Tales from S-Leven

By Dan Keizer and Drunkle Dave

Two veteran 7-Eleven clerks share their thoughts and memories from their years manning the counter around the turn of the century.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ezekiel VanDerStein
• Release date: Aug 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223122548

Book preview

Introduction

Dave and I used to work at this 7-Eleven.  We had a lot of crazy times and dealt with a lot of characters, on both sides of the counter.  Every shift seemed like a stream of shenanigans and hijinks.

Us employees were a fairly tight-knit, colorful bunch.  We all hated our job, yet we kept coming back for more.  The customers got to know us over time and despite the fact that we were often assholes and wildly unprofessional, we would get compliments.

I love coming into this place, people would say.  There's always music playing, you guys are always laughing about something.  You remind me of that one movie with the convenience store.

Yeah, we would say, having mixed feelings about it.  We've seen that movie.

That Kevin Smith movie actually did do a nice job of bringing up a lot of the annoyances and drudgery that comes with working at a party store, as they're often called around here.  That scene in Clerks where the guy is standing in the candy aisle, surrounded by candy and candy-related signage, and asks where the candy is definitely happens at every 7-Eleven.

Over the last couple decades, Dave has said over and over that he and I should write a book of 7-Eleven stories.  He actually wrote quite a few of them years ago and it was me that sandbagged on the idea.  I think he even wrote some of them while we were still employed there.  So when it finally became time to throw down, I had to mostly rely on my memory.

It reminded me of that one Mark Twain book.  It was called Life on the River, or something like that.

Even though our 7-Eleven had a large lake right behind the store, it was nothing like going up and down the Mississippi River on a steamer.  There was one little segment in that collection of tales that talked about some Civil War siege, Vicksburg it might have been, where Twain discusses the time element related to storytelling.

Specifically, Twain's point was that if one lived through some amazing event or hardship in the short term, then they would be able to tell amazing stories.  However, if that remarkable circumstance lasted until it became a lifestyle, then it would be more difficult to make interesting.  Once people are completely immersed into a situation and it becomes normal to them, they stop paying attention to the details that would have made it interesting to the outsider.

So, to translate the point, if Dave and I had worked at the 7-Eleven for a month or two, we would have had better stories to tell.  The details, from the beeping sound of the scanner to the smell of the mop sink to the taste of the new sugarless grape Slurpee flavor to the sight of the nicotine-stained walls to the feel of the disgusting empty beer cans would have made it into the book.

But it didn't go down that way.  We worked at the store for years.  The stories in this book are the product of the slowest of shifts or recollections after a decade had passed.  So, it might suck.

I would like to both thank and apologize to anyone who is mentioned in this book.

Mornings.

Late Again

You wake up to the sound of a phone ringing.  The year is 1999; it's a house phone.  You glance over at your clock, which is not built into the phone but perhaps sitting on a dresser or hanging on a wall, and it reads 7:08.

Fuck.

Hello, you slur.

Hrrh ghhrr, says Larry, the store owner.  Uhhruhh cuhhrmrrnaahh wrgh drrdrr?

Yeah, you answer.  I'm flying out the door right now.

So begins the day of the 7-Eleven clerk.  Luckily, you've slept in the clothes you wore yesterday, so that will save you a couple minutes of prep time.  It might be a good idea to at least change your socks, but that depends on how long ago it's been since you've done any laundry.

You scan the fridge for a quick breakfast on the way out the door.  A piece of leftover pizza will do nicely.  There's a little Mohawk vodka sitting on the counter, but it's kind of early for that.  It'll be there when you get home.  Well, unless one of your roommates gets to it first.

Meanwhile, Larry hangs up the phone on the other end.  He turns to the midnight clerk, who has now collected about 15 minutes of overtime, thanks to you waking up late.  Well, it would be overtime if the midnight guy hadn't come in 20 minutes late himself the night before.

