Sorry, I actually keep track of my account whether I use a check or a debit card, and I allot the amount of money that I need for gas and food, it is called budgeting.
On the restroom key - from experience it sucks when you have a four year old who has to pee, stand in line for the restroom key - because there is a line - and have someone line cut for the restroom key.
Stand in the line for the goddamn restroom key, too. Someone else may be waiting for the key.
And we are back to Northern Pipers “We ALL just have a few questions.”
Makes me glad I live in a state that has people who will pump your gas for you, complete your transaction at the pump, and charge you less per gallon to do it.
cue phony Spitzer ‘Gah gah gah gah!’ laugh for the Hacks at SNL
There are many gas stations that will allow you to pump gas & turn the pump off at the appropriate dollar amount. They used to be more common, but there are still stations that aren’t as concerned about drive-offs.
Please point out where the OP said this has been explained to the line-jumper on several occasions. Not “you need to go to the back of the line,” which can look like the cashier just being a jerk if the customer believes this is a two-second thing he’s asking, but “this is a transaction, and so you have to go to the back of the line.”
I might be, but by the same token so might the customer be. You’re kind of making my point, which is if no one explains to the customer why his request is not reasonable, from his POV it’s not going to be at all clear that the asshole in the scene is him and not the cashier. Again, what he was attempting to do is not (or at least was not) uncommon – I’ve seen it done dozens of times myself. And I doubt that in every case what I was seeing was a complete transaction, rung up on the register. To the contrary, what I have seen is the money set aside and the pump turned on, and the transaction rung up (money in the register, change back out) when the customer comes back in and stands in line for his change.
So thanks, wheelz and others, for explaining that buying gas is a business transaction, but you’re not really addressing the pointthat some of us – including, apparently, this guy – have had the experience where you go in and put your money down and the pump is turned on, and only after you’ve shut the pump back off is the transaction rung up and the money put away.
So the question isn’t really “why the fuck this guy should get to conduct his transaction before everyone else” but whether it isn’t at least possible that the guy did not realize that was in fact what he was asking to do. The second question, of course is whether explaining that (“Sorry, I have to ring your gas up before I can turn the pump on, and I have to ring people up in the order they wait in line”) might not have saved both cashier and customer a little heartburn.
Maybe the answer is just “customers are assholes and trying to reason with them is futile,” but I don’t see why we have to start with that assumption.
In northern Ontairo, the norm is for the station attendant to flip the on switch, then you fill, then you go in and pay. There are a few places where they pump the gas for you. There are only a very few places where you have to pay first – the first time I encountered one of these, I simply put the nozzle back in the holster and drove down the road to a place where I would not have to make two trips to the attendant (fiddling through my wallet at -40 is not my idea of a good time, so I prefer to pay inside in the winter). I gues it comes down to a station owner finding the tipping point between losing sales to people such as myself, or losing gas to people who fill up and take off without paying.
Unfortunately in the US, they’re almost all pay-before-pump.
WHoa! This amazes me. IN Britain (and the IOM) the pumps just pump.
You drive up. Pump in the petrol. Go inside. Queue. Pay.
Come to think of it, the last time I visited a full service gas station was about a month ago. I went inside while the attendant filled my vehicle’s tank. While inside, I tried to sell a little girl to the station owner, but he wouldn’t bite. Fortunately an old couple who were also getting their tank filled made an acceptable offer for the kid. The girl’s dad was outside in his vehicle, which was also being filled by the attendant, but he took the news well. Sometimes there are advantages to going inside the station rather than making the transaction at the pump.
:dubious:
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Right now I have a VISA debit card tied to my checking account. It costs me nothing to deposit money and the bank charges no interest. If I want a secured credit card, I have to pay a deposit equvalent to the amount of credit I want and pay fees and interest to do essentially the same thing as my debit card allows me to do. Fuck that with a rusty screwdriver.
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I don’t get $20 worth of gas if I only have that much. I do have common sense.
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I am careful with my checking account. I haven’t had an overdraft in a fair number of years.
Either Americans are less honest or more forgetful. People drive off without paying. So now, in most places, you either pay at the pump with a credit card (and insert your credit card before paying), or you pay before pumping and they set the pump to stop at the amount you paid (if you stop earlier, you can go get change).
Not always, though. I still know plenty of pumps here in the Minnesota that are “pay inside” after the transaction is over.
And they are even configurable. One gas station I use only makes you prepay when its dark - if you are there during the day, you can pump then pay.
So how much did you get for the kid?
He totally had me fooled, but thanks to your dubious smiley, I wised up. Thanks.
I knew he was being funny. I just, you know, had to raise an eyebrow.
Our pumps do not work that way. We control them through the POS display; we cannot turn a pump on without entering a dollar amount and ringing the sale through. Now there is a switch inside the locked panel at the gas pump that when flipped allows gas to be pumped without prepayment, but that option has been disabled for about a year under orders from coporate. The only time it is enabled is when Maintance (or Weights & Measures) comes out to test the pumps. We don’t even have keys to the panel anymore.
All the cashier should need to do is point to the line. Once the customer has been told that no, they are in fact not a special, beautiful, unique snowflake, and they need to wait in line like everyone else, the customer needs to move their self-centered ass to the end of the queue. It is not up for discussion, unless you want to piss off every other customer. The cashier should not be required to tell a customer who wishes to exchange money for goods and services that, like every other customer who wishes to exchange money for goods and services, they will be served on a FIFO basis. That way lies madness.
Well, you’re the one who can’t manage simple math. (And I say this as someone who has, myself, made the same kind of fuck-up.) I simply suggested a way to give yourself more of a buffer. That’s actually how I work it–I have a credit card that I charge almost everything to, which I pay off usually no less than once a week. That way, I always know exactly how much money is in my checking account, because I’m not waiting for purchases made with my check card to post.
Shot From Guns is not always the most tactful of Dopers, but in this case I don’t think a personal slight was intended: even if you individually are not at any fault, don’t forget that this thread is read by dozens or hundreds of people, some of whom may want that information owing to their own circumstances. It’s quite possible for something apparently directed at oneself to be general-information couched in a response to you.
I’m pretty sure that puts you up as a contender for some kind of SDMB Understatement of the Year award. I am currently desperately hoping that none of my coworkers walks by before I can stop laughing and wipe the tears out of the corners of my eyes.
Or a third option. Oil companies are less trusting in the US.
In Britain people will still drive off without paying (usually they do it delibararely - stealing petrol)
Some have even been known to drive off with the fuel pump still in the car.
I was just expressing my surprise. Queueing twice does indeed seem ridiculous.
(But not as ridiculous as queue-jumping is obnoxious. It’s one of the few things I’ll actually consider worth confronting another human-being about)