A gas station late at night has a certain charm about it, and more often than not something strange and eventful will happen if you're the poor sap working 10pm-5am. Needless to say after reading these, working the grave yard shift will be the last thing on your mind! Check out these hilariously strange customer encounters as told by late night workers.
Awkwarddd
“I worked 11pm – 7am shift in an all night garage for a few months when I was 18. There was this weird vietnamese dude who drove a white Honda Prelude, and always filled up with £6.66 of petrol. He wore the same pair of cut offs every time, with blotches and bruises all over his legs, and used to literally wander in, leaning against the displays, pick up as many yoghurts as he could carry, pay with a £50 note and stagger out. One time he came in with these two (obviously prostitute) women who were draped all over him with the biggest pupils I have ever seen. They stood at the counter while I scanned all their yoghurts, and he spoke for the first and only time. Staring at me, he said to the women ‘she can join us, can’t she’ One of the women looked at me and said ‘you’ll make a lot more money if you come with us, darlin.’ I nervously laughed, took their cash and they left, grinning, in silence.”
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Where Is This Gas Station?
“I always got the graveyard shift when I worked at a gas station. By midnight the clientele is almost exclusively homeless people buying booze. All the other gas stations and convenience stores turned them away but we were a small independent gas station and sacks of change the hobos panhandled were the lifeblood of our business.
I got offered crack fairly regularly, which I always politely declined. I learned that hobo names are still a thing. They’d introduce themselves with names like “the wolf” or “Vietnam” or “Big Chief”. One hobo saw me riding away on my bicycle after work and angrily demanded I give him a ride across town. One hobo came up and said “I have no money. Here’s my ID for collateral” he slapped his drivers license and his glasses down and grabbed a case of Budweiser. I told him I couldn’t accept that as currency. He thought about it for a minute, then said, “what would you do if I just grabbed it and ran out?” I told him to leave. One of the other customers, a rare non hobo, spoke up and said “the kid said get out.” The hobo lunged for the beer, the other guy tries to stop him, next thing I know they’re rolling around the parking lot fighting. I call the cops. The hobo runs off. The guy comes back in and insists he’s fine, buys some sunflower seeds and leaves. The cops show up. They say that because he ran off there’s honestly little chance of ID’ing him, let alone catching him. I hand the officer the hobos ID. One time this Mexican guy comes in and buys two 40s. One for himself and one for the two hobos outside. I watch from the window as he hands it to one of them, which makes the other hobo mad. Rather than sharing it, they decide that they are going to fight for it and a brawl ensues. They are in the middle of the road. A car almost hits them. The Mexican guy is watching all this like he’s watching a game of golf. Sort of a half bored expression on his face. Finally, one of them gets the idea to grab the bottle and run away. The other guy chases after them and I never saw them again. I heard later through the hobo grapevine that one of them was hit by a car and died. One time a guy brought his kid with him into the store at about 3a.m. The kid was like 7 years old. A prostitute was there buying alcohol and this guy was totally comfortable propositioning her right there in front of me and his kid as they stood in line, buying candy presumably for the kid. She was really weirded out by it and made up some excuse. He persisted, she got weirded out and left. As he’s paying, he gives me a friendly, knowing, look and says “Women, right?”. I felt really bad for that kid.”
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When In Doubt, Whip It Out
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“Had a guy pull up to the pump, unhooked it wanting post-pay. Our policy said not to authorize it between midnight and 5am (pre-pay only). I announce this to the dude over the loudspeaker. I’m pretty sure he was wasted; he continued to get more and more belligerent. When he started beating the pumps with the nozzle/hose, I called the cops. Dude starts banging on the door (locked, no way he would get in), can’t, gets frustrated, and finally just whips his deal out and starts wagging it in the general direction of the store. The CCTV is getting all this, so I just start laughing my ass off. Then the cops pull up, and two deputies put this poor, drunk, deal-wagging man away in the back of a police car. I quit a few months after that.” (Source)
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Master Troll
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“I’m not a store clerk but…… I went into a Family Express gas station (if you are from Indiana you know…..) around midnight and I needed condoms….. for….. sex…… I’m not shy at all about buying this stuff, I practice safe sex f*ck me right? I have no reason to be embarrassed. I asked the clerk where the condoms are and he replies,”We don’t carry those, we are a fundamentally Christian Company and don’t support premarital intercourse.” I asked him how he knew if I was married or not. He replied,”Then you shouldn’t be using condoms because it’s against God’s will to prevent pregnancies using man-made means.” At that point he could probably sense that I was about to fly off on him…. So he said: “Nah, I’m just f_cking with you pal they are over by the Raman Noodles.” I wasn’t even mad….. that man was a Master Troll.”