Ahr ghaddahrrdhh Dhrrn, he says, relieved.  Yhhrh chhr puhrnsh owrrt.  Sihr yhhrr trrmrrhh.

Diane works tomorrow, doesn't she? says the midnight clerk, somewhat alarmed.

Larry pulls out the tattered schedule clipboard, which for some reason must have the previous 8 months of schedules stacked up underneath it and held in place by rubber bands.  He moves his finger along the rows and columns, then his face sours.

Frrkkhh, yuhr rrrrt.  He slams the clipboard back into its little slot beneath the counter, under the lottery machine.  His decent-ish mood has been ruined for today.  Diane was a fucking crazy idiot, so one couldn't blame him for not looking forward to coming in the next day.  It meant he would come in, see the store looking unkempt and filthy, Diane would give him her list of things she fucked up while incorrectly ringing customers up before disappearing into the bathroom for 20 minutes, during which time Larry would discover a few more things that Diane had fucked up without realizing it.

That's all it took to make the difference in how your day was going to go.  Sometimes you could come in a half hour late and Larry would make some wisecrack about how you were too stupid to set your alarm and he would carry on like it was just another day.  Other times, such as today, he was going to do all sorts of passive-aggressive bullshit until about noon.  Larry could give you the silent treatment, stick you with, the counter to deal with all the god damned customers while he putzed around the store doing pointless bullshit, or he might give you some ho-shit chore like sweeping up fishflies or tidying up the area around the dumpster.

I learned during my first week, while training, that there would be no serious repercussions if I would come in late.  I put in my first few days on the morning shift working with Larry and the other clerks, learning the basics of the convenience store life, and one of the guys was at least 10 minutes late every time.

What happens when you're late? I asked Larry.  At age 18, I didn't think working at a 7-Eleven would be a very serious job but I did guess that there would be corporate protocols and whatnot.  You know, like, it was a legitimate company?  I figured there would be paperwork, bullshit videos to watch, eventual suspensions, not to mention the boss' wrath.

Uhr ghrrvrhhrmm ah spehrsch, he said, exhaling smoke from his Basic Menthol 100s in a soft pack while ringing up a customer.  Durr ruhddah dehr arr sehrr, 'Gehhrmeh beh mahr fahr muhrnuhrs'.  Yah nuhr?

Oh.  That's it?  Like, this guy was getting so pissed about this kid coming late every day that he was turning red and blowing up his phone and all that stuff.  He couldn't come up with anything better than that?

Later, I would find out that the real consequences came from your coworkers.  If you got woken up by some angry woman who was waiting for you to show up to work your midnight shift, you were not going to finish that call without her telling you that she had to go home and get to sleep before she had to take her kids to school in the morning.  Then when you got to the job and finally punched in you were likely to find the afternoon crew had already ditched you.  Now you wouldn't even have time to pee or hang up your jacket because there were already three customers at the counter staring at you.

Linda was one of the worst.  In those earliest days her and I were still friends.  In fact, she was the one who got me the job as, the other midnight person, which meant two midnight shifts a week and whatever days or afternoons I could pick up from other clerks who took time off or didn't show up.  Linda would come in to a lot of her midnight shifts at least a half hour late.  She was prone to day drinking, often sleeping late on her pre-shift nap or finding herself unable to easily leave a party and go to work.

Later, she would continue with her chronic tardiness as a day shift regular.  On the day shift, you had to face Larry's wrath firsthand.  She would come in 30 minutes late, nursing a hangover, acid-laughing after getting one of Larry's speeches and other more passive-aggressive behaviors, then avoid the counter for the next two hours because he was in a bad mood.  Eventually, Larry would promote her to manager as a reward.

Me, I wasn't perfect but I like to think I was generally on time.  Actually, one of my biggest pet peeves coming into the midnight shift was when I would come in five or ten minutes early, specifically to give myself enough time to fix up a cup of coffee, use the bathroom and maybe smoke a cigarette before my shift, and the fucking afternoon crew would try to dip out as soon as I got there.

