Saturday, March 19, 2011
CASH OUT
I am friends with a guy at the gym who owns a few gas stations in town. Mostly Shell.
When the prices went up, we were fascinated with how he justified jumping the price of gas just like that. Bang. Four dollars a gallon. Same day.
Of course, he blamed the supplier and the Middle East and Muammar Gaddafi, the soon to be ex-dictator of Lybia. But I knew better.
They will do fucking anything to put a few more cents on the gallon all the way up the line. Wait for the higher world price to hit this region. No way. Get it now.
The fact that most sweet Libyan oil goes to Europe plays no part in it.
We do not take our arguments seriously. Besides, I have my friend Gene, a retired dentist from Portland, a bona fide liberal, to help me with the discussions, short as they are.
I don't chat at the gym. I stop by their bikes and exchange a few shots over the bow and then proceed with my workout.
I came in the other day and asked how much he was charging now. $4.05, I think.
I told him that I just bought gas for less down the road from the gym. Valerio.
He said that I probably didn't. Did I use a credit card? Yes.
That price I am quoting, he says, is the cash price.
If you buy the gas with a credit card it costs eight cents a gallon more.
No!
Yes.
So I checked it out. He is right. There is one sign there that has both prices. It is not lit and it is at the edge of the property. On the big sign and on the pumps it does say "cash" but I have never seen it. The price that comes up on the pump is the cash price. The eight cents a gallon is a surcharge for the card.
Fuck. I hate to be wrong.
I went in the other morning when I filled my tank and paid cash. It isn't the eighty cents really. I have wasted that much in the last hour one way or another. It is the principal.
And I found out that the guy who is in there is short, handsome and latino. Bingo.
These prices, incidentally, are a lot higher than you back east folks. Be grateful. Of course, your gas station attendants are not in the same class so that is the downside.
See that guy standing at his car? Looking at the prices? He is about to go in and kick the shit out of the Shell gas station owner.
