August 20th, 2008
I just wanted to fill up the car with gas and get it washed. There was a gas station with a drive thru car wash attached to the side across the intersection. “Score,” I said to myself. The dummy light was blinking at me from the dash console behind the steering wheel as if to say “Hey moron! All it’s gonna take is one bomb or another big storm to dry up the pumps again. Then whatcha gonna do?”
“Fuck you”, I said out loud to the light. I wasn’t going to take this kind of shit from a blinking LED. Anyway the traffic light had turned green allowing me to have the last word in this insane argument with the instrument panel of my car. Or was it really with myself? “One tank of gas in a crisis is about as good as a glass of milk to a lactose intolerant man dying of thirst.” I thought to myself. It didn’t matter, the traffic light had turned green and I was already pulling into the station.
When I stopped my car at the gas pump, I noticed their were little paper sacks covering most of the nozzles. The kind you use for a can of beer if you want to drink and drive. It looks like if you wanted mid grade or premieum you were shit out of luck. I, on the other hand, am a cheap ass and it looked like they had plenty of the low grade bullshit that keeps a four cylinder compact rice burner humming like a song.
I popped the lever to release the fuel door and got out of my car. When I did so, I noticed the pump had no place to insert a debit card. I started to realize why I was the only dumb ass at this gas station. I decided to proceed with my purchace so I went ahead and removed the gas cap from my car and inserted the nozzle. No dice. Just to make sure that I was not stupid, I scanned the face of the gas pump. There were no special instructions on how to operate this arcaic device differently than any other one. I also looked for a sign asking me to pay first. Nothing.
There was a large window to look inside the convience store that went along with this gas station. I turned around to look in the window. It had been tented, but I could still see inside enough to know there was a jack off behind the counter just sitting there doing nothing. “He must’ve seen me,” I thought. Just in case I decided to walk inside and ask him to turn on the pump.
I covered the distance from my car, to the door in about six or seven steps. When I opened the door and looked at the thin rail of a man he was sitting on a barstool behind a cash register writing something on a scrap of paper. “Excuse me, can you please start the pump?” I asked. He looked up at me like I had snakes coming out of my forehead and said “I just work here!” He said it in a louder voice that most people. I don’t think he was yelling at me but I couldn’t be certain. I paused for a very brief moment to survey the store to see if anyone else was inside. Nope. This was the douche bag I was stuck talking to.
“I know you work here,” I said, “that’s why I’m asking you to turn on the pump.” Again he said “I just work here!” This time followed by, “you must pay before it is turned on and I will give you your change!” “I’m paying with a card.” I told him. “Then you must leave your card with me and I will turn it on!”
For a moment I felt sorry for the poor bastard. It was clear he was not from around here. He had come from India or someplace in that part of the world, and from the way he spoke you could tell he hadn’t been here very long at all. I’d read about the ruthless class structure he most certainly had caught the short end of for most of his life so I decided to take it easy on him. He’s just some poor schmoe trying to better his life.
“I’ll just go somewhere else,” I told him and abruptly walked out of the store. “To come all that fuckin’ way just to sit in a goddamn stop n rob for minimum wage,” I thought. I don’t know, maybe his life was better this way. God bless America.
In the six or seven steps it took to get from the store to my car, I got mad. It was a richous anger on so many different levels. First, I was pissed because the blinking light on my dashboard had won. Now I’m going to get back in the car and it will mock me twice as much as it did before. Second, I was angered that the person minding the till was such a dumb ass. He had been programed to never think and to only follow instructions. Which is exactly what he did, and he did it well. He was more of an obideant dog than a human.
What made me most angry though was the person that did this to the poor asshole. Here you have this man, malnourished at best, sitting on a hard wooden stool watching the money for somebody else who is making a small fourtine off this little shit hole store. Now I believe that each man makes his own destiny so I can only put half the blame on the owner. The other half is squarely on the thin little shoulders of my friend inside.
Just ride a bike.