The Convenience Store Jerk

Chapter 3


Day 21

Even though I specifically asked Tim not to call me a nigga he continued to do so daily. Usually it was just a cordial “what’s up nigga?”, but on occasion he’d modify it to “Ah shut the %#@*up my nigga please”.

As white as they come and having likely met neither in his life, except maybe a customer or two; for whatever reason Tim for a few days even called me: “a Jew”.

I’m not sure what prompted that, maybe it was something the young man had seen on TV the night before or in reference to the Mel Gibson tapes, but he was relentless and later while I was on my hands and knees in the cooler - sorting Snapple Ice Tea and restocking Tomato Juice - I heard one of the glass doors open briefly and a quick:”what’s up my Jew?” before he slammed it shut and I just sat back against the PowerAde display and wept.

I’d fallen far. Further than I could last recall in life and wasn’t inclined to get back up until my ass was nearly frozen to the cooler floor, else I’d still be sitting there right now.

...

Though only 18 Tim had higher hopes than simply working at a convenience store the rest of his life; even though I quickly pegged him as doing just that. Instead he said he intended to be a fly fishing guide someday. While I initially took to him and began talking about the subject much more from then on, I soon realized he had no idea how to fly fish; even less so than me.

And after about two weeks of his’ juvenile nonsense I quickly amended my hit-list and moved him very close to the top.

“At least you got the pot smoking and heavy drinking down pat, but first time you call a client a Jew who is a Jew or a nigga; I think your’ tips gonna be a little short ...as well as your guide career.”

“..Wha’d you just say to me nigga”?
...

Tim wasn’t the only idiot I still had to work with, here we had “a crew” of them…meet Eric…Who’s language skills, though he claimed to be former Navy and had just “kindof graduated college”; left something to be desired, considering he too was of the medical ‘green card’ carrying kind (pot smoker).

“AWSUM” ...The UM vanity license plate said it all when I finally saw it, his faded green Subaru parked next to my truck.

Missoula, Montana – the ‘it’s awesome capitol of the world’ second only to ‘pass it over here'...

It was by far the most accurate vanity tag I’d ever seen, as the guy said it at the end of every sentence or phrase without the slightest bit of sarcasms. You could say:”go clean the bathrooms Eric” and he’d say:”awesome”. While it should have entertained me or even pleased me I could pass off the mundane tasks to this idiot; instead I found it annoying and was wondering who would be the first to die.

“Whatever you’re on I want some” I told him about a week after we met, but then changed my mind when I saw how hippy he was. All the “right ons” and “no worries” after everything that’s not right-on, or when someone ‘should worry’; wears on a man after a while.


“Dude, did your fiancée leave you because you said everything was ‘awesome’ maybe.”

...I can hear it now: ‘I’m having my period.’…”That’s awesome!”...’You %#@* infuriate me and I’m leaving your dumbass..!’…“That’s awesome.”

“It’s no wonder you spent 2 years hating women after she left you playing World of War craft and wanting to kill yourself”.

What started out as a good razzing I'll admit got quickly outa hand. I'm not sure where it came from but might've been from working the same repetitive shift with Tim calling me "nigga" that drove me to do the same.

Making fun of this poor sap became a sport for me, and though it made the afternoon go by faster; it weren't without its risks since he mentioned the word ‘sniper’ as often as how “awesome the 40 oz. straws were compared to the shorter ones’...”

Sadly, in retrospect, Eric was the most normal one of us all, myself included. He was entering post graduate-school, whereas the rest of them had long since decided against such things and I even had to finally ask what that was; …having always wondered.

In fact there are very few jobs in Bozeman where you won’t find college kids willing to work, but convenience-stores are one of them. It probably has to do with some embarrassment along with a heavy dose of your’ coworkers being either juvenile delinquents or 42 year old jerks, or ‘former crack heads’.


...Which brings us to Shawn the Loser who faithfully works the 5AM till 1PM shift, lives in the trailer park not 500 yards from the store itself, and walks to work as he's had 7 DUI's in the past 4 years.

Shawn likes to brag he: “used to be a cracker” in reference to a not too distant past as one of the more popular local meth heads – daily visits from a dozen current users and their’ frequent friendly banter is testament to this fact.

Shawn Hughes is the quintessential convenience store employee; long ponytail, full sleeve tattoos, pierced eye brows (and no manager dares tell him to take them out), his Marlboro cough has likely plagued him since age 11 and can be heard hacking up a loogie within the walk-in freezer and all the way across the store. Where he eventually spits this loogie is anyone’s guess...

Shawn is also a total spastic and is often seen leaping over the counter instead of walking around it, he’ll run full speed from one end of an isle to the other and toss items at you when you’re not looking often connecting with customers’ heads for a “price check” which he doesn’t yell, till the item has already reached his’ intended target.

While his antics would normally drive me insane, he is actually one of the few bright lights of working there at all. The guy had me in tears most days and I laughed and smiled nearly every minute we were on the same shift.

