PHILADELPHIA – Looking for love in all the wrong places? Then try skipping “the club scene and the electronic beats” because the place to potentially meet your mate could be at the local Wawa. “At least that’s what the data from Craigslist’s Missed Connections suggests,” writes PhilllMag.com.
Missed Connections on craigslist.com is a guilty pleasure to read for some, and for others a chance to post a brief message about a serendipitous glimpse or brief encounter that could lead to finding the woman who dropped her copy of “Gone With the Wind” at the train station, or the man who caught the eye of the girl ordering a triple-venti-something at Starbucks.
The posts appear for 45 days and then vanish from the site. “A lot of it is romantically oriented. Occasionally they can get a bit weird,” writes the news source, adding that one Philadelphia Wawa location had at least 30 posts out of more than 1,000. For nearby areas like Central Pennsylvania, South Jersey and Delaware, the number of missed connections at a Wawa grew to 86 out of 2,367 posts.
The news source writes that there are “a lot of hopeless—or misguided—romantics out there, crossing their fingers that a few Internet clicks may connect them with the love of their life. And a lot them appear to be frequenting your local Wawa; buying sandwiches, filing up on gas, and hoping not to miss another opportunity.”
Sociologists even weighed in as to why a Wawa convenience store could be a “top spot for almost-lovers,” noting several factors: “It’s a place we frequent, it’s conducive—enough—for conversation, and it lends itself to the changing landscape of the commercial sector,” writes the news source.
“Wawa is a place we often go to, it’s a part of our routine,” Amanda Czernaiski, an associate professor of sociology at Temple University, told PhillyMag.com, explaining that going to a place frequently increases the likelihood of finding a potential love interest. She also noted the demise of retail locations such as bookstores as a potential reason for love to spark at Wawa.
And then there’s the customer service factor at Wawa, as well as new store openings featuring more seating, coffee, free Wi-Fi and made-to-order menu items. Wawa spokesperson Lori Bruce told the news source that additional seating has been well received and could become a mainstay at future urban locations.
Even without the seating, “Wawas have always had a community element to them,” writes the news source, highlighting the community connections between the customers and also “the workers and the customers they serve daily.”
And while the odds are not always in their favor when it comes to finding one person from 1.6 million Missed Connections posts, Wawa’s offer of food and fuel will certainly keep customers coming back. The notion of looking for love in all the wrong places is indeed, subjective.