I drove - in segments - from Chicago to Los Angles, and ultimately to Monterey for the PARSH Rennsport Reunion in 2018. I met a friend in Denver, and we did a fairly long haul from Denver to Las Vegas in one hit; we arrived at the Wynn valet with just enough time to make a 10 PM dinner reservation. Side note - I have never seen so many people eating A5 Wagyu in sweatpants.
Naturally, our departure from Sin City the next day was, ahem, delayed. The drive along I-15 was hellish, for a myriad of reasons. We were somewhere around Barstow when my buddy’s Turbo needed gas, so we stopped at a substantial truck stop / gas station off the Interstate - think Love’s / Pilot Flying J, it wasn’t an Arco. The parking lot was mostly gravel, and there were numerous occupants of said parking lot who were clearly on speed; naturally, I felt right at home given my humble, hardscrabble, hillbilly upbringing.
We finally made it to Malibu, where we had a beachfront Airbnb for a few nights. Another side note - it was probably a mile or two from The Malibu Kitchen, where you and I once had breakfast with a certain Fortunate Son. It was just before 9 PM on a Sunday night.
Apparently, there are precisely three places to find dinner at 9 PM on a Sunday night in Malibu:
1-Jack In The Box
2-NOBU
3-Mastro’s Ocean Club
(The Taco Bell inside the 76 station at the intersection of PCH and Sunset was, inexplicably, closed.)
We were driving tastefully on this jaunt, so we settled for Mastro’s (NOBU was booked).
The next morning, we were up and into the Malibu canyons before sunrise, and we’d had our fill by lunchtime. We spent the afternoon on our balcony overlooking the Pacific with a box of cigars and several bottles of wine. It was one of the best - and most carefree - days of my life.
————
On another trip to Los Angeles, I had dinner with a certain former journosaur-cum-PR flack at APL; APL references the initials of Adam Perry Lang, restauranteur / former Jeffrey Epstein personal chef. For some reason, APL is no longer in business.
APL’s menu (in)famously included a “Felony Knife,” which was priced at $950.01 to deter theft:
“Dead fucking serious,” he says. “If they steal it, it’s $950 because that’s the bare minimum for a felony in the state of California.”
The scourge of Arco has recently made its way to my neighborhood in Atlanta; there’s a palatial new Arco station that sells prepared food and also offers an extensive selection of wine. The bathrooms are unlocked. For now.
I have a topical if not personal question with regards to "I slipped a Boker Applegate-Fairbairn into my waistband..."
What's the reason you don't carry a firearm? You have talked about gun ownership in the past, have good working knowledge of them, and often travel to places where such a thing might be necessary.
As an on-again, off-again resident of said state and a fan of the appendix carry, I can assure you that's it's quite simple to check said paperweight and unpack it as the naked rump of the "Welcome to the Golden State" sign shrinks in your rear-view mirror.
We always used to buy the $2.97(?) six packs of Stewarts Mountain Brew on motorcycle tours in the Adirondacks in college. Was saddened when I just looked it up and saw that it's discontinued as of 2018. Not that it was a particularly good beer, it was just very cheap and I associate it with riding our old UJMs on beautiful roads and camping out by the lakes out there.
IIRC Mountain Brew itself was brewed for Stewarts by Genesee so it may very well have BEEN Genesee all along. I'll be honest I never thought it ever was anything that special (and I'm even more ambivalent about Genesee if I'm honest) but it was purely a nostalgia thing to remember being a broke college student on my $950 '78 GS1000 buying a $3 six pack.
Here, in the Tulsa area, we have a Mr. Bass maybe a 1/4 mile from my house. Locally owned, open 24/7/365. Beer sales til 2:30am. Need snacks, fishing gear, live fishing bait, kerosene, propane, ice, cigs, lottery tickets, ice cream, fountain drinks etc, it's all there.
They also still sell all 3 grades of gasoline ethanol free, with their own dedicated hoses.
We are right by the lake, so there are a lot of people filling their boats up. A lot of those boats are older and can't handle ethanol. I assume that's the rationale behind all the non-ethanol Gas choices.
