It is a very dangerous job
I do not know the clerk's name.
That makes me a bad journalist I suppose. His Asian Indian English runs together so quickly it sounds like a mumble to my Southern ears, but I pick out the words "prostitution" and "drugs" and finally "working at a gas station is the most dangerous job" before he steps out to move his car, leaving me alone with racks of porn mags in plastic bags, male part and pleasure enhancers behind the bulletproof glass enclosing the register, cigarettes and lottery tickets.
Why am I here? Well, I came here for this reason. To...buy a bag of trail mix and try to notice some things. But in trying to leave after five minutes of snooping I realized my keys were in my locked car.
This gave me plenty of time to peruse the Marietta Daily Journal and share several awkward moments of silence and difficult communication with the store clerk whose name I'll go back to get later on this week.
My job there isn't finished.
Last I remember about this store from many years ago was a large lady who worked the counter, swiveling in a backless chair between cigarettes and scratch offs. And when I was in fourth grade and used to walk here from a nearby park to buy a Fruitopia and wait on my dad to pick me up, the outside bathrooms worked.
Four or five months (could be longer) now, yellow caution tape has stretched across the bathrooms' openings, and I can only guess this is just as much a security measure as the surveillance cameras linked to a room full of men who will call at the first sign of trouble. (This is what the nameless clerk told me).
"They are broken," the clerk says. "You can go see. You can go try them. Go! Try them!"
He's smiling and saying all of this very quickly. I suspect he's had to explain this many times before.
I suspect the "broken" bathrooms are closely linked to "prostitution" and "drugs."
"It is a very dangerous job," he tells me, again.