A couple of years er so ago a young man that was working as a gas jockey in British Columbia was dragged to his death when he chose to chase after a thief that was exiting the gas station he worked at without paying for a little over $12.00 worth of gas…a “gas n dash.” A horrible incident, but really….why would anyone chase after a vehicle for $12.00? Especially as it’s against the law in this country to take till shortages from one’s paycheck?
Wouldn’t you think that he should have written down the license number and make and model of the vehicle and called the police instead? Might have saved his life….
As a result of lobbying by his parents, the province of BC has passed a provincial law (Grant’s Law) that states that all customers purchasing gas or petrol products in the province must pre-pay or they can not have the product….it went into effect Feb 1.
sounds simple enough?
Tonight I stopped at my local Co-op gas station to get gas….
In order to purchase gas with your debit card you must hand your debit card to a gas station employee who puts it in his wallet. If he is pumping the gas for you – you have to go inside while you wait for him to finish…but he’s got your card. So anything you want to purchase as well as the gas has to wait….
After waiting for 10 er so minutes for the seemingly 7 year old kid to pump the gas, he comes back in and wanders into the back room…so I wait a minute er two more and the kid comes out from the back wearing his street clothes with his ball cap on and his back pack on carrying his skate board….
“uhhhhhm hello?”
he says “ya?”
“can I have my debit card?”
“holy crap! I forgot” he says…..
so we go over to the cash and he hands my card to a seemingly 9 year old wearing an assistant manager nametag and proceeds to tell him all about how much gas, which pump, how he almost headed home with my card…etc
I figure he’s accountable…he’s admitted to his mistake so he’s offa the hook…
I look at the 9 yr old and I says to him…”betcha this is a pain in the ass”
he replies..”you have noooooo idea”
I said…”so all the newspapers are talking about how much the gas stations and patrons love it”
he says…”they’ll be talking outta the other side of their mouths once everyone buys fast pay pumps and stops going to their station”
“Oh” says I, “will you guys be getting fast pay?”
to which he replies….”well ya…but it will take longer and cost way more than the already thru the roof cost cos we have to have special pumps so our co-operative members can enter their membership numbers….”
“how much is way more?” I ask
“500K to do all our pumps” he says “and now we have to have 2 people on all the time too so wages are gonna cost the company more”
in the end it took me a full 25 minutes to get my gas, pay for it and get back to my car….
I get the the parents of the young man that was killed in 2005 are devastated by his loss. But I can’t help but wonder why I am being inconvenienced because they didn’t teach that young man that his life was worth more than $12.00.
4 Responses to an issue of accountability…?