Tag Archives: aliens

Aug9

Space Aliens

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These space aliens have probably never in their whole lives been to a gas station before today.

I swear some of the people who come to the fuel center where I work must be space aliens. I constantly want to ask people if they’ve never in their whole lives been to a gas station before today. I’m not talking about 15 year old kids, either. I’m talking about grown-ass adults of middle age or older.

Many confused space aliens, (aka my customers) have no idea what pump they’ve parked at when they come to the kiosk to pay. It seems to me it’s basic gas station procedure to be able to tell the cashier what pump to authorize. I know some percentage of my customers are illiterate or don’t speak English as their first language, which accounts for some of the confusion. However, these situations don’t account for all the people who come up to my window (or make it part of the way there) then have to turn around and look for the number of their pump so they can tell it to me. Space aliens, I tell you!

How much money do you folks want to spend on gas? No idea? I figured as much.

Another thing people who seem to have never been to a gas station do is come up to my window with no idea how much money they plan to spend. Folks constantly come up, open their wallets, and start counting their money. Once they determine the amount of their funds, then they decide how much gas to buy. Don’t they realize they’re going to have to give me money in order to make their purchase? Wouldn’t it be more efficient to count the money and decide how much to spend before approaching the kiosk? Apparently space aliens don’t think that way.

Space aliens often don’t understand how our loyalty rewards work either. Folks are often mad at me when I check their reward balance and tell them they’re not getting any discount today. I shop here all the time! one man/extraterrestrial said in anger before he stomped away. I tried to explain he had to earn 100 points (which typically means spending $100, although there are ways—bringing reusable shopping bags to pack groceries in, completing surveys, buying girt cards—to bump up one’s points) to receive a reward of 10 cents off the regular price per gallon of fuel. He was gone before I could help him reach an understanding. 

Let’s go to a gas station and study human behavior.

Often customers don’t know they have to lift the pump’s nozzle before they can select the fuel grade. This is somewhat understandable because at the other gas station chain in town, prepay customers tell the cashier what grade of gasoline they want. However, even there, if one is paying at the pump, one lifts the nozzle, then hits the button for the fuel grade desired. If the procedure isn’t obvious (and believe me, it must not be) the screen on the pump gives step-by-step instructions for pumping fuel. Perhaps space aliens should up their game on reading comprehension of American English before they try to pump gas in the USA.

The strangest that-person-must-be-an-alien encounter I had at the fuel center involved an (apparent) elderly man who didn’t understand beef jerky.

There’s a big merchandiser in the middle of the fuel center. It looks like a cooler; maybe once it was a cooler, but now it holds nonperishable items. One side is all snacks: chips, nuts, cookies, crackers, popcorn, energy bars, and cereal in single serving cups. The other side holds automotive supplies (fuel injector cleaner, motor oil, windshield washer fluid, etc.); a few big bags of chips; and an array of beef jerky.

I’d been outside when the man/alien pulled in. I’d told him good morning, and he attempted to chit chat with me. (He was probably trying to study human behavior). It was early in the morning—I’d opened the fuel center at 5:45—so I wasn’t very talkative.  Sure, I was polite, but I kept the interaction to a minimum. I was tired and wanted to expend as little energy as possible.

I didn’t get away with my silence for long.

Your cooler’s not working, I heard the man/alien say. He was standing by the merchandiser that looks like a cooler but isn’t a cooler. He must have opened the door and not felt the gust of chilled air he expected.

It’s not a cooler, sir, I told him.

But there’s meat in there! he said frantically.

It’s jerky, sir, I told him.

How did he look in there and see meat but not realize it was jerky? The meat in the cooler/not a cooler was in bags hanging from hooks not in trays lying flat like in a grocery store meat department. Also, if he had really looked at the meat, he would have seen it was brown and dry, not red and moist like raw meat. If those clues didn’t lead him to understand this meat was not perishable, perhaps the word “jerky” on the packaging would have offered him the information he needed. Besides, what gas station sells raw meat as snack food?

 It’s meat! he insisted. He wasn’t wrong, but he was confused.

Jerky doesn’t have to be refrigerated, sir, I explained.

How does he not know that? I wondered. How could anyone over the age of 25 not know that jerky doesn’t need to be refrigerated?

The only answer I could come up with? Space alien!

I took all the photos in this post at the Alien Fresh Jerky store in Baker, CA.

Dec29

Alien Fresh Jerky

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I don’t know exactly what this is supposed to be, some kind of alien, I guess, but it greets visitors as they approach the Alien Fresh Jerky store. The World’s Tallest Thermometer can be seen in the background on the left.

I only stopped in Baker, California because I’d read there was a penny smashing machine at the Alien Fresh Jerky store. I have a friend who collects smashed pennies (or at least she did once–I may be behind the times), so I thought I’d stop and get her a fast and cheap souvenir.

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Many huge aliens stand above the Alien Fresh Jerky parking lot.

