Dog Works at Florida Grocery Store

If you go to the BP gas station/convenience store on Nursery Road in Tampa Bay, Fla. you're greeted not by a store clerk, but by a chocolate Labrador retriever named Cody ready to take your order.

"He hears the bell and goes running. When he pops up, that sets it off," Karim Mansour, the store's and dog's owner told the St. Petersburg Times. "Uncontrollable giggling."

It all started one day five months ago when Karim decided to bring his dog to work. He didn't think much of it at the time — he just wanted to have his best friend with him while he worked the sometimes slow, and occasionally, dangerous, early morning shift. The dog was given free rein of the store, and as a joke, Mansour put a shirt with a BP logo on the dog, and gave him a name tag.

"While he's here, he's an employee. My rule is, 'all employees need to wear the shirt,'" he said.

Cody has quickly become a fixture around the store and a celebrity in his own right. everyone wants to take his picture and, for Karim, Cody is keeping his business afloat.

"That Hess down the street is a superstore. It wipes me down. But people might come the extra half mile or so to get the more personal service — or just to see the dog. In a dog-eat-dog world, when our economy sucks and business is hard, you've got to find a way to stand out," he says.


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