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Bird in a Blender posted:Where are you that they're still free? I haven't seen a free air pump in years. QuikTrip, son.
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May 29, 2015 21:05
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Some places are cool, if you go inside to pay cash for gas or get food or whatever and the cashier is cool enough they'll turn it on for free. Also sometimes the machine fucks up and doesn't take cards the cashier will usually turn it on for free
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May 29, 2015 21:15
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Yeah most of the Arco stations in my area will turn on the machine for you if you buy something. Gas station attendants give zero fucks.
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May 30, 2015 00:11
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Karma Monkey posted:What's weird to me about the Laughing Cow is that it's a dairy product mascot, but it has no udder. Not even death can save you from cheese.
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May 30, 2015 00:24
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I'm in Australia and I hadn't even heard of paid  air) pumps until now. What the gently caress, America? It's air! What are you even paying for, operation of the compressor? 
AlphaKretin has a new favorite as of 02:47 on May 30, 2015 |
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May 30, 2015 01:36
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Unless things changed since I worked at Speedway the attendants have nothing to do with the air pumps and can't even give refunds if they steal your change. It is true though that they give no fucks.
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May 30, 2015 01:47
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AlphaKretin posted:I'm in Australia and I hadn't even heard of paid gas pumps until now. What the gently caress, America? It's air! What are you even paying for, operation of the compressor? You are paying for the gas that comes out of the nozzle and goes into your gas tank. A lot of not-poo poo gas station have free air stations, at least in my area. Like other people said, if they can't find one they live in a shithole. I have never paid for air in my life.
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May 30, 2015 01:49
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AlphaKretin posted:I'm in Australia and I hadn't even heard of paid gas pumps until now. What the gently caress, America? It's air! What are you even paying for, operation of the compressor? The service. If you don't have a choice, they can charge whatever the gently caress they want. This is also why Bud Light at a baseball game costs $8.50.
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May 30, 2015 02:11
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Electricity and maintenance? I am American and drove in England for the first time ever a few weeks back and I was very confused by the gas pumps there. You see in America no one is trusted and you have to pay first. In the UK I assume no one is trusted but they have cameras and big brother everywhere so you pump first and pay. I'm the dumbass that didn't know this and walked in to ask the guy behind the counter what to do.
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May 30, 2015 02:26
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Fart Sandwiches posted:Electricity and maintenance? I suppose. I always assumed that (and worker salaries &c.) was paid for by the higher-than-average price of stuff inside and the price of the actual fuel. They trust us to pump first here too, and (AFAIK  ) we don't have big brother cameras everywhere, though obviously petrol stations have some normal security cameras.
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May 30, 2015 02:52
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If you're in Ohio the chain Bellstores still let's you pump without paying, but only if they can see your license plate. Then they write down the make/model/color of your car and report it to the police. I'm pretty sure nothing ever happens from there though. You actually can get wrote up if you tell someone to prepay. They would rather you just ignore the person until they get angry enough to come in and yell at you.
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May 30, 2015 04:35
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Decrepus posted:Not even death can save you from cheese. MY UDDERS DEATHS WILL NOT BE IN VAIN
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May 30, 2015 07:10
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AlphaKretin posted:I'm in Australia and I hadn't even heard of paid I live in one of the few states in the US that doesn't allow you to pump your own gas so maybe it helps offset the added labor required to keep Oregonians from causing the whole state to burst into flame or whatever that rule was supposed to prevent? Like I said, nine times out of ten if you ask the attendant to turn on the pump for you, they will. Being polite is a handy skill
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May 30, 2015 12:55
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Fart Sandwiches posted:Electricity and maintenance? It's rare to have to pre-pay in Minnesota. You only run into it in really shady areas. Everywhere I go, I pump first and then go in. There was an SA near me years ago that switched to pre-pay to save on drive offs. The fact is that they make their money on in-store purchases. If you require pre-pay, everyone will pay at the pump and not even come in. They switched back after about 6 months.
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May 30, 2015 17:09
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aerion111 posted:It'd be a bit creepier if they showed some of the less... Survivable products. that reminds me of Bills Barbecue, which has two really stoked pigs eating pork on the sign 
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May 30, 2015 18:38
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That's a mark of quality bbq, along with hand painted coke signs from the 40s and being a fire hazard
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May 30, 2015 19:44
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I work for a lovely penny-pinching chain of gas stations in (South) Australia and even they don't charge for Air.
Croccers has a new favorite as of 04:12 on May 31, 2015 |
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May 31, 2015 04:08
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So in America, you pay for air AND have to pay before you pump?  In Britain most petrol stations even give you 24 hours to pay if you fill up and then realise you are a dumbfuck and have forgotten your wallet. So in the good old USA people willingly pay for air, aren't trusted enough to fill up before paying (sometimes aren't trusted to even pump it themselves) and you call it "gas" stations? Lol. Rule Britannia Thrifting Day! has a new favorite as of 04:27 on May 31, 2015 |
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May 31, 2015 04:21
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AIR CHAT. Best I've seen was a free air pump that had a digital readout where you set the exact pressure you wanted to reach, and then the thing beeped once it hit it while you were filling your tires. Before you ask, yes, it automatically resets to 32psi after a minute of non-use so the next idiot doesn't blow themselves up attempting to put truck-tire pressures into their subcompact.
