Eleven to Seven

…he had me work the first 12 days in a row, telling me that he couldn’t find anyone to take my shift, but he was working on it, and if he gave me two days off the store would have to close and they would lose money.

June 1975

I’m not sure what they thought, but I suppose Mom and Dad were so happy to see me not sitting around playing records all day that they were thrilled to see that I had a job, even if it was the graveyard shift at 7-11 in North Hollywood. So I taped tin foil on my bedroom window to keep the sunlight out, and I would come home at 7:15, have breakfast with Dad, and then go to bed, sleeping until 2 in the afternoon. I was the 11 to 7 man at 7-11.
I took a lie detector test to get that minimum wage job. I answered honestly which I worried about because there were questions along the lines of have you ever shoplifted, to which I answered yes owing to my brief career during which Thrifty’s, Sav-On’s, and 7-11 in Burbank had all suffered losses at my hand. But they hired me, the manager saying only that I didn’t attempt to lie during the test and that according to my answers over all, I was, “less inclined” to rob the place blind. I always came to work on time, I never complained when my replacement showed up 15 minutes late, I never neglected the graveyard shift chores-- which included restocking the walk-in, sweeping and mopping, and shaking out the entry mats-- my till was always right, and it took me two weeks to get through a pack of cigarettes so I guess they didn’t mind that I sometimes didn’t pay for them. All borrowed magazines were returned to their proper rack without wrinkles or smudges.
Because I possessed these minimal virtues, Jimmy, the skinny, stressed-out, zit-faced twenty--something manager loved me. He loved me so much he had me work the first 12 days in a row, telling me that he couldn’t find anyone to take my shift, but he was working on it, and if he gave me two days off the store would have to close and they would lose money. I hadn’t heard about overtime, but when someone finally suggested that I should be getting time and a half after my 40th hour in the week, I spoke to Jimmy. Besides, I was getting a little stir-crazy. I was seeing colors floating in front of me. I walked into the store the afternoon of the 13th day and stood—somewhat zombieish—before him.
“I need some time off.”
“I need you to keep working. I can’t find anyone to take your shift.”
“Well, you’re going to have to; I can’t do this too much longer.”
“Do you want us to lose money? I’ll have to close the store.”
“No, I don’t want you to lose money. I want a day off.”
“I would hate to lose you.”
“Me, too.” I was too tired to care.
I started to walk out the door and take myself directly to the beach as a reward when he said I could take that day and the next day off, but he hoped he didn’t have to close the store and lose money. Little did he know that I had been raised by two guilt experts and his attempts were so feeble they didn’t even register.
“That’s great. Thanks,” I called out with my back to him, “I’ll be back here in two days.” I didn’t even know what day it was, but the floating colors started to diminish a little. I couldn’t resist cruising past the place that night to see if it was closed. There behind the counter stood Jimmy, working my shift.
With my first paycheck I bought a mattress. My mattress was a quarter of a century old and whenever I suggested we buy a new one, Mom would say, “Ask Dad,” and Dad would give his trademark response, which he used for nearly every request, “What for?”
“Dad, that mattress is so worn out. The middle of it is all caved in. It’s like sleeping in a hotdog bun.”
“You broke it!”
“I didn’t break it. It wore out. Things do wear out, you know.”
“Don’t talk back! You jumped on it and it broke.”
And so it went. Any consequences I suffered from a worn out mattress, which included back pains and vertigo after climbing out of bed, were mine for allegedly jumping on the bed and breaking it. Buying that mattress was nearly an act of rebellion. I drove to Sears, picked one out in my price range, tossed it in the station wagon, came home, threw the old one out in the patio and put the new one in my room. No one said a thing, and I slept well that night. I was 21, after all.
I returned to work feeling triumphant, but Jimmy no longer considered me his most reliable worker. He arrived near the end of my shift looking to pick a fight.
“What the fuck is this shit?” he shouted, taking a swing at a display of soup cans, stacked pyramid-style. “This is not some God-damn ghetto store! Who did this?”
I had no reason to fear him. For one I didn’t stack the cans and for another he wouldn’t fire me; I kept a straight till. No leaks. I was curious about how soup cans could designate a certain kind of store. I also pondered how Jimmy felt so strongly that a “ghetto store” was so vastly inferior to a 7-11 store in North Hollywood, being the land of pimps and porno kings.
“Dunno” I muttered, lighting a cigarette to look indifferent, “It was there when I got here.”