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Pickle Chips
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“I worked third shift at a Sheetz. For those of you who don’t know it’s a gas station/convenience store/fast food place. On multiple occasions I have been cussed out because we discontinued pickle chips. I’ve had people tell me to f*ck off, break things, demand to call corporate, etc. Drunk people love pickle chips.”
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What A Night
“I worked through my college years at a grocery store in a college town. I worked in the deli/bakery and day-time cashier. One night, I was asked to work the late shift for time and a half. I didn’t have class the next day, so hell yeah. It was a night I will never forget. As I was transitioning from day to late night shift around 9pm, a kid came in and started just eating olives off the deli bar with this bare hands. Cops get called. He is found 5 minutes later assaulting the soda machine outside, screaming and crying at the same time. Then arrested while high on what was probably PCP or meth. A plethora of drunk sorority and frat bastards pouring in between midnight and 3am trying to buy alcohol when they were already sh_t-faced. The town had a bus system than ran all over the place for free, and we were a very central stop.
Had to call a ‘Code: Wood’, to summon our late night stocker who was indeed built like a tree trunk. Some punks wanted to steal some Phillies and demanded to “just hold on to them” while they shopped. Then got confrontational when I wouldn’t give the Phillies to them before paying. For clarification since I’m a terrible writer: Wood was a night stockman who probably went to body building competitions on the weekends. Hence, I was calling him to the front to help me deal with the hooligans until the police could show up. After the cop showed up with her K-9 from said confrontation, she decided to hang out and talk to me for a while. She showed me a bunch of fake ID’s she’d collected. I talked to a mother who’s son just committed suicide the day before. We talked for about an hour, then she went out to her car and chain smoked while crying for a few hours. Insomniac kid kept coming into the store to buy food and smokes The street sweeper guys showed up around 5 AM to clean the lot. They had to come inside to use the restroom. In that amount of time, their street sweeper got stolen because they left the keys in and running. Not sure if they ever got it back, but I imagine it would be hard to hide in a small college town.”
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Priceless
I’ve never been a store clerk but I was lucky enough to witness the following story….7-11, circa 1996….A guy walks up to the surly clerk, who seemed to work 25 hours a day, and asks ‘do you sell eggs by the 1/2 dozen?’ Clerk: ‘No, you have to buy a dozen.’ Guy: ‘I only need 6’ Clerk: ‘I don’t care. You get 12 or you get zero!’ With out saying another word the guy walks back to get his dozen eggs, pays, and walks out…. Then he throws his 6 unwanted eggs at the store window before driving off.”
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Pig Foot Larry
” I used to work at a gas station in a really small town. There was this old homeless guy with a weird glass eye that would walk around with an uncovered 5 gallon bucket of pickled pigs feet. The pigs feet were submerged in this pink picking juice that would splash all over the damn place when he walked around. Not to mention that during the summer, this bucket would f_cking reek. So one of my first days on the job, he came into the gas station to buy a tall boy Bud Ice. I rang him up and he plunged his hand down in the bucket and pulled out a pigs foot in which he slammed on the counter. After a bit of back and forth explaining that pigs feet were not a form of currency, I just gave in and let him have the $2 beer (I paid for it myself). So about once a week, he would walk in, and we would have this pickled pig foot/Bud Ice understanding. Other customers in line would lose their f_cking minds after seeing this deal go down. I’d throw the pigs feet in the woods out back where the stray cats would eat them. It was a whole ecosystem of f*cking weirdness. This went on for about 6 months before I eventually found another job. The guy was insane, but nice as could be. I called him Pig Foot Larry.
