EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK:
VINCE'S GYM
I Work At Seven Eleven
Since I moved to Oregon, I literally went to every
Seven-Eleven Store in the Springfield & Eugene area. I
reasoned that since I had experience not only as a clerk, but
also as a assistant manager for the Seven-Eleven Store I had
worked prior to leaving Pennsylvania. I knew that even in a bad
economy Seven-Eleven historically had a tough time keeping
employees. Countless times I would stop at the stores & fill
out applications, & beg the managers or owners to hire me. I
hit them up constantly. I was told by the store managers to go to the Southland
corporation office & the people working at the Corporate
office would send me back to the stores.
Shortly after losing my
Skippers job & assuring Brandy that my dancing days were
over I scoured the area for jobs. I stopped off at the
Seven-Eleven on 54th St., in Springfield again. I
had applied in there several times. This time I went in & as
usual owner once again did not recognize me.
I asked again about a
job & he said, “Didn’t you hear what happened in my store on
72nd St., last night?” I said, “No I haven’t” He
said, “One of my clerks was shot in the back of the head &
dragged into the back cooler, then a few dollars for the
register was stolen & a case of beer was also taken.” He
looked at me to see how I would react. I was stunned & I
stood there looking at him. He said, He looked at me & said,
‘You look as if you can handle yourself.’
I thought, “Surely he
doesn’t think bullets will deflect off my chest. “Several of
my clerks here & at the other store just quit on me.” I
still just looked at him, & he said, ‘Do you still want the
job?” I said, ‘Sure, I got to eat.” He said, “Can you start
tomorrow?” I said, “You bet.”
Eventually, I was
working at the store that the young clerk was murdered. I
had also taken over his shift which was the graveyard
position. I made it clear with the owner that I need the
graveyard position to study when I caught up with my chores
of cleaning, stocking, ordering, & all of the usual tasks. I
emphasized that I would only crack the books when my chores
were done & when customers pulled up I would hide the books
& give the customers my full attention. The owner assured me
that would be fine. I kept a bat under the counter. The
store was on the edge of town & a lot of people would stop
at the store right as the bars were closing. Many of these
people live in the rural areas outside of town & the store
was the closest place for them to shop.
For a few months after
the killing, a lot of weird people, especially men would
come in & want to know what the body looked like. Some of
them sounded like Peter Lori, “Aggha , what did the body
look like?” or they wanted to know if I had found the body.
A lot of these weirdoes were disappointed that I did not see
the body. A lot of them wanted me to show them the spot,
hoping to see blood stains. Honestly, some of these people
were quite chilling. I often wondered how many bodies they
had buried in their crawl space.
After the bar crowd was
through the rest of the night was for chores which I could
do quickly, the rest of the night I could study, & rarely
did I see anyone come in until five or six in the morning.
The loggers & the fisherman would come in for worms & beer.
Beer was a hot item during hunting season. It was a
frightening to see hordes of hunters with their rifles come
in & buy large quantities of alcohol with the intent of
mobbing the hills firing off their rifles.
I use to come in early
to help the change of shift & to prep the way to make my
shift easier. I use to stay later to help with the close out
& to help the new shift get a better start. I was making a
whopping $3.30 an hour, which was a whopping $132.00 a week,
-- $520.00 a month, a king’s ransom of $6,240 a year, before
taxes. Yeah, I was living large. (By the way that was
sarcasm!). My boss was so grateful for my above & beyond
service he called me in to give me an atta boy!. He said, “I
have been watching you & I have seen that you took the shift
that nobody else wanted, you have done your chores & then
some & you go out of your way to help the crew coming in &
going out, therefore I’m going to show my appreciation, & my
wife & I decided to give a raise up to $3.35 an hour. I
thought, “Wow, a nickel an hour, an extra $8.00 a month,,
shit, I can marry the little woman & have kids!” He kept
talking, “We’ll start you on that raise in a month.”
Before the month, the
owner mentioned that he got word from the fellow clerks that
they saw me reading when they stopped in late at night. He
said, “Your not suppose to be doing anything but working in
the store.” I said, “We did have an agreement.” I said,
“What do you want me to do when I am all caught up with all
of my chores?”
The owner told me that I
needed to stand straight up & look alert. I thought, “This
is fire watch all over again.”
By the end of the month when
the big raise was suppose to come, the owners pulled me in &
told me that they could not honor their promise to give me
the raise because they had to tighten their belts &
therefore, I had to be satisfied with the same fair wages.
They had some poor lady
that they sucked into believing that they thought of her as
the daughter that they never had. She worked lots of extra
hours just to please them. They did not require this of her,
but she did it out a misplace sense of loyalty. It was
destroying her marriage. I think she suffered from
obsessive-compulsive disorder because when she couldn’t find
enough chores for me to do, she would take a pipe cleaner &
stick them into all of the hundreds of holes in the frames
of the display racks, & these were made of tubular steel.
She would jam them into the holes frantically swirl them
around & then pull them out, & each time the pipe cleaners
would have a least a tiny bit of oil & smudge showing. This
would drive her nuts. She convinced the owners to force me
to perform this chore. I spent a week every night doing this
insane task. No matter how often this chore was done those
damn pipe cleaners would show smudges.
I snapped & told the
owners & the manager that particular chore was insane, no
one I said, can see the inside of the frames, no on gave a
shit if the insides were smudge. I told them that they could
fire me before I lifted another damn pipe cleaner.
The women who came into
the store were of two types. Some would flirt with me
endlessly & try to seduce me even though they knew I had a
woman at home. I wondered if the deal would have still been
there if I was a lonely bachelor. The other type of women
treated me as if I was a barely tolerable specimen of
manhood because I worked at a Seven-Eleven. To them I was of
dubious quality & my seed was probably toxic. One beautiful
woman that use to come in & treat me with this type of
disdain ironically met & married Larry years latter.
The ironic thing was
that Brandy was always suspicious that I was running around
on her, even though I took great pains to be faithful, & I
must say some of the women tested my limits & my integrity.
I would ask Brandy where she thought I had the time. I said,
“Look, I work forty hours a week while you are sleeping. I
am taking twelve to eighteen credits during the day, at the
same school you are going to & I sleep at home when I can
while you are their & I train two hours a day, where would I
find the time?” She could never answer me.
I was again having doubts that I.Q. had anything to do with
the measurement of intelligence.