“We don’t do things that way here. South Central liquor store, maybe, not here.”
“Cool.” I turned up the radio and Paul McCartney advised me to “Listen to what the Man Said.” There was no chance of that happening.
“Rows. Straight rows. This ain’t a circus. I’ve worked retail before. Damn!’’ He rearranged the cans hastily, before someone came in there, either confused about whether he had entered a 7-11 or a South Central liquor store, or—worst of all scenarios-- wondering what the matter was with the manager.
The next night two of North Hollywood’s finest rolled in. I naively thought they were there to “Protect and to Serve.” There were there for their own amusement.
“You the new guy, huh?”
“Yeah, I …”
“They didn’t tell you about the last guy in here? I guess that makes sense.”
“What do you mean?”
One stayed near the register, while the other walked back to the refrigerated drinks, his leather holster squeaking. He wasn’t looking for a soda; he turned and looked at his partner.
“What about the last guy” I asked again, curious but doubtful.
“He got to about here, I’d say,” the cop by the fridge pointed to the last of the doors. “Was trying to run out the back, probably.”
“Damn what a mess that was. Blood everywhere,” the cop by the register said, leaning closer to my face, “All that damn manager said was the mess he had to clean up.”
“Wow. He never told me.” I played along. This had to be some kind of game. They were bored.
“Well, if you ever feel like there’s gonna be trouble just prop the front door open. We come by this way every night. If we see your door open we’ll come in. It’ll be like a signal.” For the next couple of nights I propped the door open, just to see what would happen. Nothing did.
The most difficult part of the graveyard shift was from 2, when the bars closed, until just before 5 in the morning. When daylight arrived and the mailman came in for his cup of coffee, the worst of it was over.
Just before 2 one night, four or five drunks from the bar next door rushed in to buy beer. In California there can be no sales of alcohol after two a.m. so they would leave the bar just before the last call and stack six packs on my counter.
“Sorry. I’m not selling this.”
“Wuddya mean? It’s not 2 yet.”
“No, but it looks like you’ve had enough.”
“Aw come on, be cool.”
“Sorry, man.”
“It’s not like we’re even drunk or anything.”
“Maybe not but I’m not selling it. I’m getting ready to lock up the beer anyway.”
“Whatever. But hey I gotta pee. Can I use the bathroom?”
“No.”
“I gotta take a piss, ok? Come on. I know you got one back there.”
“Employees only, sorry.”
“What I gotta do? Piss on myself?”
“No, you wouldn’t do that.”
“Ok, I’ll piss on the floor.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I’m goin’ round back and piss on the wall then. What will your boss think about that?’
“Don’t know.”
His entourage convinced him to leave, and they walked out. A minute later he came back.
“I pissed on your fuckin wall. You know that? I pissed on it!”
“That’s nice.”
“Go on around back. Wanna see it? It’s there. I pissed on your wall ‘cause you wouldn’t let me use the bathroom.”
“That’s right.”
“I pissed on the wall.”
“Have a good night.”
His friends came back for him and with much clamor they squeezed into a Firebird and took off.
On the graveyard shift it was always better to be busy than to have nothing to do. When there was nothing I would smoke, which became intolerable after the second cigarette. One time I went to the walk-in and drank a quart of beer, just for the hell of it, or more likely because some song reminded me of some girl I wanted to forget. Or remember. Well, it was better when there were customers. From the time the drunks left until the mailman came for his coffee, you never knew what would happen or what kind of character would show up.
One time a woman around my age came in and we started talking music. She kept calling the Jackson Browne album “Too Late for the Sky” when it was in fact, “Late for the Sky.” It may have been 3 in the morning but if you wanted to talk music with me, you had to have your titles right. She made up for it though when we talked about Dylan’s latest, “Blood on the Tracks.” For that one she said claimed that she, “Cried all the way through side two.”
Another time an elderly woman in curlers showed up around three with a shopping cart, purloined from a grocery store and was maneuvering it up and down the narrow and short aisles of the store where she picked out $30 worth of miscellany, which included an 8 ounce bottle of Coke. When I told her that the 12-ounce can was actually cheaper than the 8-ounce bottle she answered, “It’s ok, I want this one. I don’t want 12 ounces, I want 8.” I don’t know what I could have been thinking, trying to help someone save money when she was shopping in a 7-11.
Then there was the man in his bathrobe and beachwalkers who came in and after wandering around for a while came to the counter, smiled and started to open his bathrobe, asking me if I wanted to play. My simple no must have been convincing because he left in a huff.
