I live in a neighborhood where stores are few and far between, and between them hardly serve every need. I don't have a car. Beverage Square is practically across the street from where I live, so I go there to buy lottery tickets on a regular basis, when I have money to bet with and when I'm home.
I try to avoid going before 2:30 P.M. But if I want to place a bets for the midday games, betting closes around 12:20 or 12:25 and, other than walking out of my way to go to another store, I have no choice but to subject myself to the unwarranted conduct of certain staff.
The clerk on the morning shift, Gerald Keating, H-A-T-E-S the lottery, its presence, and everyone who plays it with every fiber of his being.in all the times I 've patronized this store since January 7 he hasn't once hesitated to make his feelings known to anyone and everyone within earshot. Imagine you're a customer in a store and all you want is to buy somethingyou're not doing anything outrageous or disrespectfuland you have to be subject to a volley of demeaning, derisive, humiliating insults that border on harassment by a clerk who is having a tantrum because all he's required to do is execute one job duty: Accept money for product and complete the transaction. Gerry is reacting with the anger and indignity, like someone walked in off the street and asked him for a kidney committed some offense against him.
His co-worker, Brandon Moore, is almost as bad. It's just one sermon after another about what a waste of money the lottery is, and unsolicited statements such as "When the Powerball jackpot was $500,000, 000.00 [or whatever the last big one was], we sold $2,000.00 worth of tickets and paid out $52." It's one sermon after another and a stream of unwelcome snark on top of his everyday rudeness of leaving customers standing to wait for him to finish chit-chatting with co-workers or other customers. It never matters how much of a hurry I might be in or if I'm about to miss a bus, or anything else. Brandon Moore's rhetoric has to come first.
A staff of four man the store, including the owner's son. Yet, this explicit ill will and bad-faithbased behavior is condoned, if not encouraged, tacitly and otherwise. If I understand correctly, none of the staff play the lottery, but one employee and the owner's son never say anything one way or another. They're simply civil enough and just do their jobs without carrying on like savages.
The conduct of the offending personnel is subdefective enough on its own merits, but these people peddle tobacco, the worst toxin known to man and, according to an article in the Lakewood Patch, one employee was busted in December and prosecuted for selling alcohol to minors. Yet, they insist on persecuting customers who wish to patronize store for services that the employees knew were in place when they accepted their positions.
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