Saturday, August 13, 2011

Take on the single aisle gas station




I love driving on the Merritt on a nice summer afternoon when the road is clear and the sky above is that perfect color blue. Nothing on a day like that matters as you drive past all those rich uppity white towns with guest houses bigger than your own.
The only thing that can go wrong is having to stop for gas and I'm not even talking about the $4.15 sticker shock. The worst traffic on the Merritt isn't on the two lanes of highway but are caused by these these completely annoying single lane gas pump islands. I try to avoid them because if you get stuck behind a dude filling up his F250 you can e there for hours because you can't get around him. But sometimes you have to and yesterday was one of those lucky days. I drive in, I pull up right behind some old lady getting out of her 1990 Buick Century and I really should have known better. Anybody who is still driving the same car for 20 years will have serious technical difficulties and today was no different. Where I jump out of my car, pop my credit card in, flip over the lever and start dropping 87 octane into my car like I used to put down bottled beers against the hand of justice, she stood staring at the pump for a solid 4 minutes. Then she walked inside presumably to prepay, waddled back outside, stared some more and then went to stick the gas pump into her gas tank when she realized she had forgotten to pull the lever to pop the gas latch. She puts the pump back onto the holster, gets into her car and closes the door. 30 seconds later the little door opens and she gets out and starts the process again including staring at the pump. She finally gets the pump into the gas tank and stands there. I'm about to pull my hair out at this point as it is obvious no gas is flowing into the gas tank. The problem is that the way those gas stations are set up, you can't get past the car because there is only one lane and what seems like 10 minutes ago, a line started forming which completely blocked me in.
Finally she figures out that there is no gas pumping in and somebody yells to her saying she has to pull the trigger on the handle. She finally gets it and the gas meter starts ticking up..... to $10 which in this day and age doesn't even get you two and half gallons ensuring she'll put somebody else trough the misery of pulling up behind her in about about 50 miles

I hate old people

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