The craziest though was a guy who came in one night and chatted for a while, then told me that he had a genius of a plan.
“What’s that?’
“Well, we could make a lot of money.”
“Lotta money, huh?”
“Yeah, it’d be easy.”
“Really.”
“Yeah, I mean, you’re sitting here in the middle of the night making 3 bucks an hour. That ain’t makin’ it.”
“Yeah.”
“Guys at the top, they don’t care. They’re making theirs. They’re just using you. They don’t care what happens to you, they’ll just get someone else.”
“Suppose so.” I didn’t like where this was heading but I was curious.
“They got insurance, anything happens. Even if the place gets robbed. Somebody takes the money outta the register, insurance covers it.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So like the plan is like you open the register and we split the money. Then I take off and you call the cops and tell them it was a black guy in a Buick, like an Electra or something, that went west down Magnolia, but I’ll go east. See? They can’t catch us.” He was a white guy driving a Nova.
“I don’t think so.”
“But it’s perfect. You get some money, I get some, and the insurance puts the money back. Everybody’s happy. No one gets busted. I’ll even hit you on the head with something, but not too hard to knock you out or anything, just like to leave a bump on your head. Then you can say you were out cold for a half hour and they’ll think I got a half hour head start.”
“I don’t think so, man.” I started reaching for the bat we kept under the counter.
“It’s not like stealing or anything. Everybody makes out ok.”
“Nah, I’m not in to it.” The poor schmoe was talking to the wrong guy. For all the ranting and raving the manager did, his policy on robberies was to give away the store, money, product, anything the guy wanted, help the guy out the door. He was a loyal company man but he didn’t see any reason for any of us to lay down our lives for the place. I was grateful for that; a few years later I worked in a liquor store on Victory Blvd where my partner told me a horrifying story about how he told a gun with a shotgun to fuck off rather than open the till. I wondered how that manager would have dealt with this guy.
“All right, man, you had your chance. I’m just going to have to go find a guy in a different store. Me and that guy will have some money but you won’t.”
“Oh well, that’s how it goes I guess.” I watched him drive away. I even tried to see his license plate but it was too dark.
It was a relief when a woman I named Mary came in at 4:45 as she always did. I appreciated a little consistency. First there was Mary, then the mailman, then in a little while the shift was over and the night with its attendant weirdness disappeared it the daylight. Mary was a raggedy old woman who wore an oversized green sweater that had lots of mileage on it. She was an alkie who could not come in at 5:01 for her alcohol; she’d come in at 4:45, shuffle over to the refrigerator door and stand directly in front of it for 15 minutes until I took the cross bar out of the door handles. We never spoke; she never even made eye contact with me. She looked at her imprisoned purchase like a dog looks at a treat. She would wait until I put the cross bar away and walked to the register before she would open the door and get her prize. She paid in quarters, dimes and nickels. Where she came in humble and shaky, she would leave proud and assured. It was heart wrenching, but at least her plan did not involve konking me on the head.
Early one morning an angry mom brought her 9-year-old son to me and wanted me to tell him tales of prison and bad things prisoners do to new prisoners so the kid would never steal again. Instead of taking the fear route, I tried for something I considered more practical. I spoke to him in a calm voice and told him that he was lucky to have a mom who cared enough about him to make him bring back the toy he had stolen, and that it might have been easy to steal, but that it was still wrong, and that being good meant that you did good even when it was easy to do bad, and I wound it all up by saying that it wasn’t that big a deal, but it might lead to other, bigger, ventures that would get him in a lot of trouble. The kid was cool with my speech. I could see that he was a first timer and he was embarrassed and his soul was still speaking to him about these things. It was Mom who wasn’t pleased. She kept pressing me to tell him about prison and evil prisoners, but I would not do it. I just told him not to steal anymore. Mom left more annoyed with me than she was with her son. As they left, she was launching into the prison speech herself. I had just finished reading “The Prince” and was out to disprove Machiavelli’s notion that fear was better than love.
I eventually quit 7-11 when it began to interfere with my social life. I was a middle class kid who could afford the luxury of quitting a convenience store if it became an inconvenience.
Later that year I heard that the North Hollywood 7-11 got robbed the day after I left. No one was hurt. I considered it divine providence that I left at the right time. I did wonder though whether the clerk had a bump on his head and whether the perpetrator was a black guy going westbound on Magnolia in a Buick Electra.