As you all may know, I am not the kind of person to bitch about just any trivial subject. So it may surprise you that I am about to act really out of character and bitch about a “customer service” representative. Again. But first…
I am really bad at filling up my car with petrol. I always leave it to the very last minute, to the point where I am worried my car is going to have to chug to the station. It’s not a money problem and I pass at least three service stations on the way home. For some reason I am always chasing that elusive sub-dollar-per-litre fuel price, yet it never quite works out. It’s a bit like Homer Simpson really — Drive to the first station: $1.01 a litre. Decide to see what the next one is. Drive to the second one: 99c a litre, but meh, I can’t bothered making a right hand turn in traffic. I’ll try the next one. Fuel running on empty, getting very nervous. Drive to the third station $1.03 a litre. D’oh!
And this happens every week.
And so you’re wondering “why on earth do we care about this?”
I’ll tell you. It’s CONTEXT you illiterate moron!
Which brings me to my Caltex experience yesterday. I did the usual $1.01 “shit”. Then my car’s light went on and I drove to the next closest servo, which was the Caltex in Beechboro. $1.03 a litre. Okay, whatever.
So I get out of my car, and proceed to fill up the car, the usual routine, and then go in to pay for my petrol. The “customer service” guy gets this look on his face, really bitchy-like. Sort of like that blonde guy on Queer Eye when he says something really nasty, girlfriend…
He looks at me, and says in his best Ricki Lake voice: “You know, that’s a prepaid bowser. You’re supposed to come in and pay first”. At which point I was looking for a camera, because I had never heard of this before.
“Sorry I didn’t realise”, I said.
“Yes, well, there was a sign on there saying it, but…oh well”.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t read it”.
At which point he rolls his eyes, sniggers and smirks to himself in his god-aren’t-you-an-idiot tone. Normally I would just let it go, but he was being so snippy with me. So I said “so, I have to come in and pay for my fuel first, then go out and put it in, then come back in?”
“Yes”
“But what if I don’t know how much it’s going to be to fill up my car?”
He sniggered again. I couldn’t believe it. I just laughed at him and walked out. And then I thought of a funny thing to say by the time I was in the car. Dammit.
But how annoying is that? Not only have the replaced petrol station attendants with self-serve machines, they now expect me to READ things for myself? Shit, that means that they expect me to be twice as skilled as the attendants they replaced! I not only have to pump my own petrol, but I have to be literate as well! The world is going to shit!
As much as I’d like to say that I won’t go back. I mist likely will, because it will always be that third station that I pull into when I am scared my car is going to run out of fuel again.