It was a contributor to Roadside America  who alerted me to the possibility of smashing a penny. D. Pruiksma said on 10/10/2010,

Just across from the World’s Largest Thermometer, Alien Fresh Jerky has it all. There’s jerky, T-Shirts, mugs, bumper stickers, refrigerator magnets, strong political opinions and, of course, a place to smash a penny with one of four Alien Fresh Jerky imprints. And, let’s face it, what self respecting roadside attraction would be complete if one couldn’t smash a penny. Once they had that, they knew Alien Fresh had arrived.

Roadside America also said the store had a

self-serve, “sample” counter. Mmmm! (use the tongs).

I’m not a huge meat eater, but I did plan to try some free jerky samples.

I took some photos before I went into the store. There were lots of fake aliens at the Alien Fresh Jerky store, both inside and out. I found lots of opportunities for taking free photos of fake aliens. The store has aliens on the roof. There’s a car full of aliens in front of the store. Huge aliens stand above the parking lot. A dozen or img_7712more aliens live inside the store. Yeah, aliens galore.

There’s apparently a plan to build a UFO hotel. In 2013, the Roadside America team wrote,

The manager didn’t laugh when we asked about how the new “UFO hotel project” is going — he said that it was underway for 2013. The plan, publicized in late 2012, is to build a 3-story, saucer-shaped motel with a pool resembling an E.T.’s head. If all goes well, Baker will be promoted as the “Gateway to Area 51″…

img_7722When I stopped by the store in early December of 2016, there was no hotel onsite, UFO themed or otherwise. There were signs behind the store advertising the hotel and an empty lot beyond the signs, but no clean, comfortable (or otherwise) rooms. The vacant lot looked as if it had maybe been leveled, but no one should plan to stay at the (nonexistent) hotel any time soon.

Not only was there no hotel, when I went inside the store, I found no jerky samples and no penny smashing machine. Oh sad day!

There was a lot of jerky for sale in the store. Lots of snacks like nuts and dried fruits were also available. There were beverages for sale too. All the food and drinks seemed overpriced. I didn’t buy anything.

I did consider having the alien in the machine tell my fortune, but in the end, I decided to keep my dollar. What could a fake alien encased in plastic possibly tell me about my future?

There are fake aliens all over the store. I saw Yoda, as well as at least a dozen of the dudes with big heads.img_7727

The Alien Fresh Jerky store is a must-see spot for fans of aliens, but I probably won’t stop there again. I don’t need to see another fake alien because I saw enough fake aliens in this one convenient location to last a lifetime.

I took all of the photos in this post.

 

 

 

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The driver alien turns its head.  Yowza!

Jul11

Restroom Confusion

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I’ve been promoted to driving the company truck and picking up trash at the nearby group campground and at the parking lot on the days off of the co-worker who is normally responsible for trash detail.

The other day I was getting the trash from the two cans near the restrooms in the parking lot. A man and a woman approached the doors to the restrooms. The man had on a ball cap and a t-shirt and pants of some kind. He was nondescript. The woman I can best describe as citified. If she wasn’t from L.A., she wanted to be. She was one of those women who’s worked so hard to look like Western society’s ideal of a woman that she looks like a drag queen. Or maybe she was a drag queen.

The restrooms in the parking lot do not segregate genders. There’s not a women’s restroom and a men’s restroom. There are two restrooms, both accessible for folks with disabilities and both available to men or women or any other gender variety. The signs have those humanoid figures representing males and females one finds on restrooms. Each restroom displays both the “male” and the “female” humanoid symbols.

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This is the type of sign on the restrooms in the parking lot. (Photo by me.)

The citified woman stood in front of the restrooms and repeated I don’t understand. I don’t understand.

She said something else (that I now don’t remember) which made me realize she didn’t understand the signs and therefore didn’t know which restroom to use.

I piped up helpfully, They’re unisex.

“Unisex” did not seem to be in her vocabulary.

Then the man reached out and tried the handle on the restroom door nearest to him. It did not open.

It’s locked, he told the woman, seemingly perplexed.

That’s probably because someone is in there, I said, still trying to be helpful. You should knock to find out if someone is in there.

Both of them seemed to be ignoring me.

Then the woman tentatively tried to open the other door.

You should knock, I told her before giving up on trying to be helpful.

The woman managed to open the door. She went into the restroom, and the door closed behind her. She immediately came back outside, shaking her head. She said something quietly to the man, and I could tell she was disgusted, but whether by the bad smell or the fact that the toilet was vault style and not a flusher, I don’t know.

At that point I’d collected the trash, so I got in the truck and drove away.

Sometimes I wonder if what appears to be humans acting strangely aren’t actually space aliens confused by our human ways. How  could a human someone not directly arrived from a developing nation have never encountered a unisex restroom? Target stores have unisex restrooms. Even Wal-Marts have unisex restrooms. And why didn’t the man know to knock on the door in order to find out if it was locked because it was in use? Doesn’t everyone know to knock on a locked restroom door?

Space aliens I tell you.