We got a new Circle K about 10 minutes away from my house with "E0" 90 Octane. All my old carb bikes get it. My Suburban gets the 30 year old gas that I drain from the 40 year old project bikes I pick up lol
Eh, even in the worst parts of the UK (usually the poorest parts of any given city) you never have to pre-pay for gas, and ours is much more expensive than yours. Because we're such a small country, we really don't have regional chains (of anything). It's all big multinationals (and supermarkets) who supply gas. Shell, Texaco, BP. So they tend to be kept to a certain standard (although I expect they're franchises).
Weirdly nothing is ever locked up here. Tobacco products are always behind the counter (and now have to be kept in a closed cupboard). Hard liquor (usually in supermarkets) will have some kind of anti-theft device on the cap which is removed when you pay. If it's your standard liquor store, have at it.
And we're having just as much of a standard of living crisis as you guys and it's getting worse.
I manage a small town hardware store located (inside a grocery store) halfway (20ish minutes) between two of IL's less reputable cities.
The amount of stuff we have to lock up, and the dollars we have dedicated to LP is absurd -- and it's not due to the locals. Every few months word gets out on the street -- go 20 minutes, the have good shit and low security. The staff, the regulars, we all see the absurdity of it. Local PD cracks down, but there is only so much one can do.
Ironically, the liquor department can leave $100 bottles of high-end bourbon on an endcap, but it's always the Hennessy and Crown Royal that get stolen...
We tend to lose power tools, knives, and the like. Oh---and the meet department loses steak.
'“Someone is stealing this because they need it,” agreed Delia Kemph, a 28-year-old teacher.'
This viewpoint is acceptable coming from a child but not from an adult. Using perceived need as justification for theft is the lever by which society will collapse. During the Great Depression? Yeah, maybe. Right now, when everyone south of Goldman Sachs has the HELP WANTED signs out? I don't think so.
If I can't find work in my field by winter, I'm going to go to Sheetz and make sandwiches for $22 an hour. I'm not above that work and neither is anyone else. If you'd rather steal than do that, you're acting out of something other than need.
I wonder if they’re seeing a trend of people stealing canned food or if they just lock up everything over a certain dollar amount and inflation has pushed spam and tuna into that territory. But you’re right, so many of society’s problems would be solved if more people understood there is dignity on work, even work that may be “beneath” you.
A lot of the problem here in the UK is people do work, but the minimum wage + any government welfare they may receive (which is extremely hard to get) isn't enough because of spiralling inflation, our ridiculous rent and house prices and childcare costs. Plus energy bills, which have doubled in the last year.
There is work out there, because of the labor shortages caused by Brexit, but companies have yet to catch on to the idea they need to raise wages now they can't count on European immigrants working for minimum.
I don’t think the UK gets much gas from Russia, but was absolutely the right thing to do and I think most Europeans would happily eat the cost. The UKs problem is blatant profiteering because our energy suppliers are privatised (part of the great Conservative nationalisation of the eighties and nineties that ensured all their mates got to own all the infrastructure and got insanely rich).
The difficulty is that it's a regional market so rising prices in Europe mean rising prices in the UK as well. We will have to agree to disagree on the validity of sanctions. From my perspective it's a coward's way to make war on a country... but even if you think that Russia should be punished for the Ukraine thing it seems to me that the sanctions are doing more harm to Europe than to Russia. Come December, when everyone in Germany and Poland is enjoying in-home temperatures of a rationed 15 deg. C and the ruble is worth 2x what it was in 2020, we will see how righteous they feel... I am probably on the wrong side of history here, but I think Russia has as much right to invade Ukraine as the US does to conduct law enforcement in Mexico and South America, which is to say "more than you'd think, but maybe less than what's being done."
yup. in the same city that locks down spam. chinese ladies patrol for 5 cent deposit bottles and cans. they leave every garbage pile neater than they found it. they're clean, never beg and say thank you if you give them your empty. it's a question of values.
Just Tuesday I was at a rural gas station that didn't have the option of paying at the pump. I noted my number and went in anticipating a struggle. The exceptionally amiable guy asked me how much I wanted, after a bit of ships in the night entirely on my part he said why don't you just fill up and come back. It's possible that this interaction was facilitated by our mutual lack of melanin but that did not seem to be the vibe. In fact on this particular journey the only trouble I encountered was with a similarly pale hotel security guard of the "you are all equally worthless" Ermey mold hassling me for having the temerity to use the pool at 2130 when it closed at 2200.
