Gas station attendants have a unique view of society. I learned this at age sixteen when I started working at the neighborhood station in my small, suburban town.
It was a Getty, tucked in a residential area and offering food essentials, convenience products, and impulse indulgences.
The owner knew most customers by name and encouraged me to make as many personal relationships as possible. While regular customers were parking their car, he brought their brand of cigarette or preferred type of milk to the counter before they even walked in.
People loved it.
“Pete” pulled this move off with a passion for customer service that most people found delightful. I did not have that same passion for service, or that same level of charm, but tried to play the part as an overly-enthusiastic teenager filled with anxious self-awareness.
It never really fit.
There is a desperation in seeking validation from customer service transactions that often causes us to cross beyond appropriate boundaries. Pete could shrug it off, but if I overstepped my bounds, it would gnaw at me for weeks.
Now that I’m always on the other side of the counter, I maintain a strong resistance to overly friendly relationships revolving around repeat transactions.
Not because I think I’m too good for the attendants, but because I think they’re too good to have to go through the charade of being friends with every person who walks through their door.
I happily allow my presence to serve as a respite to the monotony of their day.
I’m exhausted by endless banter that has no objective. The worst words I can hear in any situation are, “We’re going to take a fifteen-minute break to stretch and socialize.” Working behind the counter at a gas station is basically that level of small talk stretched out for an entire day.
This is why I appreciate it so much when I find a repeat service relationship that requires no work.
The best customer service I’ve ever had was from a 90-year-old barber named Joe who was hard of hearing and always smelled like salami. He was perfect.
Joe entertained me with stories from his days in the merchant marines and somehow always found a way to stick it to that damned Ella Grasso (a mostly beloved former Governor of Connecticut who died a month after I was born).
With the exception of a few blood-drawing hand tremors from his straight razor and the one time he got a little weird about Puerto Ricans, every interaction with him was entirely pleasant. And, I didn’t need to do any of the work.
I respect anyone who is passionate about their job or can thrive in a service sector environment. But not when they abuse those positions for their own amusement.
Before I started at the gas station, I worked as a grocery store bagger and was often paired with commentator cashiers. It takes such incredible gumption to comment on another person’s purchase.
When you’re offering running commentary and don’t know what’s coming down that conveyor belt next, it only takes one item to cause a very uncomfortable turn.
After all, this was the 1990s, long before you could order embarrassing products off Amazon or covertly embrace the anonymity of a self-checkout lane. If you wanted to buy something personal, it had to take that long conveyor belt ride of shame for all the world to see.
Once a cashier establishes a running commentary on the items being purchased, the silence while handling an awkward product is unbearable. It doesn’t matter how good her Cheetos quip was in the empty silence of scanning a customer’s hemorrhoid cream or worse.
Another word of advice to all cashiers – keep eye contact to a minimum. It’s a transaction, not a date. I learned this the hard way.
If you work at a gas station for long enough, every urge eventually passes through your door. Teenage attendants shouldn’t have thoughts about any of them, let alone conversations while you’re alone in a store together on a quiet winter night.
Even if you have thoughts on what someone is buying, keep it to yourself. Especially when the thought is, “Pornography and condoms? If you need one, you shouldn’t need the other… “
It’s not your place to comment. So don’t.
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