He once explained his unexpected energy burst were aftereffects of his past drug use and he “wasn’t always so hyper”. I’d never before had much dealing with anyone who had past drug use besides myself who tried to explain his faults on a certain substance, but I liked hearing it and wished I’d done more crack when I had the chance as then I could use it as an excuse for the past 20 years of on-the-job misery I’ve experienced; though alcohol is a close second.


Tim on the other hand held no such charm with me past the first few weeks. After that he was just an angry kid. A relentless insulter and pot smoking punk he on several occasions bowed up with fists clenched and yelled “what did you just say mother #@%*?” as if he wanted to take a swing at me.

I have this affect on people I’ll admit so it wasn’t entirely his fault, but the thought of fighting an angry 18 year old high school dropout in front of customers behind the counter was something I really wanted to avoid if at all costs; as the outcome would likely be murder before all was said and done and I wasn’t too sure I’d be the winner.

Once it had reached a crescendo over something as trivial as ‘who was gonna bag ice versus work the till’ and his calling me a nigga had reached a point if he said it again I was convinced my head would actually explode; I let him have it by saying:”Look Timmy I’m old enough to be your father and I don’t wanna hear another word about it!”

This remark had an effect on him I wasn’t too sure might not require a call to 911. The boy boiled over his face as red and bright as if I’d punched him already; he ran from behind the counter and into the cooler where I heard large boxes of what would later turn out to be about $100.00 worth of Pepsi products, some milk and few crates of eggs around till he eventually came back out exhausted and shivering.

The idiot had his tantrum and it was a bloody mess too so I held zero sympathy for him, though covered his back a bit when things turned up missing in ‘last weeks’ dairy-order?’

It was sad but true and needed to be said; though didn’t make me feel any better. At 42 and he at 18 I could very easily have been his father and even though he was somewhat brighter than me at running a cash register and counting out his till at night, I later reminded him too that:”You just got out of grade-school so this shits fresh in your mind; hell I’ve been out working for 24 #@%* years”?!

Mentioning he’d recently dropped out of high school was not a wise follow-up and he ran into the cooler again.

...


“If Wayne shows his scar to one more customer I think I might puke?” Joanne said.

Joanne was blessing in disguise. A large Native American with a great pair of tits and scathingly sarcastic; she always brightened my day when I saw she was my coworker for a certain shift. What she was referring to at the time was the nasty two foot black and purple one situated between Wayne’s pierced nipples and ending somewhere below his pant line.

The same nasty thing I alone had seen him display three times, along with slipping off his shoe to show us the stub where he “lost half his foot in a work-related injury last summer in Oregon”.

This left him “1/3 disabled” as he also mentioned in the same breath, and thus forever capable of gaining all the attention in a room (or busy convenience store), by lifting his shirt and showing off his giant purple scar; which inevitably creeped out even many of our creepier customers. Worse still he would often follow this up by relating the ‘gruesome story of how he lost his foot in the first place.’

It also left him loaded with “a hefty settlement”; which he referred to as often as his’ scar and foot - by talking in detail about his’ matching purple Corvette parked cockeyed out front; …customers of course ‘couldn’t help but notice.’

Apparently the surgeons decided to take bone or muscle from his abdomen to replace his lost toes so he could walk again; though I was convinced they’d ‘borrowed muscle from his brain as well’; as it would explain a few things.

Even though I heard the bloody story four times in all, none of it made sense to me but then I was too busy selling convenience store shit to convenience store idiots who actually shop in these overpriced beer and food-traps. The height of laziness is to see folks come in after work and throw down 3 x what each item we sell is over the Albertsons Supermarket down the street.

It’s almost fitting they should then be punished for doing so by being shown Wayne’s 2 foot long nasty scar every other day and hearing either about his new $7,000 car stereo system or in gory detail how the idiot lost half his’ foot in a job-related work injury last summer in Oregon.

....

Layne had once said: “If I smoked ciggarettes I’d get an hour break per day; one smoke-break every halfhour over the course of 8 hours, plus our usual 20 minutes; But because I don’t and I'm smart, I get 15 at best...!”

He “was right and it’s not fair” I argued, but no one listened since it’s universally understood: ‘if you work at a convenience store or manage one you must smoke’.

I missed Layne. My amateur legal advice to him had apparently not turned out as I’d expected and he was fired for even mentioning he might sue.

I think we made friends initially when I told him I used to live on Crow; then followed it up by asking if “a coup’ could be considered scoring some pussy?”

“You are one crazy mother %$#@*!” he told me a few weeks later, and I began to wonder how that would have sounded in ‘his native language’ some hundred years ago;…whence an Indian on the plains of Montana met his first great white drunk …(an ancestor of my own perhaps).


Now with Layne gone, and Jackara (who was apparently white) also fired for threatening legal-action; my hours had changed and I had little hope of avoiding Wendy ...who was without a doubt the most annoying bitch on planet earth.



Moe