The rubber match

I must hear it at least once a shift: "Do you sell condoms?"

Well, no, the store does not.

I'm thinking I'll bolt a condom vending machine onto the back of my truck and park it near the door. Charge a buck each. I'd make a killing.

I'll call my new venture "Where the Rubbers Meet the Road."

'Don't say it that way!'

3 a.m.: Two young men walk in. The first grabs a can of Monster and comes up to the counter.

"Do you guys sell condoms?" he asks.

"No, I'm afraid not," I reply.

"Then what am I going to do about this girl that keeps texting me?" he says, just as the phone in his hand chirps.

"Sorry, I can't help you," I say.

The second man then walks up with a bag of chips.

"Hey! Did you get our condoms?" he asks.

"Don't say it THAT way!," the first man says and giggles.

Have I got an offer for you

3:20 a.m.: I'm outside sweeping the lot when a beat-up sedan pulls up and the driver rolls down her window.

"Excuse me."

"Yes."

"Would you like two soft tacos?"

Pause

"Noooo," I answer. "I'm good."

"OK," she responds and heads into the store.

Later, after she'd left, I mention the taco offer to my co-worker.

"That was so weird," my co-worker said. "She was in here offering tacos to the other customers."

For some reason, that made me feel better.

"You know, I've been married for a long time," I said. "I probably wouldn't recognize a proposition if I heard one."

A poor little lamb, who has lost her way

You would think that New Year's Eve on the graveyard shift would be filled with tales of drunken debauchery, but the only story of the night didn't involve alcohol at all.

A young woman walked into the store about 2 a.m., and approached my co-worker and I with the telling words, "You're going to think I'm crazy, but ..."

Other than knowing she was in Rochester, this woman had no idea where she was.

The woman said she was visiting from St. Paul and she and a friend had checked into a hotel room earlier in the day. The woman had her friend drop her off at a hair salon, and after getting her hair done had convinced the stylist to give her a ride back to the hotel. Trouble is, the woman couldn't remember the name of the hotel, and the stylist dropped her off at the wrong one.

When the woman realized she was in the wrong hotel, she asked the people at the front counter for help. They advised her to try the hotel down the street. It was raining and about 40 degrees when the woman walked to the next hotel. Again, the wrong one. So she tried the next, and the next (there are nearly a dozen hotels in the vicinity of our store).

When she ran out of nearby hotels, she ended up in our store.  By then, the weather had deteriorated, with a strong wind from the north blowing snow.

She had a cellphone, but the friend she had rented the room with wasn't answering her phone. She had the key card for the hotel, but there was no hotel name on it. "Wilkommen" was no help.

Her friend had actually paid for the room, so she had no receipt. No credit cards. She had $15 in cash.

As she told her story, she became nearly hysterical.

"How can anyone forget their hotel?" she cried. "It's just crazy."

My co-worker worked to calm her down, trying to help her remember things about the hotel.

"It was new. It was off by it's own. It wasn't near anything."

"There was a really busy street nearby, with barriers. There was some construction going on."

"The drive from the hotel to the hair salon didn't take very long. The salon was by a Kmart."

Based on that information, she wasn't anywhere near her hotel. Other than that, the description matched dozens of Rochester hotels.

My co-worker talked with the woman for about 30 minutes, trying to narrow down the scope. But after awhile we knew it was fruitless.

We asked the woman to call the police non-emergency line, but the dispatcher said the police couldn't help her.

After another 10 minutes of tears, I called the police myself and explained the situation.

"Is she creating a scene?" the dispatcher asked.

"No."

"Is she drunk?"

"No."

"Do you think it's a mental health issue?"

"No. She's just lost and has no resources. I just can't send her out into the snow in the middle of the night."

"I just don't know what we can do."

A cabbie rolled in after his shift, and the woman started talking to him, thinking he might know about the hotel. They spent about 10 minutes talking outside, but the cabbie eventually left by himself.

A few minutes later, I saw the woman get into a car with an elderly man who had just bought a cup of coffee. As they were leaving, a Police Community Service Officer pulled in. The officer asked about the woman, and I pointed to the car headed up the street.

"She got a ride from some old codger. I don't know where he's taking her, but there they go."

"Weird," the CSO said, and left.