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Weirdo
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“11:30pm in Australia here and on break working till 4am in a sort of restaurant/fast food store. Last week I saw a woman order 4 burgers but wanted no ingredients other then lettuce, not even any bread. I offered if she would like to just buy the lettuce as a topping and just pay $1.25 for it but she insisted on ordering 4 servings of burger lettuce at full burger price.”
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Where Does She Work, The Wild West?
“I watched a truck pull up to one of our pumps, guy gets out to pump gas, a Durango comes hauling ass from the back of the building, another guy gets out with a gun aimed at the first guy. I was on the phone with a friend of mine and said, ‘Someone just pulled a gun at the pump, I’m going to have to let you go.’ I called the cops. Turned out the guy pumping gas had robbed a store 3 towns over and the durango was an undercover cop who had been in pursuit. Another time, a guy came in, walked to the back cooler, got a can of Sprite and came to the register to check out. As I’m ringing him up, one of our local cops walks in, gun drawn, says, ‘Put your hands on the counter, put your hands on the counter, NOW!’ Well, I put my hands on the counter along with the customer because all I’m thinking is, ‘I have no idea what I’ve done, but I’m very sorry for it.’ Turned out that that guy had been involved with a robbery of a convenience store in the next town (5min away) and had fled in a mustang with 2 other individuals. They wrecked the car trying to evade the cops, all three dispersed and two were apprehended pretty quickly but the third came into the store to either blend in or rob me, I honestly don’t know which. After the festivities and them hauling the guy away, the cop told me he had almost lost it when I put my hands on the counter too, and that I should really rethink working closing shifts at my age. I was 19 at the time and I am female. I laughed and was like, ‘And give up free entertainment?????!!!!!!'”
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He’s Seen It All
“Back from my days working graveyard shift at a grocery store, lets see what I can remember: Had a former employee come in drunk one night and call the cops on himself for shoplifting because he wanted somewhere to sleep that night. Had an employee come in on a night off all pissed off, proceeds to walk straight to the back room without a word. About 10 minutes later there was a successive loud POP POP POP POP. Turns out he climbed up to the roof to fire off his gun. A customer came up and told me he heard something fall down in the back room. Tons of stoners buying ice cream at 2AM. Meth heads buying brillo pads and ammonia after 3AM (bars closed at 2AM, so all the cops were usually gone from the area by around 3). Saw a drunk guy fall asleep while his car idled along in the parking lot. Luckily he hit a curb and no damage was done but the cops got a good laugh out of that one. A tall drunk Russian guy tries to buy beer after the 2AM legal cutoff time, then proceed to pick on a sober customer half his size. The little guy took one swing and broke the Russian dude’s nose. Had a guy come in when another employee was taking a dump. Guy really had to take a shit so he turned around and took a dump in the urinal, asking the employee on the toilet for toilet paper.”
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Lamb Bone?
“I work at a deli and about a half hour from close a woman comes to the counter and just says ‘lamb bone?’. We had it so I go to the back freezer. Come back to the counter and her daughter is there, she tells me to cancel the order, meanwhile her mom is right beside her repeating ‘lamb bone?’ over and over again. She had dementia and I didn’t even notice.”
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He Wasn’t Kidding
“A guy came in to buy beer after hours. Told him I couldn’t sell, it was against the law. He pulled out a badge, said ‘I am the law.’ I called 911 and a cop shows up, tells me if I can just let it go, I wouldn’t have any more problems. I let it go. Two weeks later, driving home late at night, WAY over the speed limit I got pulled over. It was cop #2, he came up to the car, recognized me, said ‘Slow down’ and left.”
