Self-Serve Gasoline...

A funny thing happened to me in Oregon on Saturday night, as I was driving from San Jose to Seattle. There was a Oregon Ducks football game that night, and I made it into the traffic jam as the game was letting out. I needed to get gas, so I pulled into a busy gas station just off the freeway. There were a bunch of cars, and a couple of girls in "safety" vests running around. I didn't pay much attention to them other than to notice that they were washing the windshields on the cars, and looked like maybe doing some other stuff. But because the station was so busy, I was more worried about finding an open pump. One finally opened up and I pulled in. I got out of the car and opened my wallet to get out my Credit Card, when one of the girls ran up to me. "Do you want to fill it up?" she asked me. "I sort of gave her a perturbed look (but not too mean) and said, "Yeah." I moved toward the payment thing on the pump but she was standing directly in front of it, and in a stance that said, I'm not moving. She told me to slide my card, and I made it look really awkward for me to do so (which it was) so that she would get the hell OUT OF THE WAY! I then turned and took off the gas cap, turned back to grab the handle of the pump, just as she grabbed the handle. So it was like a split second of tug-of-war going on. In my mind I was like, "What the donnybrook is your problem??" And then a sort of light-bulb went off in her head, after glancing at my plates, and she said, "Um… Sir… there's no 'self-serve' in Oregon…" -- long AWKWARD silence -- "Oh… well, go ahead then… sorry about that."