41 Night Shift Gas Station Clerks Share The Weirdest Things They've Ever Encountered

Nothing really weird happened per say. I worked at a Florida gas station for 3 years while in college. I saw a little kitten one night near midnight wander through the gas pumps, crying out. Cars were driving around the lot and it could have gotten squashed at any moment. I ran outside, leaving customers at the counter and scooped him up. He was filthy. Brought him around back, and since I had no cage and nothing to put him in, I placed him inside a Lay's plastic tote, closed the top and put a brick on top so he'd stay in it. Took him home after my shift, put him on the patio. Surprised my family the next day with a surprise kitten, but to my horror, his colon was prolapsing out of his body in a bloody infected mess. Took him to the vet, who said he probably got attacked by some animal. They gave him a bath, gave him shots, and put him on an antibiotic. When old enough I got him neutered. The antibiotic fixed the prolapsing colon within a week and he's still alive today, about 10 years old and more of an inside kitty now than an outside kitty. His name is Kitty, too.

I worked in a rural gas station/ garage when I was in h**h school. One evening I was working and there were some pretty bad storms brewing. It didn't take long for there to be a fairly large group of people stopped at the station to find some shelter.

I didn't think much of it, wasn't the first time it had happened, but then they started blowing the tornado sirens. All the sudden there's a bunch of adult and families looking at little 16 year old me looking for answers.

There's no basement so I did the first thing I could think of and shoved them all in the walk in cooler. Shut us all in and rode out the storm. When it passed I went out and there was a big plate glass window busted and some stuff blown around the store.

All the people came out of the cooler and were pretty much like, "See you later," and left.

I was pretty much left there by myself like what just happened.

I had a friend who worked at a gas station. He said someone came in one night and produced a gun and told my friend to empty the register. Being completely dumbfounded by the situation my friend told him that he had to buy something first. This is because to open the register an item from the gas station needed to be scanned at the register. According to my friend they stared at each other completely silent and bewildered for a few seconds. After that my friend had regained enough of his faculties to explain this to the robber. Then the robber scanned a Twix took all the money in the register and left.

I was a 19 year old female working the night shift who was grabbed from behind by a guy (he was the only one in the store at the time) with an attempt at sexual a*****t. I was a gym rat and he quickly realized it wasn't going to be easy. He let go, profusely apologized and pleaded for me not to call the police. I got his license plate number and called my buddies from the department who were able to stop him about an hour later. Found out he had just been released that day from federal prison after serving time for a r**e charge.

A friend of mine worked nights in a convenience store by herself and she told me about a time when a woman came in drenched in blood. When asked she said flatly, "don't worry, it's not my blood." She bought a pack of cigarettes and was on her merry way.

Years ago I worked overnights at a gas station, in a pretty bad neighborhood in Florida. My first night working there an older guy came in, walked up to the counter and reached across and punched me in the jaw pretty hard. The guy I was working with chased him out the door while I called the cops to send someone over. My coworker came back in pretty quick looking frightened and said to send an ambulance because the crazy guy just died outside. EMT and police came, guy was alive but had a pretty bad heart attack. Every other shift was pretty timid compared to that.

I don’t work night shift exactly, but this will work. So, my store closes up at 10 pm. I come in one morning at around 4:45ish to find an old Native American man passed out in our kitchen. We have a rather large kitchen because we work next to an industrial area w lots of truck drivers/oil field workers who start their work day early, so we make lots of food for breakfast and lunch. So I call the police because what the hell am I supposed to do (There’s a very bad neighborhood behind the store that’s constantly hit for d**g busts.. like hard s**t.. plus we find bloody needles in the bathrooms all the time.) the police show up like 15 minutes later with some paramedics and the guy was just asleep lol. Apparently he came in around 9:30 pm the night before to use the bathroom and got locked in when the two night shift employees locked up. He didn’t have a phone and didn’t think to look for ours, so he got a six pack of beer out, ate some of our bread and went to sleep next to the grill 😂.

A man with his frying pan swaggers by saying sup by the way then another one comes by and so on until i start hearing some banging (pan noises) and i find a bunch of guys jousting using pans and shopping carts **in the middle of the night** *and i joined them*.

Idk if this was necessarily weird but more luck. During and after h**h school I worked a this bad gas station that closed up at 11pm. I started doing my cleaning duties when I noticed a penny on the ground I picked it up kept sweeping until I noticed a dime by the door. This wasnt unusual since people drop change all the time. As I was picking it up though something caught my eye as it blew past the door I went outside looked right, nothing, looked left and there sat a fat wad of cash it was nearly $300 laying on the ground.

Yes I kept it.

No one ever stopped back by asking about it ether.