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Stupid Is An Understatement
“Had a guy fill up with fuel then come in to pay. Got a coffee and a few other items. Said he was going camping and started talking to me about his plans for the weekend. Just a normal guy going camping with his kids. After a few sips of his coffee, heads back out and loads up his truck. A few minutes go by and I can see flames in the back of his truck. These were roughly 1-2 feet tall flames I cold see coming up from his truck bed right next to the gas pump. I hit the emergency shut off for the gas pumps and grab a fire extinguisher heading to his truck. The other half dozen people trying to fuel are either yelling at me or the truck. I arrive at the truck and tell the guy to stand back so I can put out the fire. He was in the back of the truck and spins around. Yells “No!” so I pause. He had a propane grill of some kind and was checking it to make sure it worked. I yelled to turn it off or I would put it out for him. He argued some more and I pulled the pin and extinguished his grill. Yelled at him for a couple and told him to get the hell out. Dude is pissed and covered in white powder, jumps in his truck and drives off. Next shift, store manager and his boss show up to fire me. I told my side of the story, was sent home while they checked it out. Three other employees saw what happened. Apparently the guy called the Complaint line and said I went nuts and sprayed him with the Extinguisher for no reason. Was called in about 2 hours by my boss laughing. Apparently they pulled the video and saw to the whole thing. people can be really stupid.”
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Best Neo-Nazi Is Definitely An Oxymoron
“Not super late, but at the last minute this dude came in to Best Buy when I was working in the Mobile store. He was tatted up, shaved head, had a Hispanic gf, and he was a pretty nice guy. Made me laugh a bit. I go to grab a phone out of the cabinet and a coworker asked how it was going with the neo-nazi. I was confused.
Apparently he had lots of tells, mostly from his tattoos. I thought my coworker was full of sh*t until I went back and noticed the small swastika tat on the space between his thumb and first finger. I got a little nervous being non-white, but he was super cool, personable, funny, and had a Hispanic gf for crying out loud. I consider it weird because he was so chill. Best neo-nazi customer I’ve ever had.”
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Pow Pow
“My cousin used to work at a circle K in a rough part of Akron, Ohio. The night shift of course. He had all kinds of incidents like this on a regular basis. Druggies and drunks.
One particular situation that sticks out is a guy who comes in high out of his mind on something. He asked my cousin if he had a wife and kids. He then made a ‘gun’ with his hand and said, ‘pow, pow.’ He then proceeds to turn around grab a huge armful of chips off a rack and runs out the door. A minute later he comes back in laughing hysterically. Puts the chips back and says ‘don’t worry I’m not going to steal anything.'”
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Ya Win Some, Ya Lose Some
“In high school I worked at a 24 pharmacy which also had a small selection of beer. At about 2am this guy walks in 3 sheets to the wind…saunters over to the beer and grabs 2 12 packs. He comes up to the counter and slams the beer down. Reaches into his pocket and pulls out a half eaten taco and puts it on the counter…I couldn’t say anything because I was so perplexed…I just let him walk out with the beer and told my bosses I thought he might have a gun also…was the strangest thing I’ve ever seen. A couple weeks later he apparently tried this at the family owned gas station across the street and got shot.”
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What’s Wrong With Spiderman?
“I worked at a Walgreen’s in a not so great area and things would happen on the regular, but none were as weird as this. A man who was a regular came in everyday to buy a bag of candy, had no teeth and seemed really strange but I was always cool with him since he was a regular. Then one night after getting his candy he comes back in which he has never done before and looks at me with the strangest look on his face and puts this small piece of paper on my counter. No words exchanged and he leaves for real this time. Then, weirded out, I open the letter which said, in the creepiest chicken scratch handwriting, “Hey (my name) I was wondering if you would like to see Spiderman with me tomorrow at the mall at 7pm if so meet me there at 6″ and if I recall there was some type of smiley face at the end. The dude was about 50 something and I was around 20, of course I didn’t go but I never saw the dude in my store ever again. But I did recently see him at a FYE and booked it when I saw him……”
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Well That Could Have Been Bad
“Not my story, but amazing and I think you’ll enjoy it. This came from one of my instructors at Front Sight, the largest civilian firearms training center in the US. The instructor was formerly a cop in Bakersfield, CA. He was coming home one night from his shift, dressed in civilian clothes and carrying his Glock 19 concealed. He’s stopped in the convenience store for two gallons of milk. He gets the milk, turns around from the cooler, gallon of milk in each hand, and all of a sudden a guy in a ski mask busts in with a shotgun. The intruder walks up to the clerk at the register, racks a round into the chamber of the shotgun, and yells for the clerk to give him all the money from the register.
