Petrol Station Tales 1: Early Shifts and Crime

No-one comes to work as a petrol station sales assistant voluntarily. Badly paid, unsociable hours, sometimes dangerous. Desperation and convenience are the usual suspects in bringing someone to such places, and after six months of unemployment, and with a promise to myself that it would just 'tide me over for six months', and after a short cursory interview, on a bleak January day in the January of 2002, I turned up for my first shift.
I ended up staying for five and a half years.
I was desperate for money (I couldn't claim housing benefit for some reason) and as it would just 'tide me over' (how those words haunted me) it would suffice until a 'proper job' came up.
The petrol station, a Shell station, was in the far reaches of Hove, next to the Goldstone Retail Park, which used to be the football stadium. Set on the Old Shoreham Road, always busy, and with labyrinthine complexes of industrial estates scattered around, there was no shortage of customers.
For some reason, I wore a suit on my first day. I was introduced to Mike, a 21 year old, who had worked there for six months. (Six months I thought! No way would I be there that long!) He would oversee my first shift. About halfway through my first shift he said 'well, you've not shut the petrol station down, so you're doing okay'.
It wasn't a 24 hour petrol station. We worked two shifts, from 6:30am - 2:30pm and from 2:30pm - 10:30pm.
The first time I was left alone for an evening shift, I locked up the petrol station and went to the toilet. After returning I carried on and thought all was normal, until somebody asked for a phone card. Reaching under the counter I was horrified to see that the phone card box had gone... I hadn't locked the station up properly, and somebody had gotten in and stolen them. The manager seemed okay about it, and told me that it was his fault for not showing me how to lock up properly.
Shortly after this, on a Sunday lunchtime, the assistant manager, a taciturn man with a moustache I had nicknamed 'Silent Bob', seemed in an unusually taciturn and morose mood. He left at lunchtime, and asked me for a lighter as he left, which he didn't pay for. I thought this a bit strange, but no more about it, until his wife started ringing, asking him where he was (she also worked there as well). No-one came to take over from me for the afternoon shift, and the manager eventually turned up, and it transpired that Silent Bob had disappeared with the weekends taking, about £6000 all together.
No-one knew where he had gone. All very suspicious, particularly as his wife handed in her resignation that day. The only people left working there now was Mike, the manager and myself. Another assistant was employed, a young gay man, camp as could only be in Brighton. He was there about a week, when it transpired that he too had vanished with £600 in cash.
I think I worked 19 days in a row without a break. It was a strange time. Rain and gray days. I would wake up at 5:00am, and either the manager would give me a lift or I would catch the bus from the bottom of my road. I remember being on that bus in those black and unfriendly mornings. The faces of other passengers drawn in cold morning-shock. From Brighton centre I would walk the last half hour to the station itself (I would later discover there was a bus that ran straight from where I was living at the time to just five minutes around the corner.)
Morning rituals. Get the papers out. Get the fire extinguishers out. Load up the tills. Turn the petrol station on. Then, finally a heavily sugared coffee. For the first 30 minutes it was fairly quiet. The odd car. The odd van. By the time the manager got in, about 7:30, there would be a steady stream of traffic.
That time in the mornings our custom usually consisted of white van men. Noisy characters who bought the Sport and the Star, and talked about football with cockney accents and a cheeriness that was somehow incongruous with it still being dark outside. As 9:00am approached, office workers would start coming in. Neat and tidy, still half-asleep. There was something gleeful about the fact that I was nearly halfway through my day. Then the late-teenagers came who worked at the retail park next door. It never really stopped until I finished the early shifts at 2:30pm. Exhausted and my brain feeling frazzled from the endless line of customers (not helped by the period of depression I was then in), the only break I would get was having a cigarette behind the station, next to the car wash. I would smoke two cigarettes in a row, watch the grey skies and the rain, and long for the afternoon, when I could return home and fall asleep on the sofa in my room (so much more comfortable than my bed) until evening.
Gradually things calmed down though, and the chaos of police, who always seemed to be at the station those first few months, faded away. There was a new assistant manager, and other assistants (who never seemed to stay for long). A shift pattern was adopted. we would do two early shifts, then two late shifts, then have two days off. We had one full weekend off in every six weeks.
Things settled down, and the next five years began.
I got on well with the management, who were both a few years younger than me, and even better with Mike. During the evening shifts, I would take in a sketchbook and would quite happily draw between customers. A small stereo was purchased by the management, and when I was alone I would listen to my own music.
I still didn't intend to stay more than six months, but after six months of unemployment, the regular money (little as it was) was nice, and the routine did me good I think.
And sometimes, sometimes I even get nostalgic for it.