So the other day, my gas tank's just about on Empty and the car's so dirty, I'd forgotten the original color. Time to get it washed. I pulled into a nearby car wash and told the attendant to fill it with Super Unleaded and to give me the plain, garden-variety, no-frills, no Spraywax or ArmorAll wash. A few minutes later, as my auto rolled through walls of suds, I paid the bill, which was $29.65 and browsed about the Gift Shop, checking out the greeting cards, sunglasses and about 9,000 different kinds of air freshener.
A few minutes later as I went to tip the attendant and get my clean, wet car, it suddenly dawned on me that $29.65 was darn cheap for a full tank of gas and a wash these days. A check of my receipt revealed that I had paid $11.95 for the "Full Service Wash" (their cheapest) and I'd gotten 16.065 gallons of gas @ $1.099. A buck-nine for gas???
I checked the sign out front: Super Unleaded was $2.09 per gallon. I walked over and checked the pumps. They all said $2.09 except for the one my gas had come from, which said $1.09. I pointed this out to the attendant who reacted pretty much the way you'd react if I told you that Martian warriors had landed. There was disbelief. Then there was shock. Then there was all-out horror. Apparently, the pump had been mis-set for days like that.
Managers were summoned. Yelling commenced and I'm pretty sure someone was fired. In the midst of it, I interjected and offered to pay the sixteen bucks I'd been undercharged but someone — he may have been the guy who owned the place since he seemed to be doing the firing — said, "No, that's okay. You're honest and it was our mistake."
Returning to my car, I laid a big gratuity on the guy who'd swabbed it down with rags. He asked me what all the fuss was and I told him, including the part about someone being fired. He moaned in sadness. "Friend of yours?" I asked. He said, "No…I was just meaning to get my car filled with gas here this morning."