Our protagonist takes cover behind an isle shelf of wares, drops the milk, and draws his Glock. He comes up above the level of the shelves and puts his front sight on the head of the robber (the only part that’s exposed to him). The way he tells the story, he says he had “taken up 5 lbs of a 5.5lb Glock trigger” when he hears a voice behind him say “OMG stop, we’re shooting a movie!” It was a local college film group, and one of them almost died. Moral: secure your film set, especially for action films. Un-recruited extras can really mess up your production.”
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Creepy…
“I work nights at a gas station in a pretty good neighborhood in New Hampshire, so usually it’s pretty boring. One night I did have a customer really creep me out. I was just getting ready to close down the store when a little old man came in. He was small and dressed in khakis and a button down shirt. I made the usual small talk of asking him how his day was going. Then as I was handing him his change he firmly grabbed my wrist, made direct eye contact with me and said ‘hell is a real place and the devil has already got his hand on you girl, be careful.'”
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Obviously In The Mountains Of Tennessee
“A fat woman with real stringy hair and no teeth came in my store one night while I worked as a gas station clerk. She walked to the cooler and grabbed a soda, but the whole time she was in the store she was looking at me all wide-eyed. She came up to the register, still looking dead at me and hardly blinking, put her soda on the counter, and then said “I BIRTHED YOU”. “Excuse me?” I said “I BIRTHED YOU. YOU CAME OUT OF MY BODY” “Um, I’m pretty sure my mom gave birth to me” “YOU CAME OUT OF MY BODY. I BIRTHED YOU IN THE MOUNTAINS OF TENNESSEE.” I just took her money and then she left.”
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Somethings Are Better Left Unsaid
“A man came in ten times within a single hour. He kept leaving and coming back without buying a single thing. Finally, on the tenth time he comes up to the counter with a box of tampons. I proceeded to ask him, ‘rough night?’, to which he responded ‘I really don’t want to talk about it.'”
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Pretty Risky Prank
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I used to work at a very small gas station just outside Detroit, and since everyone else who worked there were 90 pound high school students, I always got to work the night shift (yay me!). I was robbed 4 times, mugged 6, shot at probably a dozen times, and had a knife thrown at me once. One night, around 11:30 I’m standing behind the counter watching cars pass under the overpass when 6 guys in ski masks run into the store. Two of them stand either side of me and opposite the counter, but facing towards the back of the store. They are barking orders at the others, telling them what to grab, what drinks and snacks. So for about maybe 5 minutes I’m standing there watching this unfold, wondering when I’m going to actually be robbed, or if all they want is to steal food and sh*t (wouldn’t really surprise me). Finally the ordering about stops, and they all line up between the two guys, who finally turn around to face me. Here it is, I thought, the demands for money or cigarettes or something. Nope, the guys orderly stepped up to the counter, and the two men who had been giving orders took turns paying for the stuff they had grabbed. I have no idea who these men were, and it never happened again after that.
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The Entire Song
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“The place I worked had a monitor/camera that showed you on it as you walked it. It was like ten minutes before closing and a guy walks in and just starts rapping into the camera and acting like he’s shooting a music video. He went through an entire song.”
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Flowers?
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I had an elderly woman come in in her bathrobe (nothing else) asking if she could eat the flowers outside. I told her that it probably wasn’t a good idea, they might make her sick (there also weren’t any flowers). I then offered to get her a sandwich. There is a little grill and restaurant area in the store. So she took the sandwich and sat at one of the tables watching the tv. About an hour, maybe less, one of the workers from a nursing home down the road (maybe 1/2 a mile) came in asking if I’d seen a woman, matching his description. I just smiled and pointed to where this nice lady was sipping on a coke watching cartoons. As that turned out, she was somewhat notorious for eating the flowers at the nursing home. So much so that they had replaced the flowers to be sure that all of them were edible, just in case. She apparently had gone outside to eat flowers and then just gotten confused and wandered to our store. Which was very dangerous for her, but hopefully everything worked out for her.”
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