It’s funny. Last week, I went to my local BP since they had the cheapest gas at that point. But my BP Visa card, which was just taken over by the First National Bank of Omaha (same as Speedway cards), for some reason, wasn’t playing nice with the pumps, and for whatever reason, you have to use the card at the pump instead of the BP app in order to ensure that you get whatever discounts you have available. (Same with GREEDway!) Card gets stuck in the reader after the NFC thing fails to work, so I trudge towards the store.
The counter attendant, a pleasant woman of color, immediately asks what the issue was, and then asks for the pump number. As she walks back into the back room with the controls on the pumps in order to free my card, she apologizes six ways to Sunday, and states that they have been having no end of trouble with the card transition, and that they’re trying to resolve things! She even showed me a copy of the Email from corporate. I brought the card back in and had her tee up the fill (guessed $90), filled up with no issue, and she was genuinely happy when I saw on my receipt that I’d gotten all the discounts; she was whooping and hollering like I’d found the lost coin! 😉
I should have gotten her name and given an attaboy to the station manager.
Among the many despicable aspects of the "turning into your parents" series of insurance commercials is the one where apparently it is uncool to compliment an employee to his or her manager. That could make the difference between getting a raise or getting fired, but helping people is lame.
I've purchased Arco gas exactly once while driving a car. The Debit Cards Only thing surprised and annoyed me. Four years later I get a check in the mail larger than my purchase amount as a result of a class action lawsuit (apparently due to some illegal fee on the purchase). A year after that I get another check as a result of a follow up class action lawsuit (something about interest charged on the fee). As a result Arco is the only company who has ever paid me to take their gas.
As someone loosely involved in the gas station business, I have observed this myself for many many years. My town is comfortably middle class with certain upper middle class neighborhoods but we neighbor an inner ring suburb with higher crime and the transition to the bullet proof glass model slowly over the last decade or two has been interesting. It initially sparked a desire to leave but following the stats, our crime rate does not appear to have increased in 20+ years, likely due to our well funded police department (another topic!). At least we they leave the gas station bathrooms unlocked for us around here!
We have a restaurant (well it is really a large bar with 3 rooms and a patio with about 40-50 tables) that lets you eat lunch and then you go up to the bar and tell them what you had for lunch. You never get a bill from the server. The bar tender can't see your table, and you don't even get the same server during the meal, it is more communal service and any of the 3 or 4 servers will stop by regularly at your table. The place is awesome and makes you feel like you live in Mayberry.
Cool, an Hyperion reference. That I can relate to, thank you!
The rest of what you write about is somewhat remote from the reality I see in my Montreal neighborhood, where only the hunting rifles are locked at Canadian Tire, *and* the ice in some gas station, but not all. Go figure. I have myself forgotten to pay for gas on few occasions, simply by being distracted. All of this is no news though. I think it is very unfortunate to see the impact of wealth disparity, especially in some US cities (although Asia is worst from my experience).
But what I meant to comment on is that I believe you would appreciate the writings of Mr Douglas Philips (the quantum series) and Mr Peter Cawdron, from who I absolutely love the way they explain in their epilogues the “hypothesis” they make to go from reality to (hard) sci-fi. I make my son read it to develop his anticipation capabilities (aka how perspective shifts depending on the viewpoint).
Cheers from the North! (Always enjoy reading you, even though not always in agreement, you often bring me an interesting and informative new perspective, and I can relate to the logic).
I looked tonight at my local gas station/convenience store. Restrooms unlocked and clean, all food items were unlocked and unguarded. The only thing that was locked up was the cigarettes/tobacco. Ice was in a cooler outside the side door and completely unsupervised. I guess suburban Utah must be a pretty high-trust community. I did read a local news story this week about a bridal shop in downtown Salt Lake City that had to close/move to the suburbs because the local “unhomed” individuals kept coming in and harassing/assaulting the employees.
Society swings left then right. I've read that in the '70s and '80s, parents in New York city would give their kids $20 to carry in case they were mugged. $20, they reasoned, was enough to prevent violence and was a small price to pay for a child's safety. History tells us that the city was a shithole then, with busted budgets, trash in the streets and rampant violence. It was in 1985 that "subway vigilante" Bernard Getz shot four attempted muggers, but by that point things had been bad for a long time.
