The So it would have been a very busy Black Friday at the 7-Eleven.

Now, we don't usually even do specific Black Friday deals.

This was 2019, and we'd done that Bring Your Own Cup deal the year before, and plenty of people

had arrived with cups for infinite refills this year too, and we had to explain our store

wasn't doing that promotion this year. Like every store, we had certain things on discount,

but nothing really worth getting excited over. Now, despite that, from how busy the damn store

had been, you'd have thought that we were giving Doritos and Mountain Dew away for free.

I'd taken the shift thinking

that it couldn't possibly be that stressful. I've worked retail at Target and Best Buy on Black

Friday and holy God, I'd rather drop a 60-inch TV on my head than do that again. This really

happened to a customer, by the way. Anyway, that's not the point of the story. The point is that I've been rushed

non-stop on my feet and it wasn't until around 4 a.m. or so that I finally had a break where the

store was at its usual, basically empty late-night state. And basically what I'm saying is that I was

so busy, so rushed that I have an excuse for failing to lock the back door

when I'd taken out some of the cardboard earlier.

I should have been more careful, but I wasn't expecting the store to be so busy with only me,

bugs, and January, this chick that I'd been crushing on managing the store.

And so, yeah, I left the back door open, and you know when I said that

the store was finally empty at 4 a.m. or so? Well, it wasn't. You see, a homeless, sorry, a seemingly

unhoused individual had snuck his way in through the back door and was camped out in the small

storeroom, helping himself to as many

non-perishable goods as he could fit in his damn face.

...