.