How are you today?

[MisterTinkles]

Thanks heaps for that. I'm a boss in the company myself so short and sweet is the way I like things as well as direct.

My issues are more with the 'industry' rather than the company and any of the employee's. There are issues in the industry which are changing and I don't think the company up top are aware of how serious the issues are because everyone is always like 'Yep, all is good in at work.' So if the top guys don't know about problems in the industry, they can't begin to address them.

I work in the retail fuel industry and convenience industry, my staff are the 'front line' for the company and they are confronted with an ever increasingly aggressive society willing to abuse and even physically threaten my staff and I don't feel there is enough being done in the way of support to allay the fears of my team. The approach has always been 'Keep smiling and stay calm with those customers.' which is fine if the abuse is every other week, but the abuse is several times a day and in busy periods the customers can 'gang up'

Most of my team work through the evening and early hours of the morning ALONE. If there is a fuel spill it would cause a volatile situation that they have to handle themselves and that is on top of the robbery and abuse threats that are very real at those times of day.

I'm just dissillusioned, but maybe I can help bring about change.

A gas jockey huh?

Yeah, that stuff is dangerous, any way you look at it.
I think that lower retail workers in convenience stores and gas stations need hazard pay for the crap they have to go through, the lunatics they are subject too, and the violence they have to contend with. If anybody deserves to carry tazers, its these people.

They have NO defense, NO retreat, NO way of protecting themselves for some scumbag who wants to shoot them for a freaking pack of cigarettes and a few dollars.

Wages need to be determined not only by skill level, but by hazards, safety, and security issues. Even at $20 an hour, thats still LOW wages to have to live your job on the edge of not knowing if you will come home or not, at the end of the day.