In the 90s, under William Bratton and Rudy Giulliani, the city got organized and started policing again. The policy was called "broken windows" and focused on the idea that that if you enforce the small rules it will affect the overall life in the city. It seems to have worked as by the early 2000s New York City was supposed to have been an OK place to live again, but there are people who feel that policing was too rough and too focused on people of color. They may have a point, I don't know, but whatever happened crime rates decreased.
It makes me think that many of the problems we are seeing in urban areas today could be handled if there was no tolerance for bullshit. When people are soft hearted and reluctant to enforce rules bullshit thrives - and Seattle, where I was raised, is a good example. Seattleites are nice people, they usually try to help people and the result has been an influx of homeless people. The city has become a dangerous place to be. Homeless camps have sprouted up in various areas, some sponsored by local churches, etc, and now even once quiet neighborhoods are having issues. The typical, nice Seattleites are at a loss for what to do.
Their current mayor of choice seems, like her constituents, unwilling to lower the hammer and I keep wondering when Seattleites will get finally tired of this shit, realize they have to get hard, and start voting the other way. I am convinced it will happen and the region will swing from soft touches and easy marks to "get out of my face" and "I have no tolerance for your bullshit." It will be a good thing, but how much will the average person have to suffer before the majority figure it out?
My understanding of the entire homelessness problem is probably not complete but I see three main groups: people with mental problems, druggies, and the homeless by choice. Each group requires different solutions. I think we, as a society should help the people with legit mental issues - I am not so sure what that help might look like, but we should. Drugs should be legal and as long as you don't become a problem you can do what you feel but, should a drug user become a problem, there should be consequences for crimes and some sort of infrastructure to help wean them off of drugs. If they can't be or choose not to be weaned, then we start looking at other options - maybe permanent hospitalization or prison. And for those people for whom homelessness is a lifestyle choice, the goal would be to make it so miserable on them that they would make better choices.
Right now, small-town America benefits from two things. One, they don't have the infrastructure to deal with permanent homeless populations of any real size - no large soup kitchens, no large shelters, and not enough people to make panhandling worthwhile - so large numbers of homeless are not attracted to those places. And two, small-town America has an abundance of people who are willing to call others out on their bullshit - the down home version of "broken windows" so maybe there really is something to that after all...
NYC (somewhat) kid here....used to carry $20 in my sock for this purpose. Gross bill after a couple days, but nevertheless, still do it whenever I'm in the city. Manhattanites think I'm being ridiculous, but having the pleasure of going to school in the other boroughs, can confirm that it's necessary. The way women walk around in a city drunk, is mind-boggling too.
i see twenty something girls in short skirts teetering drunk on heels entering my building every weekend after midnight. most take uber but some walk from the subway alone. my first thought is, where are their parents? no one was this dumb when i was their age.
my kid still carries the $20 but i told her it was for emergencies (the frequent mugging hasn't returned to downtown yet). she mostly uses her debit card. the other day she told me she owed the nail salon $8 bucks because her card maxed out. i gave her a hard time for not having the emergency $20. i then made sure she went back the next day to pay them, apologize and leave an extra large tip.
Jack, this prompted a few recollections:
I drove - in segments - from Chicago to Los Angles, and ultimately to Monterey for the PARSH Rennsport Reunion in 2018. I met a friend in Denver, and we did a fairly long haul from Denver to Las Vegas in one hit; we arrived at the Wynn valet with just enough time to make a 10 PM dinner reservation. Side note - I have never seen so many people eating A5 Wagyu in sweatpants.
Naturally, our departure from Sin City the next day was, ahem, delayed. The drive along I-15 was hellish, for a myriad of reasons. We were somewhere around Barstow when my buddy’s Turbo needed gas, so we stopped at a substantial truck stop / gas station off the Interstate - think Love’s / Pilot Flying J, it wasn’t an Arco. The parking lot was mostly gravel, and there were numerous occupants of said parking lot who were clearly on speed; naturally, I felt right at home given my humble, hardscrabble, hillbilly upbringing.