One time while working late I was chilling at the counter bored when suddenly three dudes come in. One wearing cardboard knights armor? The other a bathrobe and a paper hat thing, and the last one a bunch of other random c**p that did not go together in the slightest. All red eyed and high as c**p. Hahaha all had the munchies and got a bunch of chips and sodas and the usual junk food suspects. Came up to the counter with ye old English accents that were horrible with mostly just over use of the word “ye” and payed in “gold” (just regular cash with one Canadian coin) and said it was D&D night. Then all wandered off to their carriage which was a sadly rusted old Buick lesabre. Made me laugh so hard it was amazing sight to behold!

I was working at a Mobil late one night in my hometown, which is a summer vacation hotspot, when a middle aged man who looked like he just walked off a golf course. He was obviously a little drunk but drunk middle aged men who golf was the norm for tourists so I took no heed.

He came up to the counter and I heard him ask me if there were any gay bars in town. I told him no, that the closest one I was aware of was in Provincetown, a gay hotspot which was an optimistic hour drive away with traffic.

He then asked me if I was interested in "fooling around" with him. I replied no, and in an attempt to soften the rejection I joked "I don't think my girlfriend would be too happy about that", which seemed to excite the guy as he redoubled his efforts.

His big pitch was that he had an especially nice van that we could pull into the garage bay to use. Granted, it looked like a nice van, but didn't sway my stance. After another 5 minutes he seemed to resign to his fate and he left the store. I thought we were done and went back to reading.

Half an hour later I hear a car start up and leave the lot. I didn't realize he had just stayed in his van and was waiting for me. I figured, creepy, but whatever he's gone, so I put it out of my mind.

A couple hours after that I was closing up shop, and I had to go out on a ladder to change the prices on the sign for the next day. The town is deserted at this point and all the lights at the station were off save a couple in the garage. While I'm up on the ladder the same van screeches back into the lot. I'm up on a ladder in the dark alone, not thrilled about this development.

He hopped out and hollered "I FORGOT TO PAY YOU". I figured that I had given him smokes or something and just forgot to charge him as I was rejecting his advances, so I asked him "FOR WHAT". He replied, "I FORGOT TO TRY AND PAY YOU FOR A GOOD TIME"

I paused. He yelled "$250". It occurred to me that I could probably just take the dude's money and run, but I correctly assessed that would be really stupid, so I yelled "F**K MAN, NO MEANS NO", still on the ladder.

He yelled "JESUS CHRIST, FINE", and peeled out. Never saw him again, thankfully.

Not a gas station, but a train station cafe. There were overnight works going on so we stayed open until 1 or 2am for the builders. One night this older gentleman comes in, well dressed. Asks for a coffee but can't pay when I make it. I give it to him anyway since I'll just throw it otherwise, and he asks me for some cake. I refuse, and he goes "I sing for my supper!" And then starts to belt out Frank Sinatra right there in the shop. And he just. Won't. Stop. He's there for like, half an hour.
I tried to get security to look after him because he clearly wasn't all there. Found him later, singing for the builders who were giving him sandwiches. Eventually called the local police who got him supervised until he could catch a train home in the morning.

Bought some gas one night (before pay at the pump), and when I came inside, saw the clerk was my friend Dan from high school - maybe a couple of years ago, then. We have a grand old reunion through the pay slot under the glass before he buzzes me inside. I comment on how bulletproof the place looks and he says it's supposed to be. I was on my way home from a girls night out and had nothing to do, so sat on a stool and we traded what we knew people were up to, blah blah blah. Suddenly this guy in a black hoodie just *materializes* at the pay slot and I clearly hear the words "...all the money, I have a gun." Inch-thick glass or not, I'm ready to freak, but I hear Dan's calm voice:
"I'm sorry, sir, but company policy is that I have to *see* the gun, or I could lose my job." The guy holds his finger up like 'just a sec' and fishes out this big, black handgun from his cargo pants. He presents it in two hands like he's looking to p**n it. I can see a big s***w at the bottom of the grip (?) which looks funny, but what do I know? Dan again: "Ah, I'm sorry, that's just a pellet gun, sir, and that doesn't qualify." The would-be robber packs up and leaves, muttering a *sumbitch* as he goes.
Dan calls the cops, and sees I'm shaking; he gives me a hug and points out the pay slots are scooped into the counter so that a hand around a gun can't possibly fit under the glass; the owner had shown him with a plastic gun. I still thought that was pretty cool of my school buddy.

A drunk guy tried to fight me for stealing his job at the gas station. He started chasing me and fell down in the street. The “police” called and questioned me, and then the “police Sargent” blew her cover when she started yelling at me for beating up her son. He was in his mid 20’s 6’ 275. I was a short skinny 16yo.

Im sure this will get buried but...

