He works late nights at a convenience store that sells gasoline. These stores are very popular and you see them all across America. The majority of the profits, from these stores, come from the inside, they make much more profit selling the food ,snacks and drinks, than gasoline.
His day starts at 11pm, the nights are fairly are fairly slow during the week. Every morning around two thirty am ,he begins filling the hot dog machine and loading the ovens with premade sandwiches for the morning rush and re-stocking the rest of the store. The center of his life every morning is perpairing a massive coffee bar for the morning crowds.
Things have changed through the years, there are more automated coffee machines than ever before, that make Espresso and flavored coffees. These machines are less labor intensive than making traditional drip coffee as they While they are popular with those who like sweet coffee, the purest, avoid the machines, they demanded drip coffee, and they take their coffee one of three ways. Black-no sugar, creme-with sugar, or cream no sugar.
Between 3:30am to 7am, they make more than 20 pots of coffee, the demand for coffee is so large in the morning, management bring two other people to help with the crowds.
Due to Covid,, the company that supplies the store with coffee, was experiencing a driver shortage and the store was running low on coffee and the delivery date was unknown. In the storage room, there were cases of decaf however they were down to less than half a case of regular coffee.
His supervisor told him, he had no choice,other than to wait for the delivery. The next morning he opened with eight packs of regular coffee. By 5 am they were out, and created a last minute sign that directed them to the machines and apologizing for being out of regular coffee.
The reaction was immediate! Customers were screaming foul, blaming the staff for ruining their day. Some customers tossed hot coffee at employees after realizing they pumped decaf coffee.
God Dammitt! why are you out of regular coffee? Nobody drinks that decaf bullshit! It seems that every customer had something to say about being out of coffee. By the end of the rush, there were many discarded cups of coffee on the bar, sugar and powered creamer deliberately poured on the counter by frustrated customers.
With the coffee delivery, uncertain one of the employees suggested that they fill all the coffee containers with decaf, two employee said, based on what happen today, they didn’t want to risk it. But the 11pm employee said, was willing to try it.
With all the air pots full, a woman dashed into the store asking where the coffee was? Sugar, French Vanilla, a sip and she exited. In the first hour no one complained about the coffee. But the others employees weren’t so sure, especially the man who had hot coffee thrown at him.
It was 4am, the staff nervously watched the traffic build outside the store on the security monitors. One regular customer, opened the door and asked if they had regular coffee? The employee at the register said yes and the man grabbed two large cups and took a sip out of one the cups and smiled. Outside of a few people saying the coffee was weak, its was a normal day in the store.
SACRATOMATOVILLE POST 