So I just stopped at the gas station to fill up the car. I swiped my debit card, punched in my zip code, told the pump I wanted a receipt and started pumping. Two things happened that irked me. First of all, I had to hold the handle because New York State (at least this part) doesn’t allow you to use the little latch that holds the pump in an on position. They want you to stand right there and hold that handle yourself, regardless of the weather (and it gets mighty cold in these parts). This is undoubtedly because someone downstate (I’m projecting here) probably screwed up and doused themselves with gas and then lit themselves on fire and it was deemed dangerous to let the pump do it’s thing itself; they’d rather you stayed right there and sucked in as many gas fumes as possible. I project this onto downstate because they’re next to New Jersey where you’re not even allowed to touch the gas pump, you have to have the well paid Fuel Attendant do it while he’s enjoying a smoke.
Secondly, the pump stopped pumping at $0.04 and promptly spit out a receipt. So not only did I get no more than three drops of gas into the car before cashing out, I had to hold the handle for every drop of that four cents worth of gas.
I swiped my card again and went through the whole rigmarole where the pump claimed I had a full tank at 10 gallons but I knew better and was able to squeeze another 1.5 gallons into the tank. I figured if I had to hold the handle the entire time I was going to get every last drop into that tank that I could. It’s kind of like shaking it in the bathroom.
Because the OCD in me can’t stand to pump gas to an uneven amount (I either go to the nearest dollar or nickel, or something cute like $34.56), I had to go to a weird amount that was off by $.04 so I could compensate for the other receipt I had.
I’ll let Earl figure out the bookkeeping.
