In many states, you leave the station without paying for your gas, you get your driver’s license taken away. Not sure I would risk how they interpret that for a $15 tank of gas.
Well, there is a difference between “left out for you” and just “left out.”
For example, I’ve several times sat at a table or bar, or walked up to a retail counter, with no waitress/bartender/cashier nor other customers in the vicinity, and found cash there. I never acted as if it was intended, by a prior customer or the cosmos, to pay for my purchase.
I had no intention of committing any crime. As I said in the OP, I assumed that it was some random act of kindness (I had not heard of Pay It Forward Day before now but have now learned that not only do they have a website, but they claim the Day is - if not observed widely - at least not-unheard-of in 28 countries) as I know people do these sorts of things. Forgive my lack of utter cynicism in humanity - don’t worry, I’m getting there.
Setting aside the specifics of my particular case and speaking in generalities for a moment: doesn’t the legal definition of theft include intent? In other words, if Person X takes some object from Person Y but can prove that it was not deliberate - the result of some misunderstanding or oversight or miscommunication - is X still legally liable to prosecution by Y for theft?
I had every intention of paying. I bellied up to the pump with my card already in my outstretched hand, and if there’s video of the whole incident, there’s a visual record of me swiping (with utter futility) my credit card through the reader. I tried to pay. I wanted to pay - otherwise I wouldn’t have swiped my own card!
(Oh, whoever said I looked shifty or something - that comment made me :dubious: until I looked over my OP again. I can see how you’d read it that way! 
All I meant was, I was actually paying some attention to the people around me, instead of staring off into space or squeejeeing my windshield. I can say for sure I wasn’t looking all suspicious-like.)
- Yes she did.
- The gas was paid for.
Unless you know who paid and why that amount was on the pump, then you’re assuming much here. Show me intent to defraud.
I’ve put 20 bucks on a pump before and not bothered to go back in to the store to get the $1.35 I didn’t use. Does that mean the guy who got it stole it? I think not.
How much additional effort would it have been to walk into the office and ask? Machine screw up from time to time, it’s not unreasonable to expect you to take a little effort to ensure that you’re not taking advantage of an error.
You admit that you didn’t know about “Pay it Forward” day until after the fact. Even though you tried to pay, what was your intent in driving away knowing that you hadn’t paid?
Just because I hadn’t heard about some Facebook campaign to publicize some new made-up “holiday” doesn’t mean I’m not aware that people occasionally perform random acts of kindness for others. Cite #1: scroll up to pullin’s post. Cite #2: I’ve done it myself plenty of times
Erm, I wanted to go home?
Are there states, besides my home state of N.D., that actually let’s you pump without pre-paying for the gas?
I’ve made the mistake of putting cash on the wrong pump before too, but after I walk out and check the pump number, I go fix that error pretty quick.
I vote Pay It Forward Day actually. My wife paid for 10 bucks worth of stuff on the 1st too, for someone behind her at Target. It’s not that far outside the realm of possibility.
Wow, some of you are really good people. Perfect people.
You never speed. You obey every traffic law.
If you find a fiver on the street you take it to the closest police station.
You won’t bet in office pools because they’re not lawful.
Heck, you won’t bet on the Superbowl.
For the rest of us, I believe that there are good people out there and I think it was someone paying it forward.
You can always call the filling station and ask so that you feel better.
I have no problem believing that as well. I also have no problem with taking the extra 2 minutes to check with the clerk before driving off. It’s not really a big deal to do so; why not make sure?
A friend of mine works at a convenience store and said a Russian guy came in wanting to prepay for gas. He was miffed because the pump doesn’t take credit cards, and he told her to just give him 5 gallons of gas. She was taken aback, she said she could only program dollars not gallons. That didn’t make him happy either.
Here’s the scenario I’m imagining:
Busy gas station and some guy comes in and says “here’s my card, put $15 on pump #7.” Clerk errs and puts $15 on pump #9. Guy goes back outside to pump. Pump won’t turn on. Guy goes back in. “Hey, I wanted you to put $15 on pump #7.” Clerk looks and see there is no $15 on pump #7. “Oh, it must not have worked, let me slide your card again.” Clerk zips card and puts $15 on pump #7. Guy goes out to pump, sees $15 on pump #7, fills up, and goes on his merry way.
