#longtalk

It should be said that, Freedom Valu is the most ridiculous name for a gas station and the american eagle/american flag was on everything. I thought it was going to be a great job because it was right across the highway from a Kwik Trip (our store was old as balls at the time because the owner didn't care to put up any new stuff or update anything so it was a trainwreck. Most Freedom's I've seen are pretty nice. But in this case it'd be like comparing a five-star hotel to a back alley with a mattress in it. It gets the job done if you don't mind the smell). And boy, was I half right.

I was a gas station attendant for just a little over 4-5 months. And in that time I got to experience the sort of people who weren't good enough for a Kwik Trip station. I had people who 1) Tore apart my prepped coffee/filters (I worked night shift so I had to prep for the morning person), trying to somehow figure out how to make the coffee by themselves. And then yelled at me about not having fresh coffee a half-hour before I closed the store and across the street from the TWENTY FOUR HOUR KWIK TRIP that I know had better coffee because I went there after work for coffee on my way home. 2) Had actually tried to return an opened pack of cigarettes both smoked and unsmoked. The one who had smoked one realized all too late she had wanted Marlboro Light 100's instead of just Marlboro lights. An easy mistake. But she attempted to TAPE THE GODDAMN CIGARETTE TOGETHER USING ONE CIGARETTE SHE STILL HAD IN THE HOPES THAT WE'D JUST GIVE HER MONEY BACK??? 3) People who fit all forms of the worst of gas station nightmare stories. Broken things, tried stealing from me, wrecked stuff we had placed out like maps and brochures and just left them laying around, and prepped food and then decided it didn't look good anymore hot. 

Only once did I ever have a "Drive off" which was a dude claiming he had forgotten his wallet in a town 30 miles away and I'm like "lol I'll need your number and license plate guy" and he gave me the wrong plate of course which I wrote down as he drove off. He never came back but...he also apologized and said his dad was supposed to bring in the money?? It was just..ugh..The dumbest thing was he spent way too much time sitting and talking with me trying to get it sorted out prior to him leaving so why go through all that trouble if you're gonna drive off??? It was dumb.

I also dealt with a lot of midwest old white ladies who have nothing better to do than to make other people's lives miserable. Including one my grandma hates and we'd sit and laugh about how awful she is to people like holy crap. 

I was good friends with my manager, my best friend got me the job, and another friend worked weekdays and I saw him a few times. It was a pretty sweet gig and got me out of the house and experiencing a whole mess of nonsense I could talk about with other people. One time in particular there was a fucking massive storm approaching the store and my grandpa's truck was missing a window (dad knocked it out with a rock while mowing, and also broke the brakes one time but that's another story), and we had duct tape and plastic covering it..

So that shit blew off about 2 seconds into the storm, and the truck was getting rained in, and I couldn't go out because I was the only one working. It was a fucking mess. By the time I got over to the truck to try and patch up the window, the storm stopped and it was a beautiful day the rest of the day and I was ankle deep in rainwater in the bed of the truck. a good day.

But not so great as the day someone slammed into the store with their car.

So, my buddy Mike, who works weeknights, was working one night. Mike is kind of interesting because he's this skinny little white dude who is good fun to be around but me and my best friend used to joke about him a bit and with him because, while me and my best friend, marcus, listened to our music at work. Did something to pass the time, read, drew, whatever we could do to break up the monontony..Mike did none of that..

Mike stared at the wall from the counter and just waited for people to come in like a statue. It's a little unnerving the first few times you walk in and he's just kinda hanging out not doing anything. But it became a fun thing to give him guff for.

So, Mike's staring at the back wall. And evidently, a drunken regular decided he wanted to come get beer that night before the stores stopped selling. At 10 pm.  And he slams his car into the very wall that Mike was staring at.

Now, we can only speculate. But me and my buddy Marcus had it figured Mike's first thoughts were that his telepathic powers had finally come to fruition, and that he could finally bring down the store with a thought (something all of us had thought of often. My manager herself said many times "I don't think I'd mind if this place burned down, we'd get a new store at the very least").

Thankfully nobody was hurt, and the damage was minimal. I left a short time later but I found out that when they were going back to the wall, which was behind a couple old beer cases, they found a single gummy bear stuck to the wall. Just...Hanging out. 

The store's been remodeled and fixed more since that time. But to my knowledge, that Gummy Bear remains. And there's something comforting in that.