At the end of each shift, the cashier was required to zero out the register and print a report, then pull all the money and stuff everything into a bank bag.  The bag was then pushed through a mail slot in the manager's locked office door.  My partner's plan was to feed the hook through the mail slot and fish out the evening shift's bag.  Then he'd remove a sizable chunk of money, and return the bag to the office, thereby implicating Mr. Evening Shift in either dishonesty or incompetency, or both.  He worked on this project for a long time.  It didn't go as easily as he had anticipated, and he came out every so often to give me a nervous update.  At one point he was in a state of panic because he had the hook stuck in the manager's desk chair, and couldn't work it loose.  As he manipulated the string, the chair started rolling away from the desk and toward the door.  "Fuck, man!" was his critique of the situation.  He finally solved the problem, and snagged the bank bag.  I think he pocketed $136.

When Pop came in the next morning to do the previous day's paperwork, we held our breath.  We just knew he'd throw a fit and probably fire the evening worker over the phone.  Pop didn't really like him to begin with, and this was going to be the proverbial straw.  Or so we thought.  After a half hour Pop came out of the office, poured himself a cup of coffee, and said, "I was out watchin' the rabbits in the yard this morning.  They're just fascinating.  There's this one frisky little fella..."

In addition to the staff, there were several non-employees that hung out at the store each evening.  Most memorable was a gigantic fat boy, called Meatball, that was literally the same length across as he was up and down.  He ate constantly, usually junk food from both hand simultaneously.  He would move his head from side to side, alternating between various Hostess products and a 6-ft Slim Jim Meat Whip.  He also talked shit all the time, about he was "going to" do this, and how he was "going to" do that.  He was a repo man and a part-time bouncer at a trashy strip club way up in some holler someplace.  But he was only biding his time, you see, because he was "going to" get on at the Volkswagen plant real soon.  His grandfather would stop in to buy gas every once in a while and Meatball would be standing there, in all his glory, packing food in at an alarming rate.  The old man would just shake his head and say, "If I had another grandson like you, I'd shoot two of 'em."

Of course, everything that goes in eventually has to come out, so Meatball spent a lot of time in the bathroom.  While he was "in the office" one evening, a coworker produced a handful of bottle rockets from his jacket pocket and lined them up in front of the bathroom door.  Meatball started shrieking like a woman as the fireworks ricocheted around inside the tiny room, each of them eventually exploding like a stick of dynamite.  When he emerged, coughing up clouds of sulfur smoke, with his gigantic pants twisted sideways, everybody in the store was laughing hysterically -- including the customers.

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