An Open Letter to 7-Eleven

Dear 7-Eleven,

I have always been a fan of yours. Living now in Albany, New York, I don't have on that is open close to me, but there is one near my father's house (in Adams, MA) that I go to not often but on occasion.

I had the opportunity to enter 7-Eleven #32540 (Biddeford, ME) on Wednesday evening, while waiting for my pizza to be prepared. I needed a pack of cigarettes for myself and for someone else.

Let me give you a little background here, Wednesday was a gorgeous day. A seriously gorgeous day. I had a good tan going on and when I went to get pizza, I was in chino shorts and a Ralph Lauren polo shirt. Yes, I popped the collar. Why? I was feeling good about myself, and I thought it was cheeky.

Yes, it is a little douchey, but...I am on vacation, and I am a bad person.

As I was walking into Store #32540, a man (25, presumably a little drunk but the way he looked) asked me if I knew that my color was up.

"Yes, thanks," I replied.

"Well, it looks gay."

Okay...what?

It took me a second to figure out what he said but I was not going to make a scene and really, I thought he was a homeless person. After seeing that your store had a really awful selection of beer, I went to the counter to by the aforementioned cigarettes and to my surprise, the man that I thought was drunk and or homeless, and who used the word "gay" as an insult, was behind the counter, discussing the functioning of the store with the woman who cashed me out.

So, 7-Eleven, is your policy to allow homeless people behind the counter or is it policy to employee bigots and homophobes?

In addition, Biddeford in the summer is largely a tourist town and I am going to go out on a limb and state that most of the tourists coming to town and spending thousands of dollars are not as conservative as the locals. It may be in the interest of your corporate image to remind your franchisees that just because they (and the people in their town) may have a certain set of beliefs, the world is a really big place, full of a lot of people who are not small minded or, more to the point, horrifyingly ignorant.

Thanks, and I hope and trust that incidents like this will not longer happen.