Like, no, motherfuckers, you don't get to leave early just because I'm here early.  Get back there and ring up that lotto scratchoff customer.  And you'd better validate those tickets before you go.

The time I got the most upset with a coworker for being late was during the 2005 NBA Finals.  I'm on the afternoon shift, 11pm comes, Andre's stoner ass doesn't show up.  My coworker on that shift, who wasn't even a basketball fan, had some fairly decent reason for not having to be the one who waited for him.  She probably had to work the morning shift the next day or something.  I knew damn well that Andre was awake and aware that he was late because he lived in the 7-Eleven Flophouse over on Beach Street with Bub and all of their little friends were over there watching the game.

There was no point in yelling at Andre or picking a fight with him or anything like that.  He already knew that I didn't like him and didn't care.  If I got into any shit with him, I would just end up having to deal with some bullshit from Larry.

I got my revenge by taking a few packets of mustard from the tray by the hot dog grill and applying them to the doorknobs for the bathroom and the area in the back.  When Bub finally rolled in and dropped Andre off for his shift, about 45 minutes late and deep into the third quarter of Game 7 against the Spurs, I punched out before he even got inside and shut the door to the back room.  He walked past me without a word, as was our usual routine.

I hovered around before I left just long enough to watch him put his hand on the doorknob, then wipe his hands on his pants as a knee-jerk reaction.  Figuring waiting around for him to use the bathroom would be overkill, I jogged to my car and headed out to catch the fourth quarter.

I never got into any trouble for that one.  It's entirely possible that Andre didn't even bother tattling on me because the story would involve digging up the fact that he was 45 minutes late, but I like to think that Larry approved wholeheartedly.

The Scratchoff Contest

This is one that I like to tell people who play a lot of scratchoffs.  You know, gambling addict type friends of mine.  It comes up in conversation once in awhile.

One of the common questions people ask you when they find out you were a 7-Eleven clerk, or any type of convenience store clerk I suppose, is if you learn any lottery tricks while manning the counter.

Is there a way you can tell if the scratchoffs are winners before you buy them?

Shit, if you could, every 7-Eleven parking lot in Michigan would be full of BMWs and Escalades.  Fuck no, there's no way to tell.

Back in the day, there used to be code letters that would indicate how much the tickets won, but you had to scratch off the portion of the ticket where the letter would be.  An A was $1, J was $4, I think a P was $25 or something like that.  They got rid of that code system because the letters could be used to scam a store if somebody found an already validated ticket with a good letter on them.  If the clerk was busy enough or lazy enough, they might give you your $4 for your ticket with the J on it and you'd be gone before they found out the ticket had already been cashed someplace else.

My idea was to take a very bright flashlight, like one of those spotlights that taxi drivers and delivery people use to find addresses at night, put it against the scratchoff and see if you could tell what letter was under the... whatever material that is on a scratchoff which you scratch off.  Vinyl or something, I think.  I never tried that idea because I was too lazy and I really don't have that much passion for scams.

So I tell them no, there's not really any tricks or advantages that a clerk can have when it comes to those instant lottery tickets.

The one thing we could do, mainly for entertainment purposes because it was so unreliable, was pay attention to how many tickets people bought and scratched on the premises.  See, you had these dickheads that would come to the counter, by five tickets of a certain game, bring back anything that won, spend it all on more tickets, repeat, until finally they got the big one or they had reached their spending limit, which was usually when they ran out of money.

I don't know how many fucking times I had to sit there and listen to somebody tell me how lucrative their gambling addiction was as they pissed away dozens of dollars on these things in about ten minutes.

Eventually these people left and we would have a fairly good idea of how they'd fared.

"Donna bought seven Cashing in the Dough and they all lost! somebody would say.  The next one has got to be a winner."