We finally made it to Malibu, where we had a beachfront Airbnb for a few nights. Another side note - it was probably a mile or two from The Malibu Kitchen, where you and I once had breakfast with a certain Fortunate Son. It was just before 9 PM on a Sunday night.
Apparently, there are precisely three places to find dinner at 9 PM on a Sunday night in Malibu:
1-Jack In The Box
2-NOBU
3-Mastro’s Ocean Club
(The Taco Bell inside the 76 station at the intersection of PCH and Sunset was, inexplicably, closed.)
We were driving tastefully on this jaunt, so we settled for Mastro’s (NOBU was booked).
The next morning, we were up and into the Malibu canyons before sunrise, and we’d had our fill by lunchtime. We spent the afternoon on our balcony overlooking the Pacific with a box of cigars and several bottles of wine. It was one of the best - and most carefree - days of my life.
————
On another trip to Los Angeles, I had dinner with a certain former journosaur-cum-PR flack at APL; APL references the initials of Adam Perry Lang, restauranteur / former Jeffrey Epstein personal chef. For some reason, APL is no longer in business.
APL’s menu (in)famously included a “Felony Knife,” which was priced at $950.01 to deter theft:
“Dead fucking serious,” he says. “If they steal it, it’s $950 because that’s the bare minimum for a felony in the state of California.”
Link: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/please-not-steal-adam-perry-152705445.html
————
The scourge of Arco has recently made its way to my neighborhood in Atlanta; there’s a palatial new Arco station that sells prepared food and also offers an extensive selection of wine. The bathrooms are unlocked. For now.
I have a topical if not personal question with regards to "I slipped a Boker Applegate-Fairbairn into my waistband..."
What's the reason you don't carry a firearm? You have talked about gun ownership in the past, have good working knowledge of them, and often travel to places where such a thing might be necessary.
Just wondering.
Oh, it's because I have no desire to hurt anyone with a firearm... ever again.
That's a loaded statement. Badum-kss.
Our host asked what we'd like to read next. If legally possible I have long been curious what the story was.
I'm in the middle of doing something that should make it possible to tell the story soon.
As an on-again, off-again resident of said state and a fan of the appendix carry, I can assure you that's it's quite simple to check said paperweight and unpack it as the naked rump of the "Welcome to the Golden State" sign shrinks in your rear-view mirror.
Is ARCO is the worst of the lot, I submit Stewart's as the best of the regional gas/c stores.
We always used to buy the $2.97(?) six packs of Stewarts Mountain Brew on motorcycle tours in the Adirondacks in college. Was saddened when I just looked it up and saw that it's discontinued as of 2018. Not that it was a particularly good beer, it was just very cheap and I associate it with riding our old UJMs on beautiful roads and camping out by the lakes out there.
IIRC Mountain Brew itself was brewed for Stewarts by Genesee so it may very well have BEEN Genesee all along. I'll be honest I never thought it ever was anything that special (and I'm even more ambivalent about Genesee if I'm honest) but it was purely a nostalgia thing to remember being a broke college student on my $950 '78 GS1000 buying a $3 six pack.
The only weapons laws in the US that are more confusing and inconsistent than those for firearms are the laws governing knives.
Yeah. And if you put something like a Microtech or Benchmade OTF auto in your checked baggage they'll just steal it.
Talk about low trust interactions.
The interactions that be require using a knife or checking your luggage? /s
Dealing with any government employee or official.
Here, in the Tulsa area, we have a Mr. Bass maybe a 1/4 mile from my house. Locally owned, open 24/7/365. Beer sales til 2:30am. Need snacks, fishing gear, live fishing bait, kerosene, propane, ice, cigs, lottery tickets, ice cream, fountain drinks etc, it's all there.
They also still sell all 3 grades of gasoline ethanol free, with their own dedicated hoses.
Same gas station as my story above they had real gas. Tempting, but at a $1 more per I couldn't justify filling up the appliance I was driving.
Appliances no, even the Egoboost drinks E88 from the Casey's, when I'm around one.
But the MG gets the good shit. Besides, it's got a 5-gallon tank!
We are right by the lake, so there are a lot of people filling their boats up. A lot of those boats are older and can't handle ethanol. I assume that's the rationale behind all the non-ethanol Gas choices.
