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Clerks with steel spines toe the firing line for our convenience

Aug 23, 2017 • by Mike Zielinski, Host of The Mike Zielinski Show
Mike Zielinski

We rightfully and respectfully revere policemen, firemen, members of the armed forces and other first responders for being heroes.

But overnight clerks in convenience stores are equally as heroic.

To these brave souls, the night must seem as if it has no end.

For they never know when somebody, attracted by what they perceive to be an irresistible stack of cash, will pop in to pound the pudding out of them.

Or worse yet, shoot them.

These poor folks toil in a brickbat universe, and they seem to be lightning rods for robbery.

For the sake of our convenience, their job is incredibly inconvenient. They work during hours when sane people sleep, and they work while trying to see through the back and sides of their heads.

They simply can’t afford a blindside. For they never know when some intruder, some interloper with greed in his eye and a gun in his hand, will walk in and turn their world upside down.

Nocturnal robberies of convenience stores are not as regular as the sunrise but they still happen too often.

And when they do, the utter abduction of their already shaky serenity gives clerks pause for thought.

A job like theirs is an open invitation to wanton, raw violence.

Each and every night they are perched like lonely, vulnerable sentinels in the name of customer service. Sitting ducks who aren’t paid enough.

But employment options sometimes are limited. So there they are, taking a huge risk that some scum from the streets will ooze through their door.

All for the sake of our convenience.

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