Gas Station+James=Heck

Why I hate people, reason number 247 (Gas Station Blues)

I swear that every time I leave the house, I regret it. Gas stations are the worst places in the known galaxy. First, I park my car at a gas pump and realize it is out of order. So after finding a pump that works, I entered the station to pay for a pre-set gas amount. However, I noticed a long line of unhappy people on both ends of the counter. My first thought is to turn around and go to another gas station, but I was already here so I stepped all the way inside.

One line was usually longer than the other line, plus I knew the clerk that was working in that line. He’s known as one of the slowest clerks on Earth. He used to work for Wal-Mart, and I remembered standing in his slow-a** lines back in the day. Plus, he does that annoying thing where he licks the end of his thumb with his nasty tongue. Then, he takes that nasty thumb and touches MY change with it, yuck! You don’t see me licking his casher-machine do you?

Well, I head for the second, shorter line. However, there is craggy man that is kind of standing there kind of off to the side, so I don’t have a clue if he’s in line or not. He’s wearing a white t-shirt that is more yellow than white, and he has poorly grown beard. He has brown-dusty dirt on his arms, so I surmise he worked in construction. He had a long can of some type of beer in his hand and a cup in the other. I let him kind of get in line in front of me, that was me being nice.

Fairly quickly, the line moves up to the dusty guy in front of me. I look across the counter and see that the other line with the slow-a**, thumb-licker hasn’t moved an inch. I smile slightly, knowing that I made the correct choice.

The dusty guy in front of me places his “junk” on the counter. The old clerk scans his junk, and says, “Is that all?”

The guy mumbles, “Let me have a pack of something cigarettes.” His voice is so low and so garbled I had a hard time understanding the dusty guy myself.

The old clerk has to lean in to understand him. After nodding to his garbled request, he looks around the millions of cigarette boxes and packs.

Let me step out of the story for a second and say how bad Gas Stations are. Not only are they one of the leading causes of gas use and environmental damage, but also they sell more tobacco products than any other place. It’s like your one stop, death store.

The old clerk can’t seem to find his special brand of cigarettes. It takes the old clerk a LONG time to realize that he has to open a box from a supply place from behind a shelf. I start rolling my eyes, because I’ve been in the damn station too long.

After a few minutes, dusty guy leans over to me. “My bad, Dude.”

Through tightened teeth I say, “It’s okay.”

With his cigarettes now on counter, the man then mumbles, “Could you get me some numbers?”

Lottery Numbers, one of the things I hate the most. They slow the line down even longer. I generally have a problem with people that play the Lottery. It seems people want to get rich quick, instead of working for it. They hope they’re the one person that gets lucky, and never have to work at their crappy job again. I am not against gambling, just lottery numbers. Don’t slow down the line for foolish dreams.

It takes the old clerk forever to understand the garbled numbers, and he finally gets it right. Now, I’ve been in this damn store for TSG long. The dusty man finally leaves, with me cursing his name.