Convenience Stores, or as I like to call them, given the smash-and-grab climate of California, “Stop and Robs” has become the go-to shopping experience for lazy people.

Think about it for a second. You see the Stop and Robs all over the place. In fact, it has gotten to the point where a Stop and Rob are on every corner. Now, before you think that I’m calling convenience stores, Stop and Robs because they are usually one of the top ten places a crackhead with a gun will go to either steal merchandise or hold up some poor bozo working behind the county for the 18 dollars that is in the register.

But another reason I call these stores Stop and Robs is not only because criminals come in and rob the place. It’s the stores themselves that rob the average consumer. Go into any Stop and Rob, check out the prices for items listed there, and then compare the same things at your local grocery store.

It’s a huge ripoff!

At least when the criminals and crackheads come in to rob the place, they have the decency of wearing a mask. But Stop and Robs have the audacity of blatantly ripping you off and have the cajones to do it without even attempting to hide their identity.

The sad part is that most people know they are paying more than they should, but they don’t care. And do you know why? Because they don’t want to drive an extra 5 minutes to the grocery store. People,  you have a damn car, use it and spend the additional 5 minutes and save yourself a lot of money.

I have concluded that Stop and Robs is nothing more than the Pay Day Loan concept for grocery shopping. I’m sure you’ve all heard of the Pay Day Loan concept. People who are short of money and go to these establishments take out a loan for the amount they wish to borrow to tide them over till payday. Then, once payday comes, the consumer pays back their loan at a high-interest rate, when they get paid.

But what most people don’t understand is that a Pay Day Loan is a never-ending scam. Because now that you’ve paid back your loan, guess what? You’re back to square one because now you are short money again from your paycheck. After all, you’ve just paid back your loan. Hence, you need to take out a new Pay Day loan.

Now, take that concept to a Stop and Rob. People have so many things going on in their lives, with kids to baseball practice or dance recitals, having to run errands that they need to do once they get off work, or on our weekends that they “run short” in their time paycheck. So, to “save time” by shopping at a Stop and Rob, people pay a “high interest rate” for that time saved  by paying higher prices for things than if they had gone to a grocery store in the first place.

Now, let us look at the health aspects of a Stop and Rob.

Let us say for a moment you run into your local Stop and Rob to “pick up a couple of things” on the way home from dropping the kids off at practice, and you realize you are feeling a little hungry. They have taquitos and hot dogs rotating on cooking rollers under heat lamps. You also notice that they have glass cases where under the same kind of heat lamps, they have a bevy of BBQ Wings, Chicken strips, slices of pizza, etc. You also notice a case off to your right; they have sushi and other sandwich items.

Before you indulge your craving for a snack, let me give you one piece of advice: Don’t.

Trust me, don’t do it.

You have no idea how long that stuff has been under the lamp or when it was last changed. Don’t look at those cookers and cases as holding hot and delicious snacks; think of them as incubators for the different types of botulism you can get once you ingest their “mouth-watering taste treats.”

Oh, and if you think the guy behind the counter knows how long the food science/germ warfare experiments have been there, don’t ask. He doesn’t know, and he doesn’t care. (That’s assuming the guy behind the counter understands what you are trying to say.)

Trust me. The people who work there, at least the smart ones, never eat anything from a Stop and Rob.

Stop and Robs are adding another weapon to viciously remove your hard-earned money from you: They’ve added gas pumps. So, they will rip you off inside the store and rob you blind at the gas pump. Check out the pump prices at these places and realize that maybe they should offer every customer who pays for something inside the store and then pays for a full take of gas should be given a free jar of Vaseline as a parting gift.

Getting financially screwed over shouldn’t hurt that much now, right?

Look, you only have so much time and money. You have to spend time to make money. Because once that time is gone, you can never get it back. Time is a very precious commodity. Use it, like your money, wisely. Spend them both in places that benefit you and not these Stop and Robs.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled life…already in progress.