My Gas Story

The gauge on my Volvo S80 was brushing the red at the bottom eighth, so I pulled into the station on the way to the office this morning. Despite the pain of the high gas price, I was still encouraged by the fact that the posted price this morning was lower than I've paid all summer.

I followed the usual procedure and began pumping the mid-grade fuel into my nearly empty tank. Things went along normally until I glanced at the pump. The dollars and cents were rolling along very slowly, which initially made me think the pump must be extremely slow. I had a mildly irritated thought that I'd have to wait a long time for my tank to fill.

But then I looked a bit closer, and noticed that the gallon counter was moving pretty fast. I quickly discovered that instead of $3.87.9, the gas was actually pumping at $0.387. When the tank was filled, I saw that instead of costing more than $60, the tank only cost a bit more than $6.

It didn't require much thought for me to conclude that the right thing was to inform someone at the station about what was obviously a mistake. So I walked into the convenience store and handed my receipt to the clerk, saying, "Either I just won some sort of contest, or the pump price isn't set right."

The clerk's eyes opened wide, and she said, "I can't deal with this." She immediately handed the receipt to someone else behind the counter, who must have been a supervisor.

The supervisor looked at the receipt with a sigh, apparently thinking she was about to have to handle some sort of customer complaint. She asked without looking at me, "What am I looking at?"

"The price."

Suddenly her expression changed, I heard "What!?", and she quick-marched over to the machine that I presume manages the gas pumps at the other end of the counter.

While the supervisor was busy punching buttons on the machine, I stood at the other end of the counter, unsure whether I should wait for her to return. After about a minute, I picked up my receipt, which she had put down on the counter in front of me, and walked to where she was continuing to work on the machine.

I asked her, "Do you need anything else from me?".

Again without looking up, she said, "Nope. Ain't nothin I can do with yours anyhow."

I thanked her and left, wondering a bit at the bizarre experience but thankful for the 1960's gas price.