Monday, August 03, 2020

A QuickTrip with too much time on hands...

Paying remote attention to the remote guide, offerings were limited: General Hospital, kajillions of recorded sports from yesteryear, Spongebob, Gunsmoke, World's Dumbest Thrillseekers, etc, el boro, etc.

So........  I did what, obviously, any of us would do in time of severe boredom.  I drove to QuickTrip to people watch.  Huh?  You don't?  Try it,it's interesting.  Also tires a retiree making for a perfect nap after.

Backtracking, in 1958, Burt Holmes, traveled and saw the popularity of 7/11.  Thus, he convinced classmate Chester Cadieux to each put in $5,000 to build the first store in Tulsa, OK.  How much is it worth now you ask?  9.16 BILLION.

We, Liberty, had a really nifty QT.  If memory serves, it had 4 doors.  Not good enough.  Tore it down a couple years ago, built from scratch, a hair bigger store, with 6 doors, making is easy for us lazy folks to walk no more than 3 car spaces to the entry.

Masks.  It is 'mandated' now in our fine City, or is it County, I forget.  Anyways, sposeta.  I spent 40 minutes in my 'study' (You really ARE bored aren't you Victor?  Uh huh.)  During that time, I only saw 5 people enter with no mask. Young punk kids?  NOPE., grumpy old men my age.  I didn't see them getting booted out.

Our City is pretty drab on mask choice.  Most were the blue on one side, white on the other, cheapie "get em ten at a time at the Piggly Wiggly for $9.99.'  There was one bright green one, quite a few cloth ones, but only one (a beautiful rainbow mask) that had any pattern or writing. One dude simply pulled his t-shirt up over his mouth, nose, emulating a bank robber kinda sorta.

I counted 4 "oh crap" folks who walked up to the door, saw the 'Mandatory' sign, walked back to their car, put it on, and restart.

Most put the masks on in the car before they got out.  Some, waited right up until they got to the door.  A large percent gave it that lady "I'm taking this damn bra off the instant I get home" look, and unsnapped the mask from the ears immediately after exit.

Some of you might be old enough to remember the "Ain't that right Lamar" QT Dog commercials from the late 70's.  I did see, in this 40 minute span, 4 tailwagging 'Lamars', but none wore masks.

All people used the door handle to enter (really no choice), but most placed the heel of their hand, or their elbow, on the glass to exit.  Two guys actually kicked the door open.

QT, they do good business.  For ten minutes or so, I counted how many seconds elapsed before the next customer entered.  I got up to 24 seconds once, but, most of the time someone entered every ten seconds of less.  (SEE the powerful goodies one can learn here?)

Amazon Prime takes a lot of crap for misdeliveries, but I will say there was one Prime van, and it DID NOT park correctly between the yellow lines.

I saw ZERO preggo ladies, but then, it's only been like 4 months since the US has been in hibernation.

Two people went to the "VS School of laziness", gassed their car up, got back in and drove up to the building so they wouldn't have to walk so far.

Bottled water. There were/are 47 cases of bottled water stacked in fronta our QT.  Side note, my buddy Bubba once went on (and on) about how he'd never buy onea those cases that had been sitting in the sun all day.  I asked him if he ever flirted with, or dated a lifeguard, he never grasped the connection. He must be right though as no one purchased a case in my time there.

I dig math.  I took the number of hours in a day, times 60 seconds, somehow figured the 803 total QT stores, how much they make a minute based on 9.16 billion, and came up with this QT brought in $2,204 in the 40 minutes I was there.  Thought that was low, then I remembered I gotta C in Algebra in HS, dropped quantum physics after two weeks in college, so you can help me figure maybe.

Tune in tomorrow.  I'm either gonna do a similar study at the Piggly Wiggly... or, will park in fronta the Wiggle In to see how many Wobble out.. or, it's election day, I may go take a study and report back to the local Republican Committee how many Weekend At Bernies I counted exiting the polls.

Love, Victurd

PS, I stole the "Wiggle In, Wobble Out."  That was actually the name of a bar in our fine town years and years ago.

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