Oh yeah. My friends and I would take our bikes to the nearest gas station to refill the tires. Of course you had to be careful or your tire could explode. We were really pissed off when, one by one, they started charging for air.
Air was free until maybe 20-25 years ago, then you needed quarters. I think in California they have to provide free air now. But most places the air doesn’t work anyway.
That middle picture shouldn’t be able to happen. The pump shouldn’t work unless there is an airlock between hose and car. At least that is how those work here.
As for the bottom picture, I have been places where I had to do that.
You can do that with most pumps. I fill up 5-gal plastic gas cans all the time for yard work and you just point the nozzle into the container and squeeze, no seal required.
I’ve owned a Kia Sorento for 5 years, and in all that time I’ve wondered about a little symbol on the passenger side plastic post down by the floor under the dashboard that shows a little gas pump with a line through it. At first I was like “Why the hell would someone attempt to put gas into the vehicle here, in this weird spot? Did someone actually do this, blow themselves up, and now Kia is obligated to put this warning here to prevent any more dumbasses from harming themselves?” There is a little hole in the post there, capped with what appears to be a non-removable plastic cap piece, so maybe Kia just wanted to make sure nobody thought “Oh hey, this would be a cool place to store extra gas for when I run low!”, but that also seems really weird. I finally settled on maybe it’s just trying to tell me that the gas tank is not on that side of the vehicle, but that seems really strange as well since it’s so low and under the dash on the passenger side that you’d literally have to be bent over looking for it to find the symbol.
Just one of the many mysterious of my Korean vehicle. Like the strange credit card sized slot on the dashboard below the radio that even the dealership admitted they don’t know why it’s there or what it’s for. I love it though, best and most reliable vehicle I have ever owned, hands down.
My 2 1/2 gallon metal gas can only be filled by putting the hose connection tightly over the entrance. You can get some dribbles otherwise, but not like in the above picture.
California has special pumps, due to environmental regulations that try to reduce the release of fumes. Not all states have those pumps.
Weird. Probably different regulations on pumps in different states. I live in Ohio, a mostly red state that doesn’t believe in regulation or safety, so people get to kill themselves in stupid fashion fairly regularly here. I mean, we’re no Florida or anything…
I’m still partial to Wawa, but I live in Sheetz country, so you deal with it.
I just try to avoid Rutters.
Western Massachusetts here. The two “local” shops are Cumberland and Stewart’s. They both pretty much suck, but at least Stewart’s has free air. Cumberland actually requires a credit card, and charges a minimum $1.50 for any air. I’ve never tested how long that lasts.
One thing that “special Pump” means is that I can never fill my gas can because as the can fills the hose senses the fumes and shuts off. Pain in the ass. I can maybe get 2 gal in a 2 1/2 gal can.
Yup, for all my power tools I get the gas at the pump and cart it home. No “airlock” required. Is that a CA thing?
EDIT: Way too slow coming back after lunch. Answered upthread :)
Well, I’m not at all interested in pumping gas per se, or the arguments over it. And I see zero relevance in how much gas station owners make. As I noted, if a state has minimum wages that are robust, that’s fine, but in most cases I stand by my assertion that these sorts of low-skill jobs are mostly beneficial to capitalists making money than they are to the workers, who in general work their asses off in bad conditions and don’t make enough to live like most Americans would want to.
And most people who end up arguing in OpEd pieces about how good it is to have all of these McJobs are, in fact, shills for corporate America, IMO.
Hmm, perhaps, though I’d love to see evidence of that (and particularly evidence that shows any meaningful increase in wages). It seems far more likely that employers looking for low wage/low skill labor either automate, or dip further into the low-wage pool (illegal immigrants, etc.), rather than actually raise wages, as in most cases these businesses either have very tight margins, or the labor shortage never gets bad enough to actually make them change their practices.
Though you may well be correct, of course. I suspect the details of this sort of labor supply dynamic are fairly volatile and complex.
I don’t think understanding the industry we’re talking about makes anyone a corporate shill, and since we’re talking about gas and stations, of course it’s relevant. For instance, the non-traditional stations, Costco, Safeway, Kroger/Fred Meyer drop below traditional prices all in the hopes of you going into their store and making up that loss.
Eh, retail is the industry, not gas. Retail comes in two varieties, in terms of brick and mortar. High end, where the product is in a way secondary to the experience, and where sales staff is actually an asset that is intended to massage the customer by providing a good shopping vibe, and hence, might actually be paid well, and bulk, which is most retail, where the staff is just an expense that the owners would rather not have to pay at all because the customer doesn’t give a shit.
Gas is definitely in the latter category.
Have you seen how well traditional retail is doing? Retail is changing, and no, you don’t really paint all retail the same. Doing that is what gave an opening to the e-tailers to begin with. And you could say the cheap shit and low wage employees wins the day but… Wal-mart would say otherwise.
I moved to New England from Classic England. One of the first things I had to do was drive to Pennsylvania.
I filled up with gas in New Jersey and someone shouted at me when I tried to get out of the car.
In Pennsylvania I wanted to pick up some booze, so I went to this big drive through booze store. Driver through booze!
Someone there shouted at me when I got out of the car. Apparently I had to point at the booze I wanted and then people would load it into my car. I wasn’t allowed to touch the booze until I had driven off the premises.
Y’all have a weird country.
In Pennsylvania, that’s a fairly new thing I believe… for ages, we had extremely archaic liquor laws that were ultimately rooted in old Quaker influences. You couldn’t buy booze on Sundays, or in super markets. It changed a few years ago.