Whenever I go to a gas station, I sometimes glance around at the pumps around me to see what the previous customer paid for their fuel. Most of the time, it’s so I can see how many people paid out in nice perfectly round even numbers like $20, sometimes $10, and even the occasional $5. Once I saw one pump actually sitting at like $165, which meant that someone with a Hummer or a Land Rover must have filled up all 40+ gallons of their tank with high-octane at the same cost of what a Sega Genesis, an extra controller and Ecco the Dolphin cost me when I was in the sixth grade.
Twenty bucks I can understand, and to some degree I get ten dollars, if they’re like a teenager or someone who probably still either doesn’t have enough disposable money on hand, or just can’t afford more. Anything less than $10, and I’m often curious to how pointless it kind of is to even roll into the gas station in the first place, because even if they had pretty fuel economic vehicles, they’re guaranteed to be back in a day or two, tops. Way, way less if they had like a Ford Explorer or any kind of six-plus cylinder vehicle. Obviously, I don’t know these peoples’ financial situations, and such implications mean they can’t be too well off, but I’ve seen my share of people in some pretty luxurious cars also doing the whole “pay for less than $10 worth of gas” thing before as well.
Man, my time is way more valuable to me to have to want to stop by the gas station every single day, so needless to say, whenever I go, it’s fill-up all the way. I don’t want to be back for at least 4-7 days.
I saw this pump adjacent to mine one day. The previous customer purchased eighteen cents worth of fuel, equating to 0.05 gallons of unleaded. 5% of one gallon of gas.
Now this, was definitely a situation of wondering just how bad it has to be for a person to have to get just eighteen cents worth of fuel. I can’t really fathom any sort of scenario where a person willingly felt like going to the gas station to top off, and needing just 0.05 gallons of gas to do such. There’s a chance that the surcharge the station has to pay on a credit card transaction might cost more than that. This definitely seems like a scenario where a person was running on fumes and their car was just beginning to show signs of complete emptiness, and they rolled into the place and literally had no cash on hand except for eighteen cents they were able to scrounge together by searching frantically throughout their car, as well as panhandling or checking around the immediate area for loose change. And with that eighteen cents, they were able to procure just 0.05 gallons of gas for their car.
It’s really almost meaningless too, to put in that little gasoline. Say they had a modestly decent car that got 30 mpg on the highway. Do the math, and 5% of an entire gallon still buys them 1.5 miles worth of fuel. Now imagine if it’s any sort of gas guzzler like an Expedition or a Yukon that gets like 9 mpg. 0.05 gallons of gas barely buys them another half-mile. And living around where this picture was taken, I can assure you that I’m fairly certain that 1.5 miles in any direction isn’t enough to get to any residential areas.
What was really the point of even making this purchase in the first place? What kind of place does a person have to be in to where eighteen cents worth of fuel is even worth it?
No matter what way you put it, it’s hard to imagine any sort of scenario where this wasn’t a measure of desperation, or some sort of analogy of hitting bottom. Personally, I couldn’t really imagine what a life where scrounging for eighteen cents for gas would be like, or maybe I’ve just got a different approach. At that point, the car is more trouble than it’s worth, so as denigrating as it might be, I’d probably sell it for what I could, and then start taking the bus or bumming rides.
