With the school year coming to a close, many of the students in the Tri-State area seek a job in order to pay for their Panama trip, car, what have you. The place to be at for the next couple months is Steve’s B.P. where Elder, LaSalle, and St.X, all find students doing services for some pocket change.

Some people might be confused when they hear, “Steve’s B.P.” and are curious to know what it is; it’s a gas station.

This gas station isn’t just an ordinary one off Glenway. No sir this is a 5-star, ranked top in the city kind of deal here. My father told me stories of what it used to be, and in a quick 5-8 years, it went from a semi-trailer sized shack, to a fast-flowing drive-thru, pizza parlor, and gas station.

Located off of I-74, Miamitown and Cleves exit, it’s the infamous B.P. where recently Elder and other GCL schools have taken over the responsibilities of the demanding orders. Steve Naltner, owner of B.P. comes to me and fellow Maka-Mia-Pizza co-worker Nino Salamone, and says, “Talk to some guys at school, or maybe some friends at colleges looking for a job and tell them we need them.” So naturally what do we do? We recruit the start athletes and top of class students. Only the best will suite well for the job.

In the Drive, we see all kinds of characters and our professionally trained workers must be alert at all times. We need big, muscular, and athletic guys to handle this, and what better people to bring in then Bradley Simonson and Lucas Downey.

We have one other worker out there, that goes by the name of Quinn Earley. He doesn’t do anything good for the place (just kidding) but our main focus is the Elder boys. I asked Brad a couple broad questions about the new job and atmosphere here and working with some new faces.

I said, “How do you feel about working with other GCL schools?” Simo gives a very professional and well thought out answer by saying, “As long as we don’t talk about sports, I don’t have a problem with the other schools.” I couldn’t have said it better. I think Brad will bring intimidation into some customers if they ever get out of line, which we certainly need since he’s such a big man. He will certainly give a cutting edge to this business.

Lucas Downey may not seem like a good worker, but working with him for an afternoon really impressed me at how quick he caught onto things. Showing him around, and teaching the young buck the ways of the drive-thru he did very well helping cars by himself. What really impressed me was how agile he was on his feet when someone wanted cigs or dip. I’ve been there for two years and it took me a while to get used to it and know all the brands, but it’s like he already knew them before he started working somehow. Weird.

From my personal view, working with Quinn even though he is from St.X honestly isn’t all that bad. I try to ignore he comes from such a place but it’s hard when he pulls the typical tool move and pulls his out the state title ring. Nobody cares about that because it all comes down to the games of HORSE in our free time. I lost the first game but it doesn’t matter. Elder always bounces back, and when I was down 18-5, of course I won with a score of 23-21. 

In the Maka-Mia-Pizza, we have plenty of dough-tossing talent in there, mainly consisting of Nino Salamone and Connor Sullivan. I asked a similar question to Connor as I did to bra, and that was how is working with other GCL schools? He simply and respectfully said, “All of us working together is just another opportunity to prove all of Cincinnati that Elder is better than every other school in every way.” Many can attest and I think Steve obviously favors the Elder kids since he is an alum.

I expect nothing but great things to come out of our jobs, and everyone to do the best to their ability. Altiora.