Yeah, right.  But it worked once in awhile, enough that I guess I could say it gave you an edge.  The shitty thing was, it was the $5 and $10 tickets that had the best odds and were most likely to be true to our losing streak theory, if you will.  If it didn't work the way you thought it would, you could lose a pretty penny on that fucking lottery.  Or usually if that next ticket actually did win, it would only give you your money back without any profit.

So as to this contest thing: At one point the Michigan Lottery started doing this contest where if your location, within a certain region, sold the most lottery tickets in a month, the store would be given a free roll of $1 scratchoffs.  There were 250 of those boys in a roll, so that was a lot of potential winnings.

Now, us 7-Eleven clerks got a lot of fun out of the lottery machine and we loved fucking with our customers, so we got to hustling on this lottery contest.

Would you like to buy a scratchoff today, sir?

Why?

Because gambling is fun and easy, sir.

Will it be a winner?

The potential winnings are guaranteed, sir.

OK, I'll take $5 worth.

So we ended up winning the contest for our little territory and in their gratitude the Michigan Lottery sent us a roll of scratchoffs, on the house.  I think there was maybe seven or so employees working at our 7-Eleven, so there was the issue of how to divvy this thing up.  We put it to a vote- Do we divide up the tickets into equal shares and let everyone try their luck as individuals, or should we scratch off all the tickets en masse and then split the total winnings?  The store's crew ended up going with the latter option.

I walked in to work one day and Bub handed me $6.

What's this for?

That's from the scratchoff thing, she said.

This is from that free roll we got?

Yep.  We won $47.  Everybody got six dollars and we gave Larry the remainder.

There was 250 tickets in that roll, right?

Yep.  We won $47.

Jesus Christ, I said.  Fuck the Michigan Lottery.

Well, you know.  I still played around with that lottery machine quite a bit.  I could never stay away from that Club Keno for long; you can make some bank on that motherfucker.  But that's my cautionary tale for people who think they're going to luck out on a scratchoff or if somebody thinks they've figured out a method.

250 tickets gets you $47, dude.

Spilling Coffee

After one of my attempts to get a real job hadn't panned out, I returned to man the counter at 7-Eleven after being gone for about three years.  Things hadn't changed much, aside from the Good Humor freezer being relocated and some updated products on the shelves.

I did notice that the boss, Larry, seemed to be a little more laid back than he had been before I'd left to work at General Motors.  After a couple weeks I finally drew the short straw and ended up on the Sunday morning shift, which meant it would be just Larry and I for eight hours.  Now I would see if Larry had just been minding his manners around me or if the change was more fundamental.

A few hours went by and he never got testy.  Even through the sometimes stressful coffee rush, with senior citizens who don't feel like they have to wait in line to pay for their Sunday newspapers and lotto bozos who also don't feel the need to wait in line, he never fell into the mutterings and tantrums I'd come to associate with Larry.

We chatted a bit between customers, took turns playing albums on the turntable and cheerfully divided the morning's chores.

At one point I was getting myself something to drink over at Coffee Island and in the ninety seconds I'd stepped away, every customer in the store had apparently decided to get in line.  Not wanting to leave Larry to deal with a line which was now partly going down the chip aisle, I quickly stepped over to join him at the registers.

In my hurry, I had set my little thermos down right on the sales counter.  At one point either Larry or I knocked it over and coffee spilled all over the counter.  Coffee spilled into the glass case for the lottery scratchoffs.  I think some of the stuff people had set on the counter to buy had gotten coffee on it.

This was something that would normally cause Larry to absolutely lose his shit.  Customers and coworkers felt the wrath when the most minor of accidents occurred at the store and this one was fairly high up the scale.  I grabbed a handful of paper towels to control the mess, expecting the usual beet-red complexion and passive-aggressive ranting from Larry.

