Stripes

I was delighted to find, on my arrival in Corpus Christi two days ago, that the Stripes convenience store chain is actually an affiliate of 7-Eleven, my hometown Chicago chain. Apparently the whole Stripes chain was acquired by 7-Eleven two years ago.

7-Eleven has for a long time been the dominant player in Chicago convenience stores. But since moving away from Chicago in 2004, I never encountered them.

They were not present in western North Carolina, where I lived in Asheville for 16 years. I never saw one in the several southeastern states I traveled through between March 2020 and October 2021.

But when I returned to Chicago for six weeks last fall, they were still the primary chain. I found those stores to be in many ways inferior to many of the other convenience store chains I had encountered throughout the Southeast and Kentucky and Indiana. It seemed that they had stopped improving sometime in the 90s.

But the Stripes stores are quite different than the Chicago 7-Eleven stores.

They have modern coffee set-ups that grind the coffee beans in front of you, whereas Chicago 7/Eleven stores still have old-fashioned coffee pots, where you can’t tell how long the coffee has been sitting there.

Some of them have elaborate hot food cafés and wonderful seating areas.

And they are not managed by Middle Eastern immigrants, which almost all the Chicago stores are.

For the many years I taught diversity in corporations, we taught the principle of “data based generalizations” – the tendency of certain groups to behave in certain ways. (You cannot predict to the individual, because there is some diversity. To do so is stereotyping and overgeneralization.)

I think it’s just a plain fact that there is a tendency for Middle Eastern convenience store shopkeepers to be disinterested in their customers or even plain rude. It is commonplace for them to ignore the customer and just keep talking with each other in their native language.

I have encountered several wonderful Middle Eastern cashiers and managers, but they truly are in the minority.

By contrast, the local Texans who staff this store were overall quite charming. I had wonderful experiences with the assistant manager Cynthia, the evening cashiers Dom and Marcia and the manager Jessie.

They were terrific with me and my service dog Magic when our car broke down in their parking lot.

My experience with the third shift guy was quite different: even though I checked in with him after he came on duty at midnight and told him that Cynthia and Dom has given me permission to stay in the parking lot because my car was broken - and I thought we had hit it off quite well – he called the police while I was sleeping in the car and told them that he saw strange people clustering around my car and thought that I might be selling drugs.

When I challenged him about this after the fact, he said, “I know my customers. And there were people I did not know parking next to your car.“

I had slept through all of this and not interacted with any of those people. And in Corpus Christi in the summer, he’s going to be getting a lot of customers he has never seen before.

The police officer who awoke me at four in the morning did so very rudely, apparently assuming I might be a drug dealer. He finally came to understand that I was doing nothing wrong and had been invited to stay there, so he simply encouraged me to move the car as soon as possible.

That third shift guy and I finally ended up doing fine with each other, but it was only because I coached myself to enormous self-discipline and restraint in the face of the fact that he had gotten me off to a terrible start with that police officer with his irresponsible rumor-mongering.

Overall, the staff in the store have wonderful relationships with their diverse customers. Cynthia especially totally knocked my socks off. She is very charming and sweet and funny with her customers. I would say she is a world-class customer service professional.

It was good, I didn't find what I wanted but got a similar product.Would love to see some SHOWS cigars (flavored)

They deliver 🍺 B E E R
(cheers)

Great store vist it 10 out of 10

Specials on cigarettes

If I could give zero stars I would. They have had a broken glass door inside for months. Not only that they have an old man working inside that doesn’t accept any form of ID if he thinks you’re not 21 or feels like being difficult. I don’t know why stripes even has business. Out of all the stripes I’ve been to, none have been as dirty, disrespectful, and disappointing.

Disgustingly filthy inside and out. I stopped at this Stripes for gas. The gas station was uncovered and only had two pumps. Went inside and restroom was through a maze of junk in back room and too filthy to use. Had not been cleaned in ages. I would never buy food from this location. Parking lot was just as bad, litter all over. Poorly managed.

Horrible service! On 8/15/21 @ around 10 am I stopped in to cash my scratch offs and buy more the guy behind the counter named Dom was so rude... I wanted to see what other tickets they have on the other counter abd it was covered wuth clip boards so I asked if I could see them he saud you have to wait a minute ???? He acted like I was bothering him he then saud which one are you looking for? I said I don't know I have to see what you have he then cut ne off and said well I was ust trying to help I said all I need is to see what available he said no need to be rude to me. I felt disrespected and rushed he kept raising his voice and making me upset it was. one of the worst experiences srpies used to be a good company until 7 eleven took over

This location timing says 24 hours open. Im at the location and there are two guys inside and they just put the sign on the door “sorry closed”. How the hack is this store running? Why don’t you change your timing online if you’re not wish to serve your customers?

WORST WORST WORST 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