Travis, FromOR, here’s the other thing: it’s not a piss-poor design. You are correct.
The comment I made was playing on the fact that the comment being replied to sounded just ambiguous enough that it left the door open for a smart-ass remark.
I will have to give you credit, when people get annoyed with my posts, they usually call me “Rafter” or something like that, but “DaftPeople” made me laugh.
Well played sir.
I think I owe everyone an apology.
To everyone in this thread with an emotional investment in gas pump hose design, I sincerely apologize if anything I have posted offended you in any way.
It is my firm belief that we have the right to “root” for whatever gas pump hose design we each find most pleasing, and we should not feel undue pressure to switch allegiance to some alternate design.
It was never my intention to discredit the amazing accomplishments of the current standard gas pump hose design currently in place.
I may be too lazy to switch some dumbass’s gas to the other pump, but by god, I can come up with a mocking name.
Joe
How would you have it designed? Elastic, so that each and every hose can stretch from here to Hong Kong? Nobody could ever fuck up! Parked out on the sidewalk? No problem! There’s 417 feet of hose in there!
Joe
I totally missed that it was supposed to be smart-ass. Sorry.
:smack:
My design would employ elements of efficiency, flexibility, durability, robustness, humor, sarcasm, pain, joy, invisibility and all of the “Key 13” tenets of good engineering.
Your second suggestion would be a helluva lot easier than the first. Why the hell don’t they just make all the hoses long enough to go around MOST cars???
Now that’s a rotten thing to say to the poor confused customer. 
Yes. They should put a sticker on the dash pointing to the indicator on the instrument panel. Brilliant! :smack:
As luck would have it, it was Hitler.
HA!
Perfect.
Better yet, have one on each side of the car. Problem solved forever, no matter if someone is dyslexic, driving a rental, blind, hungover, a Pommeranian or whatever.
Ummm…a friend from college did this once. She’d never put gas in a car before. A nice guy at the next pump over was trying to help her by explaining the concept of coming in again this time with things lining up correctly, but she was so embarrassed that she drove away in shame to try at another gas station.
Or so I heard.
From my…friend.
What if it was one of those popular gas stations, at noon, with cars lined up waiting at all pumps? And you go in to pay and wait in a line of working men buying sub sandwiches, for 10 minutes, and when you go outside and see you’re parked on the wrong side, and you have to go back in and the driver of the car waiting for your pump is giving you the stink eye…oh, it’s a nightmare just to think about!
I too once drove away in shame from a gas station. But it was because I’d asked for $20 on a pump, and could only put in $18 and my tank was full. I was too embarrassed to go back in and get my change. (I have no idea what bothered me about it, it just did at the time)
I did have a friend who didn’t realize that the indicator in the car that said “Fuel Door >” was actually showing her where the gas cap was. She didn’t make the connection. I think “Fuel Door” sound kinds cooler…
Only because you’ve never driven a car with an “Energon Interface Port”.
At least I think it was a car…
[Friend]
It’s greater than what?
[/Friend]
Absent a time machine, you could make your displeasure known on a more limited scale by stealing the towels from a Ritz-Carlton hotel; the phrase was essentially coined by César Ritz, who said “le client n’a jamais tort” (the customer is never wrong).
It’s okay, DaftPunkle - your post made me laugh out loud. SOME of us got it. 
When I noticed that my 2005 Corolla had the indicator arrow to show me where the gas tank was, I thought that was friggin’ brilliant.
And, in closing, I had to teach a young-ish woman how to pump gas last summer - she was just plain stuck. It’s not rocket surgery, but I can see it being fairly intimidating if you’ve never done it before.