Twentysomething…

Blue Jeans And Gas

By David Lion Rattiner

I’m pretty angry at gas stations right now and I’m really frustrated with washing machines. Let me tell you why.

Yesterday was a gas day and I had just finished up my laundry day. My blue jeans were in desperate need of some washing. If you are like me, you wait a long time to wash your jeans for two reasons. The first is the fact that you only have one pair of them that you actually like and you wear those every day. So if you spend a day washing them, you’ll have nothing to wear. The second reason is that the one pair that you like is seven years old and you bought them for a ridiculous amount of money that you didn’t have at the time and simply refuse to give them up. There are patches all over them, and if you wash them a lot, they’ll fall apart.

It’s a Catch-22 situation because if you wash them, yes they will be cleaner, but you are risking more damage to them. Personally, I don’t wash them until I’m relatively afraid of getting the plague by putting them on. It’s how I roll.

Anyway, I was at the Hess station in Wainscott on gas day. It’s a great station because the gas is cheap and the coffee is good. I was in my clean jeans, got out of the car, whipped out my debit card and fired up the gas pump. Of course, like all cheap human beings, I got the cheapest gas available and used the self-serve area of the gas station to save a few cents on a gallon.

Like a ninja, I flew through the motions of opening up my gas tank and squeezing the gas trigger in perfect timing to when the pump actually turns on and NOT when the digital display on the pump says, “begin fueling.”

It’s all about the timing here. You have to wait for “the pump is on” noise, then half a beat and then squeeze. Otherwise, you might over shoot and the pump might be on but nothing will come out because you squeezed before it actually turned on. Like I said, I’m a ninja at this.

With a slight smile of satisfaction for nailing the pump timing perfectly, I did a full squeeze and watched my car receive its sustenance. Suddenly, my cell phone started ringing inside my car. I wanted to answer it, but I didn’t want to stop pumping. Mini panic attack.

Of course, the gas station people, like the good people that they are, have made arrangements for you in this situation. There is a little locking mechanism that you can use by simply clicking a little latch into a little rivet. They even have slow rivets and fast rivets. I always use the fast rivet and can’t understand why anyone would use anything else. You can’t over pump because of the automatic shutoff. They have thought of everything.

I quickly grab the latch and attempt to lock it onto the rivet, but guess what? THERE ARE NO RIVETS! What the hell! The latch slipped through and I quickly grabbed the trigger to save the pump. I was at twenty dollars and my phone was on its third ring. There was no way I was going to finish this and answer in time. Why did they leave the latch on the pump handle but get rid of the rivets? What is wrong with these people?

I finished up pumping, a little angry and then spilled excess gasoline onto my jeans. Then, I bent down to put my gas cap back on and noticed a new rip in my jeans. Now I’m pissed at Hess.

Perhaps this is just an isolated station, I thought. It’s not intentional, it’s just because the rivet guy who installed the gas tanks was lazy. I was suspicious, so I drove to the Water Mill Hess, to see if they have rivets on the pumps there. No rivets. It was like one of those chilling moments in a dramatic film.

I drove to the Mobil in Southampton and discovered the reason behind all of this. You are not going to believe what is going on here.

There are no rivets in the self-serve at the Mobil, but there are rivets in the full-serve. DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT THIS MEANS? This means that the gas station people are deliberately taking rivets off of gas pumps to annoy people into paying more for gas. It’s like one big conspiracy.

I told this story to a friend of mine who just got back from Florida, and she told me that they have rivets at the self-serve in Florida. That means it’s a conspiracy just on Long Island. Well I’m having none of it.

Next week, I’m using the Mobil station at the full serve, but then quickly demand that I pump it myself, use the rivet and then demand that I pay for the self serve price. And if that doesn’t work, then I’m going to go back to using the pumps with no rivets and instead, just shove a plastic water bottle into the handle to keep the gas flowing. And I’m going to leave it there for the next person because that’s the kind of guy I am.

You got to try to make the world a better place for the next guy you know?