Pump #9 still has $15 credit on it. OP pulls up and fills it up.
So I’m thinking the clerk screwed up and if this guy doesn’t monitor his credit card statement he’s out $15 and won’t even know it.
If he does catch it he’ll call the credit card company or the station and have them reverse it. Gas station will eat the $15 for it’s mistake. The end.
In my state, not only is driving off without gas not a crime, but the police won’t even come to the scene. If you do catch someone at it, you have to sue them civilly. If that makes you feel better, OP. I think it’s the Pay It Forward day thing- that’s a little too coincidental. I wouldn’t worry about it.
What made you change your mind about talking to the clerk?
Why didn’t you return and correct the situation then?
Something tells me that cosmos is going to sneak up behind you and bite you on the ass one day.
I know you don’t want to hear this, but you stole the gas. I’m not claiming that is an uncommon response to that situation. I’m not even claiming that I would have acted differently. But don’t kid yourself.
You stole the gas.
mmm
GQ side question, since I’ve never worked at a gas station: is this how it works? There’s often more than one clerk, overlapping shifts, etc. so I’m not seeing how the gas station would be able to keep track. Are these pump meters of which you speak checked at the end of each worker’s shift?
No. In my state no gas passes to the pumps unless it’s already paid for. There was no magic, someone paid for it and obviously left it behind for whatever reason. Whether they intended to or not, is another question.
Man you people are sanctimonious today. It’s not like she ran over babies and kittens while she set the pumps on fire from her peelout sparks, cackling into the sunset the entire time. One time I admit I forgot to mention the kitty litter and cat food on the bottom of my cart, and didn’t realize it until I got to the car. I drove away! HAHAHAHA and I admited it on a public forum and everything, where no one knows my name, address or any other real life details about me! Look people admit to crimes all the time on the internet, and what happens to them? Two things. Jack, and shit.
Pump transactions are tracked just like grocery store transactions. The pumps are marked as items in the register and rung up essentially as such. Prepays and pay-at-pumps aren’t technically paid for yet since they have a deposit on goods to be purchased. Think of it like going into a grocery store and saying to the cashier “I think I’m going to spend $500 in the store today, hold onto this money for me” then go hog wild shopping. Then the cashier would give back the appropriate amount of change. At fuel stations, when the cashiers do a drawer change or shift swap they sign out and their transactions are logged in the controller in the store. So yes, they’d be able to go through the transaction logs to see where the $15 went, if it indeed went anywhere. If another customer accidentally paid for it, it wouldn’t show up as a loss since technically it was paid for.
With the prepay and pay-at-pump only stations, you can’t really drive away with unpaid gas since you’ve put money up front then pumped. In gas stations with pay-inside, people can just drive away after they’ve pumped gas. Most stations are moving to prepay and pay-at-pump due to theft and the razor thin margins on fuel sales.
**Hampshire **described the most likely scenario. No one will call the Gasoline Police to clap **purplehorseshoe **in irons. It was just a mistake somewhere and either the customer will fight with his credit card about it, or the gas station will eat it.
No one has claimed she did.
What some of us have claimed is that she took gas without paying for it.
mmm
Way back when pump jockeys pumped gas for the customers, a favorite trick of cheapskates was to say “Gimme five.” If you pumped $5.00 dollars into the car, they would claim they meant five gallons. Since gas was around $0.35 per gallon at the time, that was a significant difference. It took me only one such experience to learn to ask if they meant five bucks or five gallons. The ability to program only money might stem from this sort of thing. There are a lot of cheats out there, believe it or not.
There are gas stations around here that don’t demand pre-payment. Not many, and the one in question is not one of them. (Or wasn’t, last time I was there–maybe a year ago or so.)
Well, obviously she did–that’s a clear and simple fact. The question is whether she did so illicitly, which is not at all clear to me. Someone prepaid $15 on the pump before she got there; given the described circumstances, I find it difficult to imagine that an error wouldn’t have been corrected before she drove off. I vote ‘Merry Christmas’.