Life Skills at the Local C-Store

Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith have a solid history with convenience stores. Thirty-one years ago they created one of the most iconic Gen-X movies, “Clerks,” and launched their own film careers as the duo Jay and Silent Bob.
 
The 1994 movie was inspired by Smith’s own c-store experience; one of his first jobs was working as—you guessed it—a clerk at his local Quick Stop. Mewes’s connection to convenience stores came from hanging out with Smith while he was working; the two are longtime collaborators and friends.
 
During a recent Convenience Matters podcast, Mewes and Smith talked about how convenience stores are one of the last true “democratic town hall spaces” in a time when people are “siloed into their phones.”
 
“When you go to the convenience store, you're all one people. It's like the America that we grew up in—the one that everyone's always romanticized …. [where] people come in and chitchat,” said Smith.
 
As a teenager growing up in Red Bank, New Jersey, Smith admits he was looking for a job with little responsibility. “That's what attracted me to convenience stores in the first place,” he said, noting the rushes of customers and the lulls, which he found appealing.
 
“I could deal with the rushes because I like people and I like talking to people. You can make a person's day. That's what I always enjoyed about working at Quick Stop,” said Smith.
 
Ask most frontline workers and they’ll likely agree that some customer interactions stick with you. Smith recalled a regular customer who smoked Newport cigarettes. “Eddie comes in, he's all steamy because he's dealing with life and before he says the word, I point to the cigarettes” already on the counter waiting for him, he said.
 
“[Eddie] lights up like Christmas, and for like 30 seconds, I made a difference. You could see in this guy's face how miserable life is having to work and stuff, but for that moment, he was a king. He was known. He felt respected. I enjoyed that so much. That's something I carried into my other line of work,” said Smith.
 
His experience aligns with a NACS study that uncovered how working in a c-store as a first job can leave a lasting impression. Respondents said that they found more value in interacting with customers than their fellow co-workers, and that working in a c-store helped them learn how to interact with people.
 
Listen to more from Mewes and Smith on Convenience Matters.