Conversations with Random People --27 #T

Gasoline prices down $0.46 today from the price at last fill, so wheeled into the station. Pickup truck on the other side of the island I was working and just as I got my card inserted in the correct attitude, the truck started, pulled away a few feet and CLANG! clankety-clank.  Startled, I looked up to see the filler hose dangling from the vehicle.  "HEY!" He stopped, and I immediately jumped around to see if we had a gasoline spill.  Whew! *wipes sweat from the brow* The cutoff valve worked and thus no disaster in the making.

Driver of the vehicle, skinny, rough looking male individual about six foot four leaped from the truck god-damning everything to hell and to the ends of the universe and beyond.

"Sorry," I said.  "That won't fix it.  It happens."  Well, he saw that the pump was not cascading gasoline on the tarmac, cussed a time or two more, then said, "Sorry, but I've never done anything like that before."

"Well," I repeated,  "it happens."  He jerked the nozzle from the neck of the filler pipe, replaced it in its bracket on the pump, got in his vehicle and zoomed away!  Now I, not startled, but stunned, stared in disbelief at the retreating rear-end of the truck.

I walked into the station-cum-convenience-store-cum pizza shop and told the young man, boy, actually, what had just occurred.  "When?" he asked.  "Just now," I replied. "You need to call it into headquarters."

The lad came out to the apron, looked at the damage, picked up the dangling end of the hose and said, "I wonder if I can reconnect it?"

I asked him if he was authorized to do that, and he said no.  Then, I told him, perhaps you had best call it in.  "Okay," he said, perhaps doubtfully, as though he might get blamed for the screw-up.  "Maybe I should make an "Out of Order" sign?  Sure,  why not.  Coals to Newcastle, I did not say.  He was bumfoozled quite enough without my fooling with his head.

And so it goes, here in Perfect on this perfect day.