Why can’t they get this right? Every propane exchange is some shady deal set up in a steel cage outside some legitimate place of business, but you have to go inside to set up the deal.
What’s the proper etiquette? Do you carry your cylinder inside? Leave it in the car? Leave it by the cage and then go inside? There’s problems with all of these.
You carry it inside, you have this nasty dirty thing that ways twenty pounds dragging against your leg and then you have to hold it while you stand in line.
If you leave it outside by the cage what if somebody steals it? They’re not cheap. How do you prove it’s yours? Don’t they tell you never to leave packages unattended?
“Has this propane cylinder been in your posession the whole time, or did you leave it by the curb?” It could get turned in to a terrorist bomb or something.
If you leave it in the car, than the schmuck has to wait for you while you go out to your car and get it. How does he know it’s you? It’s never the same guy as was at checkout. You could be walking back to your car to get your cylinder and somebody else could exchange their cylinder on your dime. The guy could go back inside thinking his mission’s accomplished.
Then you’re screwed.
You go back inside and say that nobody exchanged your cylinder and then their going to ask the clerk and he will say that he did. You’ll just have to pay again.
I bet there’s people that just wait for the cylinder guy to walk outside while you go back to your car so they can get free propane. Leave it by the curb and they’ll steal that. I’ll bet a lot of you people that post here and hate Bush and stuff would do that to me if you got the chance.
“Ha ha! Scooter’s in jail and I just stole Scylla’s propane cylinder! Fuck the Conservatives!”
Then there’s the cylinder inspection. They’re always checking out you cylinder to see if you molested it or let your dog hump it or something. Usually mine is covered with old grease drippings and what have you, and the way the guy holds it he thinks it’s love juice. The chart’s right there for the inspection. “Rusty? Any visible holes? Bent valves? Covered in cum?”
All these things will get your cylinder rejected. It’s not even really my cylinder. I got it from here a month ago. All you did was take some rusty old crappy cylinder, spray paint it white and put a Blue Rhino sticker on it. It was a shitty cylinder when I got it.
They get pissy when you try to pick the cylinder out yourself. “I want that one,” you say as the guy reaches for the oldest crummiest cylinder they have in stock.
They never buy cylinders, you know? Some guy get’s a Weber grill and a brand new cylinder, the first thing he does is exchange it for some crappy old cylinder full of propane but with a fresh coat of paint on it. He takes it home, it rusts and falls apart and then they refuse to exchange it. That’s how they get their new cylinders. It’s a game of hot potato and the pimply faced kid gets mad at you when you don’t want to take the cylinder on it’s last legs.
Where do you put it once you got it? It’ll roll around in the trunk and if you seatbelt it into the backseat, it’s like your breathing propane from a crappy old leaky cylinder.
Set it next to you kid, like a bomb? Drive real slow with the windows down?
When you’re in line in some crowded gas station “Hi, I’d like to exchange a propane cylinder,” and the clerk sighs and everybody in line shuffles their feet and growns as if you are some 85 year old lady who wants to buy 20 powerballs each with the birthday of a nephew as the number.
Now you’re an outcast, slime, pariah, for nothing more than trying to buy some propane.
It’s not fair because you’ll show up and eat a hot dog when I grill, won’t you?
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