Heart and Mind

Buying Gasoline and the Quirks I Have with It

I guess when it comes to buying gasoline, I've got some weird issues.

Last week I was driving into work when I noticed that my gas "moron light" was on. That's the little light on the dashboard that comes on to let you know you're almost out of gas, in case the little meter being pinned to "E" wasn't enough of an indication.

I was almost at work and didn't really have time to stop, so I reasoned that I would fill up after work. I even noticed a gas station on the other side of the street that I figured would be a good place to stop. It would be on the correct side of the road for my trip home. The price, I noticed, was $2.39 per gallon.

So, after a long day of work, I started heading home and when I got into the vicinity, I started looking off to the right to find the gas station. For some reason, I pulled into a different gas station instead. I suppose it's because it also looked like a good station and I came across it first. I think the other one was still a little further down the road.

I pulled in and immediately found a problem. It was full-serve.

Yeah, for me that's a problem. That's the opposite problem I've known people to have. See, I've known people who are too scared and/or lazy to pump their own gas (and I usually give them a hard time about it, especially the former group of people who simply don't know how to pump gas, explaining, in my stock line, "Any moron can pump gas; it's NOT difficult"). So I certainly have come across people who go out of their way to find those full serve-stations, perfectly willing to pay more money to have someone else do their work for them. But I'm the opposite.

I not only pump my own gas, I flat out prefer it and will go well out of my way to avoid full-service stations. I've been to them a handful of times, but only in extreme cases where I'm about to run out of gas and I'm fearful that this is my last chance to avoid that. Or, when I'm driving in New Jersey, where self-serve is not an option.

Now why is this? Well, one obvious answer is that I don't want to spend the extra money for full-serve. And I readily admit that. Even if it's not a significant amount of money, why should I even give someone a penny to do something that I'd gladly do myself?

But here's where this particular story gets weird...

I saw the full-serve signs and had to contemplate my normal "instant veto." The price on the pump was...ready? $2.39. The exact same price that I was willing and planning on paying at the other gas station I saw a few hundred feet down the road. It was a bitter cold day and common sense told me that it made more sense to have someone else pump the gas, especially since I had already pulled up to the pump, than it was to go elsewhere and insist on the privilege of standing in the frigid cold doing my own work for the exact same money.

Be that as it was, after hedging briefly, I put the car in gear and drove off, looking for the self-serve station.

So, apparently, there is more to it than the price. Some thoughts I have as to why a logical guy like me would make such an illogical decision include:

1. Control Issues - I think, subconsciously, I feel better about the perception (perhaps erroneous) that I am more in control when I pump my own gas. It is I who will handle my own credit card ("Pay at the Pump"), choose my own grade of gas (making sure I'm, indeed, getting the regular grade stuff), and influence how quickly I can get in and out of there by not having to wait for an attendant.

2. Principle - Again, subconsciously, I wonder if I reason that although they are giving it to me for the same price I was willing to accept at the self-serve station, they could be giving it to me even cheaper than even that if they'd let me pump it myself.

3. Habit - This one is probably the biggest reason. Plain, ol' habit. It's just my way of doing things, and since it's how I operate, it seems odd to me to not follow suit. Humans are quite habitual. I tend, for example, to put my left shoe on first every day. Why? There's no benefit to doing it that way, but there is also no benefit to doing it arbitrarily, and I, somehow, always favor putting the left shoe on first. It's not quite superstition, but it just feels more "right" to me. So pumping my own gas is how I do things and I guess I don't like doing things that are not typically "me." It makse me feel like I';m someone else who is doing a bad imitation of me.

One thing is certain, though: although price as a global thing is certainly a concern (as in, "It's better to get in the habit of avoiding full-serve because they tend to be more expensive"), in one isolated incident, price doesn't mean much at all, and I proved it here.

The further proof is in the fact that I'm not even a gas price shopper these days, and that's another very weird thing. Let me explain...

I am a very careful shopper. I spend my money wisely and I don't think I overpay for much because I watch price tags. But, for some reason, I don't even do this anymore with gas, which is an area where so many people do—even a lot of people who spend irresponsibly as a general rule! When I was younger, I used to seek out the cheaper gas stations in town, but these days I don't give a f*ck. I don't even know what's good or bad anymore. I just go where I feel comfortable going and assume it's about the same price I'd pay elsewhere. It's completely counter-indicated to the "don't spend more on full-serve" mentality and the opposite of my otherwise frugal approach to life. Go figure.

I went about driving home. For some reason that I can't recall, I didn't pull into that other gas station that I had seen that morning. But that was hardly the only gas station I avoided. In fact, I passed a whole handful of gas stations on the way home, and basically vetoed every one for different reasons.

For starters, about half of them were on the wrong side of the road. That reason kind of makes sense to me. Left turns onto main roads—like the kind I'd have to make when leaving the gas station and resuming my commute—on Long Island are rarely pleasant, especially during rush hour.

But I also opted not to go to many right-side gas stations simply because I didn't like something about them. Here's where it continues to be weird...

As an example, I don't like gas stations that have those generic brands like "gaseteria" and "usa gas mart" and stuff like that. Why? It makes little sense. I am totally a non-brand-name kind of guy. I'll bypass Coke or Pepsi to buy the "store brand cola" from Pathmark if I can save a nickel. I rarely care about the name brand tag, and in the instances where I do, it's usually related to something I give a damn about...and I do not give a damn about gas or cars, though I still prefer a nice new-looking Hess station to one of those little rinky-dink looking places.

Which brings me to my next point: I don't like little crappy places with just two pumps that look like they're saying, "We really are not in the gas business...we're more of a garage that fixes cars and we just have a pump or two to make some extra money." Meanwhile, I know full-well that a) it's the same shitty gas as they're selling everywhere else and b) gas is not somehow diluted because there are only 2 pumps.

I don't know why any of this quirkiness exists in my gas purchasing habits. I am not normally like this, and I don't care about cars that much. Mine are all old and I wash them about once a year.

The only theory I have is that because I'm not a car-guy, I had to rely on my dad for expertise when I was first learning to drive and I just took his opinions and accepted them because I was too uninformed to make my own opinions. Certainly, the kinds of stuff I'm talking about fit the mold of what he used to tell me. He was a big proponent of self-serve because it was cheaper, and he also used to make comments about certain gas stations being "Panther Piss" back in the day.

Well, at any rate, to finish up our story, I knew of one gas station that was right by my house, but I vowed that I would certainly find a different one to get gas from I reached that one. But I did not. I coasted in there—the one by my house—"on fumes," as they say. I was actually so nervous that I was about to run out of gas that I turned the heat off in my car thinking that extra pull on the resources might be the difference between making it to the station and not. I did make it, though, and I stood in the freezing cold, pumping my own gas and freezing my ass off, at a price of $2.44; 5-cents-a-gallon more than I would have spent if I sat in my warm car and let someone else do it for me.

Ironic? Ridiculous? Both? Yup. That's why as this was happening, I knew it had to be a blog entry.

posted by Steve @ 5:40 PM