Larry just quietly rang people up while I cleaned up the spill.  Once the line died down, I set about the business of taking apart the glass case for the lottery scratchoffs and wiped up the last bits of coffee while Larry wandered off to stock the walk-in cooler.  He never mentioned the spill.  I think he even sprang for carryout at lunchtime and we finished our shift without further incident.

A couple days later, Bub asked me how my shift with Larry went.

Oh, it was fine, I answered.  Larry seems like he's really calmed down over the last couple years.  Maybe he's a little happier in life than he used to be.

He told me you spilled coffee all over the counter and it went into the lotto case, said Bub.

Yeah.  It wasn't that big a deal.  I just wiped it up.  The case probably needed to be cleaned anyways.  I thought Larry was going to lose his fucking mind, but he was really cool about it.

What? she asked in disbelief.  He told me that he gave you the silent treatment so you would know how pissed he was.

I laughed.  It now seemed possible that Larry was even worse than he'd been before.

Oh, that's what happened?  Well, if he keeps doing that I'm sure he and I are going to get along just fine.

Naked Rob

There was this one fella that used to come into our store every day, his name was Rob.  I want to say he was a painter or something- walls, not art.  He was of average height, a little bit stocky and was probably in his late 40s when I first started working there.  Rob had grey, curly, poofy hair that he occasionally covered with a black cowboy hat.

At first, Rob was only notable because out of all of our customers he had the filthiest coffee mug.  He used to bring in this little thermos that looked like he had dropped it out of his car window while driving down a dirt road where it was struck by an oncoming semi truck and settled in a drainage ditch where it sat for two months before he found it again, then went right back to drinking coffee out of it without ever washing it.

I once asked him if the bacterial cultures growing on his mug were an attempt to create a new life form.  He was not amused.

Rob was a good natured guy and was never any trouble.  Sometimes I enjoyed his visits to the store because he would ask Larry dumb questions about our merchandise and signage, which sounds harmless but it would infuriate Larry.

Dhey jrsh sehndh mhrr thh shhht ehrn I hhrff tuh puhrt eht opph, Larry would snap.  I duhrn't knuhr unnhurthuhrrng uhbbrrt ehrt!

One day Gary, a retired Vietnam veteran we were friendly with, came in at the same time as Rob.  He scowled at Rob as we rang him up.

That was my next door neighbor, Gary grumbled after Rob left.  Fucking crazy prick.

What's wrong with Rob? we asked.  He doesn't seem that bad.

I mean, I was entirely open to the idea that Rob had his quirks, but in my eyes he wasn't any more fucked up than any of our other customers.  He would come in on the morning shift, get a paper, a coffee and maybe a pack of cigarettes.  Occasionally he would get a six-pack on the way home.  Once in a great while he might pop in on the midnight shift and buy one of the delicacies we had in our frozen section.  He had days where he wasn't the most cheerful customer, but that was about the worst it got with him.

I have to see his naked ass walking around outside, said Gary.  It's not a pretty sight.

You're saying he literally walks around naked? we asked.  Naked naked?

Broad daylight, not wearing a fucking thing, Gary replied.  Maybe some sandals or sometimes his hat.

Like, he walks around in his yard with his dong flopping around in the sun?

I wouldn't say, 'flopping', but yeah.

Jesus Christ.  This guy didn't live in any type of secluded area, he lived in a regular ass suburban street where the houses are maybe 15 feet apart.  A street with kids and old ladies and pets and all of that.  I think miserable, paranoid, thieving old Ms Green also lived on that street.  Shit, motherfucking Patti Smith lived on their street.  I wonder if she ever had to look at Rob's naked ass.

It was hard to believe, but Gary wasn't known to bullshit.  Even his stories about smoking weed and dropping acid back in Vietnam were told in a matter-of-fact way.

It wasn't long before we were able to confirm the tale.  One of our fellow clerks, Violet, rented out Gary's upper flat and saw everything for herself.  After Violet moved out, Bub took the flat and she would also