Extend the Oregon “Gas Attendent Required Law” to all of the United States.
What could possibly go wrong?
people would consider it ‘beneath them’ and refuse to work the jobs… you know how many job signs I have seen in McDonalds and convenience stores lately?
Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of gas station/convenience stores, already operating on razor thin margins, go out of business because they can’t support the additional overhead that comes with more employees.
Think of the tipping threads, man. It would be awful.
Ever you ever been to southeast Oregon? Ever have to buy gas somewhere in southeastern Oregon after 7pm? Nope, you can’t because rural gas stations can’t afford to be full-service 24 hours a day. No doubt some of them can’t even afford to be full-service 12 hours a day.
A lot of the middle of the country resembles southeastern Oregon. What’re you going to do when the only gas station in 50 miles doesn’t do enough volume to pay for an attendant?
Gas prices would go up.
If a million people get jobs pumping gas, that money doesn’t come from nowhere, does it? If gas stations are forced to pay somebody to stand there and pump gas, they have to raise prices on gas.
And so everyone in the country will have to pay higher prices for gas to create a bunch of dead-end useless jobs.
Why not just increase the tax on gasoline and hand the money over to unemployed people? Then the unemployed would get the money, they wouldn’t be stuck doing a job that isn’t worth doing, they’d be free to search for a better job that actually creates value, and while the rest of us would have to pay higher prices for gas, at least we’d be able to pump our own gas instead of wasting time waiting for someone else to do it.
This is the classic “broken window” fallacy. The economy is slow? Pay a kid to throw rocks through windows around town. The businessmen and homeowners pay the window manufacturer, the window manufacturer hires more workers, the workers have money and so buy more from the other businesses, and yay, everyone benefits! Except it doesn’t actually work this way.
“The cost of gas will go up” <— when does it not go up?
“dead-end useless jobs” <— clerk’s and baggers are now dead-end useless jobs with self-checkout… we still keep them around.
“Increase tax on gas and hand the money over to unemployed people” <— Unemployment benefits run out. The jobs would be around as long as cars needed fuel.
As my governor once put it in a debate, “What we have is not a lack of jobs. Why, I know a single mother who has three jobs! What we have is a lack of good jobs.”
There are always minimum wage jobs available to those who want them. The problem is that a minimum wage job is fine for a high-schooler or retiree who’s looking for a few extra bucks on the side, but it’s not something to raise a family on.
Not useless - we are still going through an acceptance phase on self-checkout. Many customers don’t like it, and if you went entirely to self-checkout, they might take their business elsewhere. I notice this in Home Depot - a fair number of people will preferentially line up in the manned checkout aisles with no lines waiting at the self checkout.
We’ve gotten most people to accept pumping their own gas. THAT took a while, also, and happened largely because they made self-service cheaper, and eventually nobody pulled up to the full service pumps anymore.
New Jersey also has a “no self-serve” law for gas stations, and yet it has the lowest prices for gas in the NYC tri-state area.
I still hate it, though, because of the wait time it introduces at those Turnpike rest stops, which is my usual New Jersey gas-up experience. There are typically three islands with two pumps each, so you could have up to 12 cars fueling at the same time, yet often they have spots coned off for no obvious reason other than that the 2-3 guys they have employed can only keep up with running around to 8 or 9 locations. Then there’s the waiting for the guy to come to your car after you pull up at an open pump, and then again to wait for him to come finalize the transaction after the fueling is finished, to give you back your credit card, screw the gas cap back on and close the fuel door.
It’s even sillier when I gas up my motorcycle. They never pump the gas, just hand me the pump, yet I still have to wait for one of them to come by.
It seems it’d be so much faster if one could just pull up, swipe a credit card, choose the right octane level, pump and go.
When it goes down. Do you remember $4.00 gas fondly? This is essentially a tax on gas, with the proceeds going to the poor. While that’s not an indefensible idea, there are simpler ways to do so without the unattended consequences.
Which rest stops are you talking about, so I can avoid them next time I drive through Jersey? The couple I’ve been to in the past couple years in NJ did not have full service only.
And even if someone who isn’t a kid, retiree, or uneducated, they still won’t end up working at a gas station or the like, because they won’t get hired - see this IMHO thread on the subject.
People who are overqualified for minimum-wage jobs won’t get them, because employers don’t want someone who will leave the second they get a job in their actual field. There are plenty of retail chain stores and fast food restaurants that are hiring - and they want to hire people who will hang around for awhile.
Based on robardin’s experiences, I think I prefer the unattended consequences.
Are you sure? I was under the impression that all of New Jersey is full-service by law.
One reason for New Jersey’s lower gas prices is the tolls on the Turnpike and the Garden State, which in theory are used to pay for road maintenance. A cost covered with gas tax in other states.
Well, there’s a thriving security industry, along with ancillary businesses like boarding up broken windows on very short notice or even cleaning up apartments and houses after dead bodies have been removed.
Just saying. All those thrown rocks do seem to produce enough business to keep an entire industry going.
I have driven from and to airports on five continents and Portland, OR is, hands down, the most difficult one at which to find fuel for the rental car. It is the only car rental agency that I took the option to pay Hertz to fill the tank, because I’d have missed my plane trying to find a gas station.
Yeah and the last convenience store I applied at offered me 16 hours a week then sent me home early most of the time I worked less than 8 hours a week.
So much for that well known fact “McDonalds and 7-11” are always hiring. True they are if you can live on minimum wage and 8 hours A WEEK and constantly being sent home early etc.