Jerry was the reason I was
losing money at the gas station business, and it was driving my wife and me to
despair. We put the gas station up for sale in The Miami Herald. We called Armando and asked him to send any
potential buyers our way. About a week later, a man named Dave called and asked to see the
gas station. My wife told me to be positive. “Don’t show any negativity in the
meeting.” That was sound advice.
You can imagine how nervous I was, thinking about unloading the
gas station and the terrible situation that we’d just gone through just two
weeks earlier. This is what happened on New Year’s Eve, the biggest sales days
of the year. Everyone was in a party mood buying beer, wine, and cigarettes. I instructed the cashiers in a firm voice, “Everyone stays inside
the bullet-proof cage. No cashier is to venture outside the cage without first
closing the two doors electronically and checking the isles via video screen.
Make sure no thief is hiding there. Do you understand me?”
Three cashiers were working
that New Years Eve: Joe, Colin, and Phyllis. Colin and Phyllis were from the
local community. Joe was an older man and the most responsible cashier ever. He
kept the station clean, the shelves stocked, the paperwork accurate, and he
finished all tasks promptly. On New Year’s Eve, his responsible behavior was
exactly what the thieves were counting on.
About 10:00 p.m., a customer went to the beer cooler. As he took
out a six-pack, it dropped to the floor; two bottles broke, and beer spilled on
the floor. Other customers stepped into the beer and tracked it all over the
floor. What a sticky mess!
Joe decided that the broken bottles needed to be picked up and
the spilled beer had to be mopped up. He left the cashiers cage, and the
remaining cashiers were careful to lock the door after Joe exited. Joe got the mop and was cleaning up the broken glass and spilt
beer when three thieves, dressed in black and with stocking masks over their
faces, burst into the station. Guns were pointed at the two cashiers. The third
thief rushed right over to Joe and struck him with his pistol. Joe fell to the
floor still holding the mop. The thief pressed Joe’s face to the floor with his
boot, while pointing a gun at his head. The two cashiers looked on from the
glass cage in horror, too terrified to make a move.
“Open the door, you sons-a-bitches!” shouted the leader. “Open
the door, or I will shoot your friend! Open the door!” The thief pressed his
boot deeper into Joe’s face. He pulled the trigger, and a deafening shot rang
out. The cashiers screamed, but Joe remained calm his face pressed firmly to
the floor. The thief had fired
into the cooler glass window, and several beer cans were ruptured. Beer was now
draining from the cooler onto the floor next to Joe’s face.
“Now will you open the door?” screamed the thief. Everyone could
see that he was crazy with adrenalin. He pointed the gun straight at Joe. “Open
the door, or I will shoot this mother fucker!”
The cashiers opened the glass cage door. The two thieves rushed
in, knocking the cashiers to the floor. The cash register was opened in the
wink of an eye and about $1,000 in cash scooped up by the thieves. Then it was silent. The thieves ran away into the night.
The first to recover was Joe who got up from the floor and steadied himself on
the cooler with the bullet hole. The other cashiers couldn’t move and were frozen with fear. Joe
shut down the gas pumps and closed the station, called the police, and then
called me. It was Joe who mustered the courage to go on that night. I got in my car and rushed to the station. The police had not arrived even though
Joe had called two more times. Obviously there were other robberies and
shootings going on. I was on my
own with Joe and two petrified cashiers.
There was no way of keeping the station open, as the cashiers
were too scared to go on. All three asked permission to close the station for
the night and agreed to come to work at 7:00 a.m. the next morning. I was
relieved to learn that the cashiers were staying with me in this dreadful
business. I walked back to the beer cooler and examined the bullet hole.
Because the glass had a protective plastic coating, it had not shattered. The
bullet hole was visible only if you looked really hard.
Two weeks later, as Dave and I walked slowly around the
convenience store, we stopped by the beer coolers. He looked directly at the
cooler with the bullet hole. “What’s this hole in the door?” Dave asked.
My heart raced! What could I tell him? “Oh, that,” I said calmly.
“I was sweeping the floor, and the broom handle hit the window.” I explained
that delivery and installation of the new door was scheduled tomorrow.
Dave seemed to accept the explanation and went on to other
questions. “I noticed from the sales records that beer sales are very high,
more than 150 cases of Heineken a week.
That’s a lot of beer!”
“Yeah,” I said, “that’s about the normal beer sales every week.”
This was a piece of information that even I had failed to notice.
A week later, I had a signed contract from
Dave for the gas station franchise and the inventory of the C-Store. I ended up
losing 50% from the price I had paid for the business only three months
earlier. My wife and I signed the contract, and the transaction was almost
finished. The beer cooler door arrived, and we quickly installed it. The terrifying
New Years Eve was almost history.
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