Monday, January 31

Get Your Damn T.V.s Off My Pump

There's a Shell station near here, and some genius thought it would be a super idea to stick televisions on the pump. I mean, in the three minutes I'm getting gas, I doubt I'll have time watch an entire episode of anything interesting, so I'm guessing these are designed to fill up my head with advertising.

That's a brilliant thought, Mr. Executive! Buy televisions, spend money on installing them, powering them, and upkeeping them, then overcharge my gas, and tick me off in the process, so I'm less likely to want to visit your establishment!

Since you are too dumb to realize what you are really selling, let me explain it to you: The entire point of getting gas is to encounter a small slice of time, a meditative bubble, where we have nowhere to go, and nothing to do, where we wait for a number to magically count up from zero gallons to our personal capacity for enlightenment.

After I've slid the card, stuck the nozzle in the tank, and picked 87 cause I'm cheap, I'm in charge. Let me say that again: I'm in charge. I want to lean up against my car and do nothing. I want to check my windshield. I want to look over my car for dents. I want to clean off the birdshit. I get to pick, because I'm in freaking charge, and your T.V.s are getting in the freaking way.

We need moments of respite in this crazy world, and pumping gas is one of those few islands in the storm. If you fill it up with inane babble about your stupid credit card, then you have ruined the experience. You have annihilated a section of my life that I appreciate, and you need to know that there will be a natural consequence for your disregard of our merchant/customer relationship--

I see that Chevron across the street has no televisions.

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