Up here in da UP they call it recreational gas.
We got a new Circle K about 10 minutes away from my house with "E0" 90 Octane. All my old carb bikes get it. My Suburban gets the 30 year old gas that I drain from the 40 year old project bikes I pick up lol
Eh, even in the worst parts of the UK (usually the poorest parts of any given city) you never have to pre-pay for gas, and ours is much more expensive than yours. Because we're such a small country, we really don't have regional chains (of anything). It's all big multinationals (and supermarkets) who supply gas. Shell, Texaco, BP. So they tend to be kept to a certain standard (although I expect they're franchises).
Weirdly nothing is ever locked up here. Tobacco products are always behind the counter (and now have to be kept in a closed cupboard). Hard liquor (usually in supermarkets) will have some kind of anti-theft device on the cap which is removed when you pay. If it's your standard liquor store, have at it.
And we're having just as much of a standard of living crisis as you guys and it's getting worse.
Some aspects of this are downstream from culture and diversity, i think.
Hello from the other side of that retail counter.
I manage a small town hardware store located (inside a grocery store) halfway (20ish minutes) between two of IL's less reputable cities.
The amount of stuff we have to lock up, and the dollars we have dedicated to LP is absurd -- and it's not due to the locals. Every few months word gets out on the street -- go 20 minutes, the have good shit and low security. The staff, the regulars, we all see the absurdity of it. Local PD cracks down, but there is only so much one can do.
Ironically, the liquor department can leave $100 bottles of high-end bourbon on an endcap, but it's always the Hennessy and Crown Royal that get stolen...
We tend to lose power tools, knives, and the like. Oh---and the meet department loses steak.
I'm surprised they have the willpower to go twenty minutes for free stuff. That's like halfway to having a job or something!
They go where their drug dealer sends them. Usually in a "dump" car. H
https://nypost.com/2022/07/30/spam-goes-on-lockdown-due-to-inflation/?utm_source=NYPTwitter&utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_medium=SocialFlow Where does locking up canned meats fit in the scale?
'“Someone is stealing this because they need it,” agreed Delia Kemph, a 28-year-old teacher.'
This viewpoint is acceptable coming from a child but not from an adult. Using perceived need as justification for theft is the lever by which society will collapse. During the Great Depression? Yeah, maybe. Right now, when everyone south of Goldman Sachs has the HELP WANTED signs out? I don't think so.
If I can't find work in my field by winter, I'm going to go to Sheetz and make sandwiches for $22 an hour. I'm not above that work and neither is anyone else. If you'd rather steal than do that, you're acting out of something other than need.
I wonder if they’re seeing a trend of people stealing canned food or if they just lock up everything over a certain dollar amount and inflation has pushed spam and tuna into that territory. But you’re right, so many of society’s problems would be solved if more people understood there is dignity on work, even work that may be “beneath” you.
A lot of the problem here in the UK is people do work, but the minimum wage + any government welfare they may receive (which is extremely hard to get) isn't enough because of spiralling inflation, our ridiculous rent and house prices and childcare costs. Plus energy bills, which have doubled in the last year.
There is work out there, because of the labor shortages caused by Brexit, but companies have yet to catch on to the idea they need to raise wages now they can't count on European immigrants working for minimum.
The raw stupidity of eurocrats thinking they could sanction Vlad and still get cheap fuel...
I don’t think the UK gets much gas from Russia, but was absolutely the right thing to do and I think most Europeans would happily eat the cost. The UKs problem is blatant profiteering because our energy suppliers are privatised (part of the great Conservative nationalisation of the eighties and nineties that ensured all their mates got to own all the infrastructure and got insanely rich).
Warning, link to lefty Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jul/28/an-insult-soaring-profits-at-shell-and-centrica-cause-outrage?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
The difficulty is that it's a regional market so rising prices in Europe mean rising prices in the UK as well. We will have to agree to disagree on the validity of sanctions. From my perspective it's a coward's way to make war on a country... but even if you think that Russia should be punished for the Ukraine thing it seems to me that the sanctions are doing more harm to Europe than to Russia. Come December, when everyone in Germany and Poland is enjoying in-home temperatures of a rationed 15 deg. C and the ruble is worth 2x what it was in 2020, we will see how righteous they feel... I am probably on the wrong side of history here, but I think Russia has as much right to invade Ukraine as the US does to conduct law enforcement in Mexico and South America, which is to say "more than you'd think, but maybe less than what's being done."
yup. in the same city that locks down spam. chinese ladies patrol for 5 cent deposit bottles and cans. they leave every garbage pile neater than they found it. they're clean, never beg and say thank you if you give them your empty. it's a question of values.
