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How Not To: Get Gas
Last night, my mom (Hi, Mom!) pulled into the Forest Avenue Mobil to fill up her ginormous SUV tank. (She’d rather pay $60/fill and drive a big car, because she’s tiny, and “need[s] to be high up”.)
Anyway, as we all do sometimes, she pulled in on the wrong side. And then when she tried to fix it, oops, she did it again. This is a woman who still resents having to fill up the tank herself, so she was blind with rage at this point. “I have to fill up the tank myself AND be on the right side?”
But I’ve given her tons of lessons at the pump. So she cooled off and said fine, I may have to do this, but I don’t have to read those goddamn directions.
And so she proceeded, frustrated and directing herself by memory.
Insert credit card, select gas quality, pick up the…
Wait, insert credit card. What’s wrong, here?
INSERT CREDIT CARD, damnit.
She couldn’t get her card into the slot for some reason. It just wasn’t working for her. But she wasn’t about to accept defeat after all the trouble getting to this point, so she shoved it in as hard as she could. And you know what? She got that credit card in.
Into the receipt slot. Behind which it disappeared.
The manager who came out to assist her worked silently with a screwdriver to remove the interface panel, and as he handed her the retrieved credit card, said “Don’t worry about it, Ma’m. Another woman just did the same thing twenty minutes ago.”
Scary fact or kind man?