So I've got my license again, and am legally allowed to roam Canada's roads and highways once again. An unfortunate problem associated with driving however has always been the fact that vehicles typically need gas, fuel, petrol, or whatever you call it.
Now, in recent years most pumps have been upgraded with some smarter brains, a big screen and more buttons, to allow you, the consumer, the luxury of "Paying at the pumps." Often, this feature is labelled with large letters, dubbing this feature "Express-Pay" and using other such speed-implying adjectives. But this is hardly the case.
In fact, should someone take this matter so seriously that they wish to test, I'd bet you'd find that in most cases it the drive in to drive out time is greater, when you use the Pay-at-the-Pump features. And why is this? The pumps are #)($*#)($* SLOW! It starts so convenient, you stick the card in and pull it out rapidly. Now, the next couple steps are fairly straight forward, pick how much gas you want, or fill-up, punch in your PIN code and pick what account to charge. Perhaps there's a chance to stick a Airmiles card or other gas-station specific card in the machine at some point. This should only take 15 odd seconds if you're quick with the punching of buttons, and you should be off pumpin'.
But every time you do anything, it seems to take the pump an eternity to recognize you've done something, churn through it in its puny little brain, and ask for the next step! I don't get it, with many gigahertz processors cheaper than a full tank of gas nowadays, you'd think they could make it a tad more "expressy!" Do they have a large stock of 15 year old computer chips they gotta use or something?
So this is a call-to-action for all gas stations out there. Increase your profitability, pump those cars through your station quicker, and give your pumps some real 21st century technology. Please, make it a bit easier for me to spend my hard-earned money on gas. I hate it enough as is, make it a bit more painless!
Posted by Boone at August 14, 2004 02:00 PM