Pay At The Pump

A lady in a monster SUV pulls up to the pump. We pull in behind her, deciding to wait in line. Ahead of her is a man pumping gas into his pickup.


She reads the streaming message on the pump asking her if she has a certain grocery chain's customer card. Into her purse she goes, in a manner of speaking, and a minute later emerges with a card which she scans. The streaming message changes, now it wants to know if she has a shopper's card from a drug store chain, if so she can save 5 cents on top of the 10 cents she'll save with the grocery card. Back into her purse she goes, in a manner of speaking, and emerges with yet another card.

After scanning that card she takes her credit card, but before she can scan it yet another message appears. If she has given blood in the past 3 months, and will be so kind as to scan her blood donor card, she'll save another 5 cents. Yep. Back into the purse she goes - of course, in a manner of speaking.

The guy in the pickup in front of her is putting the gas cap on.

After scanning the blood donor card she looks into her purse for the credit card she had been about to use but it is nowhere to be found. She dumps her purse out on the back seat - no credit card. As her eyes fall to the pavement - in a manner of speaking - she spys the credit card on the ground, picks it up and scans it.

The streaming message asks, "Debit or credit?" She pushes credit.

The streaming message asks for her zip code.

She, having recently moved into a new area, tries to recall her zip code. She punches in the numbers and the streaming message says, "Invalid zip code. Transaction canceled."

By this time the guy in the pickup has pulled away.


The lady puts the gas nozzle in her car, leaves it there for all of one minute, and returns it to the pump. She gets in the monster SUV and drives off.


I say to Vickie, "Did you notice that she only had the nozzle in her vehicle for one minute? She couldn't have filled that huge SUV in one minute. She just put the nozzle in her car because she was self-conscious about having been at the pump for 5 minutes...let me tell you what really happened."