Just Tuesday I was at a rural gas station that didn't have the option of paying at the pump. I noted my number and went in anticipating a struggle. The exceptionally amiable guy asked me how much I wanted, after a bit of ships in the night entirely on my part he said why don't you just fill up and come back. It's possible that this interaction was facilitated by our mutual lack of melanin but that did not seem to be the vibe. In fact on this particular journey the only trouble I encountered was with a similarly pale hotel security guard of the "you are all equally worthless" Ermey mold hassling me for having the temerity to use the pool at 2130 when it closed at 2200.
It’s funny. Last week, I went to my local BP since they had the cheapest gas at that point. But my BP Visa card, which was just taken over by the First National Bank of Omaha (same as Speedway cards), for some reason, wasn’t playing nice with the pumps, and for whatever reason, you have to use the card at the pump instead of the BP app in order to ensure that you get whatever discounts you have available. (Same with GREEDway!) Card gets stuck in the reader after the NFC thing fails to work, so I trudge towards the store.
The counter attendant, a pleasant woman of color, immediately asks what the issue was, and then asks for the pump number. As she walks back into the back room with the controls on the pumps in order to free my card, she apologizes six ways to Sunday, and states that they have been having no end of trouble with the card transition, and that they’re trying to resolve things! She even showed me a copy of the Email from corporate. I brought the card back in and had her tee up the fill (guessed $90), filled up with no issue, and she was genuinely happy when I saw on my receipt that I’d gotten all the discounts; she was whooping and hollering like I’d found the lost coin! 😉
I should have gotten her name and given an attaboy to the station manager.
Among the many despicable aspects of the "turning into your parents" series of insurance commercials is the one where apparently it is uncool to compliment an employee to his or her manager. That could make the difference between getting a raise or getting fired, but helping people is lame.
I've purchased Arco gas exactly once while driving a car. The Debit Cards Only thing surprised and annoyed me. Four years later I get a check in the mail larger than my purchase amount as a result of a class action lawsuit (apparently due to some illegal fee on the purchase). A year after that I get another check as a result of a follow up class action lawsuit (something about interest charged on the fee). As a result Arco is the only company who has ever paid me to take their gas.
As someone loosely involved in the gas station business, I have observed this myself for many many years. My town is comfortably middle class with certain upper middle class neighborhoods but we neighbor an inner ring suburb with higher crime and the transition to the bullet proof glass model slowly over the last decade or two has been interesting. It initially sparked a desire to leave but following the stats, our crime rate does not appear to have increased in 20+ years, likely due to our well funded police department (another topic!). At least we they leave the gas station bathrooms unlocked for us around here!
Not a gas station but...
We have a restaurant (well it is really a large bar with 3 rooms and a patio with about 40-50 tables) that lets you eat lunch and then you go up to the bar and tell them what you had for lunch. You never get a bill from the server. The bar tender can't see your table, and you don't even get the same server during the meal, it is more communal service and any of the 3 or 4 servers will stop by regularly at your table. The place is awesome and makes you feel like you live in Mayberry.
Cool, an Hyperion reference. That I can relate to, thank you!
The rest of what you write about is somewhat remote from the reality I see in my Montreal neighborhood, where only the hunting rifles are locked at Canadian Tire, *and* the ice in some gas station, but not all. Go figure. I have myself forgotten to pay for gas on few occasions, simply by being distracted. All of this is no news though. I think it is very unfortunate to see the impact of wealth disparity, especially in some US cities (although Asia is worst from my experience).
But what I meant to comment on is that I believe you would appreciate the writings of Mr Douglas Philips (the quantum series) and Mr Peter Cawdron, from who I absolutely love the way they explain in their epilogues the “hypothesis” they make to go from reality to (hard) sci-fi. I make my son read it to develop his anticipation capabilities (aka how perspective shifts depending on the viewpoint).
