Super America

Daniel is working late at the Super America. "It's the fourth time this week," he says. He's not supposed to work the graveyard shift more than three times. It's only Thursday and he gets his schedule tomorrow.

You'd be surprised at how many people show up after midnight. Kids, the elderly, buying scratch-offs and cigarettes and Mountain Dew. A combination of the night owls, the early early birds, the insomniacs, the just-don't-give-a-damns, the gamers, the people on their way to work, the people going home. I ask Daniel if he's ever gotten robbed. "While working?" he asks. "Not as often as you'd think."

He's saving up money. He has a girlfriend and a kid and one on the way. He used to wash windows for a man with a window washing company present in four states. He'd get sent around (one time he was sent to Hebron, Kentucky to wash the Cincinnati airport and was there for four weeks). He was making a decent living, he says, about thirty-six thousand a year. But once the competition kicked in his salary got halved and it just wasn't cutting it. "Can't support my girl and my kid with eighteen grand a year. It's just not gonna happen." He stays local now, no more four-week washing excursions. He picked up this second job, which he hates, but he does it, because that's what you do.

"I don't see myself here for long," he tells me. "I'd like to go back to school." I ask him what he'd study. Daniel says he doesn't know. "Seems like getting to school is the important part."