Hello!

Last Friday (10/18/24) at a 7/11 down the street from my home, the gas station attendant was murdered. She was an 18 year old by the name of Jaedynn Anthony. She was stabbed to death sometime after midnight, with a wellness check being called into police at 2:45 AM, and this being the way her body was discovered. At the time of writing, no arrests have been made.

Many big name gas stations believe that, due to a lack of business, it is acceptable to only have one overnight clerk. This argument, while possibly correct, also ignores safety concerns for the individual tasked with tending the store overnight. A lone individual is much more easy to overpower, overcome, or outright kill, than someone with even just one other staff member. Pair that with the fact that more crime is likely to happen in the late night hours, and you have a recipe for disaster.

For reference, Gas Stations have some of the highest rates of occupational deaths in the US, averaging 9.8 deaths per 100,000 people, or to make the  math a little simpler we can round to 1/10,000. To break that into a national average, 36 gas station employees are murdered per year in the US. Not don't mistake me, some of this may be unavoidable, such as crimes of passion, but the Bureau of labor Statistics has outwardly stated that those instances do not make up the majority, contrary to popular belief.

I believe it is time for change. I'm going to use 7/11 for my example as this is what sparked this. In 2022, 7/11 made a profit of $2.95 Billion, with 12,800 locations. so let's asume we need to hire one more overnight clerk for every single one of those locations. Locally gas station attendants make $13/hr so let's justify the math broadly for that. Hiring those 12,800 workers would cost the company $345,600,000 annually, hardly 15% loss to the company. I genuinely think that 15% of anything is worth far less than a human life, and if you're in agreement, then i encourage you to help out by signing this petition.

The only way to make change is to make your voice known, and I think it's high time we speak up

an addendum: I have had it speculated that my issue is just with 7/11 but it isn't, this is the gas station industry as a whole. Not every company is an offender, not even every store is guilty of it, but this is an industry thing that should be addressed.