I used to be an overnight manager at walmart if that counts. One time i was heading to the breakroom to eat and i walked in to find a 7 foot tall muscular man with a giant, grey and black afro sitting there talking to himself. Kinda reminded you of uncle ruckus in the face i think he even had a false eye. I sat across from him and started eating thinking he might be a walmart driver just getting some coffee or somthing. I asked him if he was a driver and he started laughing and said "yeah i used to drive cars a whole lot!" I was like "...ok. i mean a walmart driver" and he just got up and started laughing and left the break room and the food he was eating behind. That food turned out later was a random associates lunch they packed. I called my support manager to have him be on the lookout incase he did anything else crazy just for my associates safety. Later that night they called me to the front door for an emergency. Apparently the man had a wallet and watch that he was trying to trade for instead of paying for it. Like the man straight up was trying to barter with random objects he had on his person. When we stopped him at the door he threw a fit, started cussing at us and drove off on a powered shopping cart. We watched him drive it all the way off the lot and on the main road so i called the police. They pulled him over about a mile from the store and the cops came back to talk to me. They told me the man escaped from a mental hospital and they guess he had changed clothes in the store. The officer also told me that he was in custody, and i also had to come get the scooter or they would have to impound it. I had to get in the police car, ride to the scooter and drive it back to the store at night with a police escort. I took the opportunity to mess with my wife on facetime. I called her up had the police car behind me with the lights on and i was yelling "baby! baby! i f****d up bad! wait for me on the outside!" then i hung up on her. It was a crazy night tho.

TL;DR I had to retrieve a shopping scooter that was stolen by a schizophrenic mental patient escapee, with the help of a police escort.

Always in the bathroom: I had to call 911 a few days ago at work because we had snakes in the bathroom.

Blowjobs in unlocked bathrooms. Crackwhore prostitute blood on the toilet, walls, floor, toilet paper dispenser.

I watched a man try to rob a drive thru liquor store window with a wooden baseball bat a few weeks ago while I was on shift too.

Working security in a bad neighborhood . This guy walking minding his own business in a cowboy hat , cowboy shoes . And a thong carrying around a raccoon. It looked like he was feeding the raccoon something. I locked my doors asap.

edit:wearing the thong lol.

A few things. One is a man came in very drunk and told me that the key to happiness is c*****e, hookers, a new truck and a bottle he then tipped me 20 bucks. Another time I had like 20 police officers in my store at the same time for no reason.

When I was in High School I worked overnights during the summer. Only cashier in the store. I’m working towards the back of the store and the cashier island is right in the middle covered with machines. I’m pretty tall so I can see over most of them. The door ding goes off so I start making my way around to the counter. As I’m doing this a cowboy walks in. I see his hat float across the top of the deli case, the soda machine etc. I greet him and he greets me back. I really couldn’t see him well at all though.

He makes his way to get a fountain drink and walks back around to the counter. He has his hat tipped down Marlboro man style, didn’t think much about it until I rang him up and gave him the total. He digs in his pocket and hands me a couple dollars, except his hand was completely melted, fingers we’re missing and the skin was burned off. He was healed over, it wasn’t a fresh wound, then he tips his hat back and his entire head had been burned. No hair, full burned skin. No lips, no nose and his teeth were bare. It was shocking to see.

I was 17 and it was 3am on a Saturday night. My jaw dropped. I froze with the money in my hand. He just politely said, “hey, you owe me some change”. I fumbled to finish the sale and send him off. I apologized for my reaction and and he just blew it off. Then he said, “ I get that a lot, but I’m a hell of a lot of fun around Halloween!” We both laughed about it.

I lived in a small town and nobody knew this guy, I would ask people for the next couple of years and still people think I made it up.

I worked at a gas station about 2-3 years ago, one night there was a random guy that came in, bought his items, then lingered around the store for a while. I was behind a glass, so I wasn't that worried, but I still was prepared to call the police because after 45 minutes and it's just becoming 3am, that's a bit weird. About 15 minutes later a regular customer comes in and starts yelling at me because it's after the legal time for me to sell alcohol. The random lingering guy (we'll call him Rob) "Rob" started yelling at the man and told him I'm his "little sister" so he can't talk to me like that and ordered him to leave. The rude customer left, and that was when "Rob" introduced himself. He said he was lingering because he was bored and had nowhere to go and nothing to do.

A few of his friends showed up a while later (2 regulars) and they cleaned the parking lot and changed the trash cans outside. (Surprised the s**t out of me because I honestly did not ask them to, but I wasn't going to argue because it was dark and I was thankful I didn't have to do it.) "Rob" and his friends left after awhile. "Rob" came back 2 hours later, about 30 minutes before my shift ended (with some girls bra) to check on me and see how the rest of my shift went. He then came back to check on me other times after that on nights he was bored and had nothing to do. Really sweet guy.

TLDR: Random guy is lingering, defends me, does my work without being asked, checks on me on various occasions afterwards. Pretty cool guy.