Cheers from the North! (Always enjoy reading you, even though not always in agreement, you often bring me an interesting and informative new perspective, and I can relate to the logic).
I looked tonight at my local gas station/convenience store. Restrooms unlocked and clean, all food items were unlocked and unguarded. The only thing that was locked up was the cigarettes/tobacco. Ice was in a cooler outside the side door and completely unsupervised. I guess suburban Utah must be a pretty high-trust community. I did read a local news story this week about a bridal shop in downtown Salt Lake City that had to close/move to the suburbs because the local “unhomed” individuals kept coming in and harassing/assaulting the employees.
Also, don't go to gas stations after sundown if you can avoid it.
Society swings left then right. I've read that in the '70s and '80s, parents in New York city would give their kids $20 to carry in case they were mugged. $20, they reasoned, was enough to prevent violence and was a small price to pay for a child's safety. History tells us that the city was a shithole then, with busted budgets, trash in the streets and rampant violence. It was in 1985 that "subway vigilante" Bernard Getz shot four attempted muggers, but by that point things had been bad for a long time.
In the 90s, under William Bratton and Rudy Giulliani, the city got organized and started policing again. The policy was called "broken windows" and focused on the idea that that if you enforce the small rules it will affect the overall life in the city. It seems to have worked as by the early 2000s New York City was supposed to have been an OK place to live again, but there are people who feel that policing was too rough and too focused on people of color. They may have a point, I don't know, but whatever happened crime rates decreased.
It makes me think that many of the problems we are seeing in urban areas today could be handled if there was no tolerance for bullshit. When people are soft hearted and reluctant to enforce rules bullshit thrives - and Seattle, where I was raised, is a good example. Seattleites are nice people, they usually try to help people and the result has been an influx of homeless people. The city has become a dangerous place to be. Homeless camps have sprouted up in various areas, some sponsored by local churches, etc, and now even once quiet neighborhoods are having issues. The typical, nice Seattleites are at a loss for what to do.
Their current mayor of choice seems, like her constituents, unwilling to lower the hammer and I keep wondering when Seattleites will get finally tired of this shit, realize they have to get hard, and start voting the other way. I am convinced it will happen and the region will swing from soft touches and easy marks to "get out of my face" and "I have no tolerance for your bullshit." It will be a good thing, but how much will the average person have to suffer before the majority figure it out?
My understanding of the entire homelessness problem is probably not complete but I see three main groups: people with mental problems, druggies, and the homeless by choice. Each group requires different solutions. I think we, as a society should help the people with legit mental issues - I am not so sure what that help might look like, but we should. Drugs should be legal and as long as you don't become a problem you can do what you feel but, should a drug user become a problem, there should be consequences for crimes and some sort of infrastructure to help wean them off of drugs. If they can't be or choose not to be weaned, then we start looking at other options - maybe permanent hospitalization or prison. And for those people for whom homelessness is a lifestyle choice, the goal would be to make it so miserable on them that they would make better choices.
Right now, small-town America benefits from two things. One, they don't have the infrastructure to deal with permanent homeless populations of any real size - no large soup kitchens, no large shelters, and not enough people to make panhandling worthwhile - so large numbers of homeless are not attracted to those places. And two, small-town America has an abundance of people who are willing to call others out on their bullshit - the down home version of "broken windows" so maybe there really is something to that after all...
NYC (somewhat) kid here....used to carry $20 in my sock for this purpose. Gross bill after a couple days, but nevertheless, still do it whenever I'm in the city. Manhattanites think I'm being ridiculous, but having the pleasure of going to school in the other boroughs, can confirm that it's necessary. The way women walk around in a city drunk, is mind-boggling too.
i see twenty something girls in short skirts teetering drunk on heels entering my building every weekend after midnight. most take uber but some walk from the subway alone. my first thought is, where are their parents? no one was this dumb when i was their age.
my kid still carries the $20 but i told her it was for emergencies (the frequent mugging hasn't returned to downtown yet). she mostly uses her debit card. the other day she told me she owed the nail salon $8 bucks because her card maxed out. i gave her a hard time for not having the emergency $20. i then made sure she went back the next day to pay them, apologize and leave an extra large tip.