Indifferent Chevron employee may cause someone to explode

Sep. 23—From what she told me afterward, it didn’t take Mandy more than a few seconds to realize there was no bathroom inside the Chevron.

We were smack dab in the middle of the stretch of Alabama highway between our home in Northeast Mississippi and Atlanta, where our small family had spent the weekend. These were miles rural enough to make you question whether the Rapture had occurred and the Almighty hadn’t invited you to the party — nothing but rolling hills and open road dotted intermittently by deer corpses and Dollar Generals.

In other words, not a lot of places to stop and relieve yourself. At least, not officially.

Mandy was at the point where the need to use the restroom had reached a critical junction — either we were going to find a place to stop very, very soon, or we’d be spending a small fortune having the car cleaned once we arrived home — when we rolled up on the Chevron. Like most structures in Alabama that aren’t located within the state’s handful of cities, the gas station had been erected in the Valley of Absentia, its nearest neighbor either far enough away that it couldn’t be spotted from the parking lot or buried behind a forest of trees. Mandy whipped her Honda Civic into the parking lot and pulled up to a pump. I think the car was still rolling as she hopped out.

From the backseat, our 7-year-old daughter hollered.

“Wait, Mama!” she said as she struggled to unfasten her seatbelt. “I’ve got to go, too.”

“OK, Arlie,” Mandy said, shifting from foot to foot. “But hurry.”

“I’m going to put some gas in the car,” I announced casually as I freed our child from the confines of the sedan’s safety harness. I received no praise for my volunteerism.

“Do whatever you want,” Mandy said, her tone frantic — a tinge of panic around the edges — as she took hold of Arlie’s hand and hurriedly led her into the store.

When I followed suit a few minutes later, I found Mandy and Arlie standing in a short line at the front counter, which was being manned by a lady who seemed intent on turning indifference into an art form. She was servicing her single customer with all the gusto of one of those deer corpses I mentioned earlier, although she kindly took a break from lethargically ringing up the dude’s Newports, can of Monster Energy and pizza-flavored Combos to stab an index finger in the general direction of the front door and announce to no one in particular, “Bathroom’s outside.”

In the time it took for my eyeballs to swivel in Mandy’s and Arlie’s direction, they were already gone. Again, I followed.

The bathroom was located in a separate concrete box behind the gas station, unlikely to be found if you either didn’t know it was there or just loved wandering around isolated convenience stores. Which made me wonder why management couldn’t just put a sign somewhere near the store’s entrance directing people to the facilities. Especially if guiding travelers in desperate need of relief to the thing was too Herculean of an effort for the single store employee.

It’s a gas station located miles from anything; of course people are going to stop there for bathroom breaks. Might as well be cordial about it. Judging my the pool of yellow water I had to wade through to reach the small bank of urinals, we weren’t the first to have found the store’s staff less than helpful.

Later, as I scrounged through the vast selection of cigarette-smoke-flavored snacks, a man barreled through the glass doors with a familiar look of panic in his eyes.

The store clerk, having shed herself of the burden of patrons, watched as the man hurriedly searched the back of the store. She said nothing.

I turned to him.

“Bathroom’s outside,” I said.

“Oh, thank you!” the man replied as he hurried out the door and disappeared around the corner of the building.

I turned to the store employee, now preoccupied with doing absolutely nothing. I think she may have smiled.

ADAM ARMOUR is the news editor for the Daily Journal and former general manager of The Itawamba County Times. You may reach him via his Twitter handle, @admarmr.