Robbery at the Gas Station

     I was working part time at an Amoco station while attending college.  The station was on the corner of West Florissant and Goodfellow in the Walnut park neighborhood.  This was many years ago when service station attendants actually provided service by pumping your gas, checking your oil, washing your windshield and sometimes checking the air in your tires.

     These gas stations were called full service stations and most disappeared in the late 70's.  It was not uncommon for the attendant to spend 10 minutes or longer servicing the driver’s car when they pulled in for gas.  It was a service that sometimes brought in additional revenue if the car needed a quart of oil and that's when gas cost 35 cents a gallon sometimes less if there was a gas war.  Our lives are too busy in current times and with the Internet we value speed over personal service.

     My duties included doing oil changes, pumping gas, servicing the customer’s car and ringing up the sales on the cash register.  At that time it seemed most sales were cash transactions.  My boss Joe was the owner/mechanic and he worked days and some nights.  After I had been there awhile Joe trusted me to work nights by myself, which included locking up the station at closing.

     The cash register had 4 drawers each containing a small amount of cash (about $50).  When I worked alone at night I would use only the main cash drawer.  The cash register had a lock but a paper clip would easily fit in the slot to open it.

     The station had 4 gas pumps, two in the front and two on the side and you would frequently have cars at both locations needing service so it could get hectic on some nights.  After working one what seemed to be a normal Friday night I closed the station and went home.  The next morning I got a call from my boss asking me to come in to see him, he wanted to discuss something.  I said "Sure, no problem" and went in to see him.  When I arrived Joe called me into the small office and told me I was robbed last night.  "What, how could that be, I was here all night", he then began to explain how the robbery occurred.

     Joe had the tape from the cash register and could tell that only one time that evening the 3 drawers I wasn't using were opened at a specific time.  The tape showed a time as well. I never checked the other drawers when I left because I hadn't been using them.  Joe ask me if anyone had come to the side pumps last night and I told him yes and about what time?  He concluded from the time logged on the tape that someone was stealing the cash from the 3 drawers while I was servicing the car at the side pumps leaving the main drawer untouched so they would not be caught. Someone had obviously been to the station before and knew my routine prior to stealing the money.  Wow!

     I was thankful that I had Joe's trust so he was not suspicious of me and I was also thankful the robbers didn't decide to rob me at gunpoint.