Wawoah

If you aren't from the Greater Philadelphia region of our fine US of A, you may not know the term "Wawa". Similar to a certain four letter f-word in the English language, Wawa can be used a variety of ways. For example:

Noun: "I'm going to Wawa"
Adjective: "Wawa run!"
Verb: "Ima Wawa"

Wawa is actually the region's largest convenience store chain. Similar to the more geographically diverse Sheetz, it is a veritable smorgasbord of good, but not necessarily good for you food. You can purchase your gasoline, your freshly prepared sandwich, pre-packaged salads, cheese sticks, breakfast munchies, coffee, fountain sodas--the whole gamut. If you've ever had the pleasure, you'll agree that their mac-n-cheese hot side dish is among the best inventions ever to pass one's lips.

Between my LAFitness and home, I pass approximately 3 or 4 Wawa outlets (depending on my route). Considering that the gym is less than ten miles from my house, the Wawa concentration and market penetration is fairly high.

With practically a 1:1 store to customer ratio, why are they still so crowded? I stopped at one today to grab a bottle of water. At 10:30 PM, there was a rush of cars in the lot, throngs of people in the store, and various others deciding where to go next. And unlike the Western Pennsylvania tradition of teenagers choosing Sheetz as the local hang-out, none of the 30 people in there were lolly gagging (I love that word)--they were all on some sort of mission.

This mission was most clearly evidenced by the parking lot chaos. I was nearly backed into, had to wait in line for a space, had to meander around several idle and mis-parked vehicles, and wait in a line to exit. This is normal, and tonight was actually slow!

What is with our wawonder? More important, how does arriving at these meccas of suburban life make it OK for people to completely lose touch with rules of the road, courtesy, and human decency.

If you are in the area, don't worry, they're a Fortune 500 company; your Wawaloha Hawaiian coffee and sausage Sizzli will still be there even if you take the time to park like a human.

If you aren't from the area, you should just be so jealous that you can't Wawa!