Sheetz

Wednesday

Amber Duke

The Biden admin is socially engineering your workplace

Do you currently enjoy a workplace environment that is free of violent criminals? Is your work bathroom reserved for members of the same sex as you? You might not enjoy those commonsense benefits for much longer. The Biden administration is flexing the bureaucratic state’s muscle to force businesses to comply with its progressive worldview. Last month, the Biden administration’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced that it was suing Sheetz, a popular gas station and convenience store chain in the mid-Atlantic, for alleged racially discriminatory hiring practices. Sheetz is a great American success story. It was opened by Bob Sheetz in 1950 in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and is still owned by the Sheetz family to this day.

Thursday

Teresa Mull

Inside Pennsylvania’s gas station wars

Travelers road-tripping across Pennsylvania this summer, take heed: a war is brewing in the center of the state. Buildings have been flattened. Families have been torn apart. The threat of an emerging third power regularly captures headlines and fuels the local rumor mills. I am referring to the competition among three gas stations-cum-convenience megastores — Sheetz, Rutter’s and Wawa. It is said to be the “most heated food rivalry in the country.” Food? A lot of what these places pass off as “food” is up there with the cosmic chicken sponge found at airports. Nonetheless, the rivalry is real. It’s palpable. It’s all-American. And as for the rural places benefiting from this capitalism, as the kids like to say, we’re here for it.

wawa

Friday

Mary Kate Skehan

On the frontlines of the Pennsylvania gas station war

One afternoon towards the end of my first year of high school, as I filed through the crowded halls to my locker, I saw the news ripple as visibly as a breeze through a cornfield in August. A Sheetz was opening that very day, at the summit of Queen Street, off I-83. My little Pennsylvania city was on the map. We’d finally chosen a side in the great gas station wars. Now that the hit HBO show Mare of Easttown has brought the world’s attention to one of America’s greatest shames — Pennsylvania accents — it’s also reminded us of the fierce loyalty residents of the emptier parts of the mid-Atlantic have toward our convenience stores. Mare and her fellows refer to their Wawa hoagies and coffees with a curious, pointed frequency, satirized in a recent SNL skit.

wawa gas station