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May 31, 2015 04:26
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Boat posted:AIR CHAT. Wow, ok then. I didn't think I lived in a particularly well-off area, but it can't be too bad if I've never seen anything but this and others are calling it rare. Maybe the companies responsible for air pumps here make a killing in another industry and can afford to be generous?
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May 31, 2015 04:34
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Every gas station I've been to since I started driving (10 years ago) has a card reader right at the pump, you literally can't pump gas without swiping first, is this not normal?
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May 31, 2015 05:02
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British Columbia went Pre-Pay in 2008, and most people opted to use the pump-PIN pads to get gas unless you were using cash. I drove through 4 provinces pumping my gas first before hitting BC and wondering why the hell the pump wouldn't turn on. They realized that they saved on drive-offs (generally the highest gas prices in the country) but lost the walk-in business. A few chains responded by putting Tim Hortons in (Like a Dunkin' Donuts if you don't speak Canadian) with a limited menu and tiny footprint and sales exploded. Do I want to get my Tims while I get gas before my commute? gently caress yes I do! Most of these locations have been updated at least once since they went in, which tells you how well they were doing. Other chains that couldn't score a full store got Tim Hortons Express, which is just a self-serve coffee bar like any other but all Tim Hortons branded coffee and stuff. They don't even have employees, you just pay the gas station clerks. The rest of the gas stations who can't get in on the sweet Timmys cash started finding more upscale brands and stepping up their coffee and convenience food game. None of this is a dumb move but I find it interesting to see a free-market solution in action to the question of "well what do we do if everyone can pay at the pump with debit/credit/speedpasses?" I've also noticed that less and less stations offer full service. They trust pretty much everyone to pump their own gas and it's cheaper to not pay a guy to stand outside. If they have someone, they have a truck bay with a diesel pump and you can hand a fleet card over and never leave the truck. If you really wanted to, you could go to a full service station, pay a few cents extra on your gas to get it pumped, then rock up through the Tim's drive through and leave with breakfast without leaving your car. It's not a drive through liquor store, but it's nice when it's cold as gently caress out.
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May 31, 2015 05:13
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reformed bad troll posted:So in America, you pay for air AND have to pay before you pump? I love posts like this, cuz it really helps the rest of us find the insufferable goobers in the thread. Congrats on being born in the UK dude, your weird misplaced outrage about gas stations is completely justified.
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May 31, 2015 07:02
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MAD ABOUT GAS STATIONS AND GEOPOLITICS
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May 31, 2015 07:11
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wait no i think that's the subtitle to the politoons thread
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May 31, 2015 07:11
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Radio Help posted:I love posts like this, cuz it really helps the rest of us find the insufferable goobers in the thread. Congrats on being born in the UK dude, your weird misplaced outrage about gas stations is completely justified. Settle down.
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May 31, 2015 08:42
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Radio Help posted:I love posts like this, cuz it really helps the rest of us find the insufferable goobers in the thread. Congrats on being born in the UK dude, your weird misplaced outrage about gas stations is completely justified. At least he isn't circumcised. And he probably has his toilet paper the right way round too.
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May 31, 2015 09:36
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Everyone knows the dollar menu at McDonalds. So I don't know why they altered it so that almost everything is now $1.50 or so. Or why most of the stores around here closed for a month to get remodeled, so now every single loving store looks the same. There used to be one with a two-story kids area with giant playplace. Gone. One that was decorated like a loving dinosaur park. Gone. One that had aquariums in it! Gone. They are all the same now with the same poo poo design...and they wonder why they are losing money?
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May 31, 2015 11:52
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reformed bad troll posted:Settle down. No you. Heh (gotcha) Cowslips Warren posted:Everyone knows the dollar menu at McDonalds. So I don't know why they altered it so that almost everything is now $1.50 or so. Or why most of the stores around here closed for a month to get remodeled, so now every single loving store looks the same. There used to be one with a two-story kids area with giant playplace. Gone. One that was decorated like a loving dinosaur park. Gone. One that had aquariums in it! Gone. They are all the same now with the same poo poo design...and they wonder why they are losing money? This one's pretty easy to explain. The dollar menu is downplayed because McDonalds wants to appeal to millennials, and millennials (according to overly-broad marketing tropes) would rather pay more for something they perceive as higher-quality. The stores look the same because they always kind of have been the same, save for the few outlier franchises in small towns. Playplaces are gone because they're an insurance liability and are a hassle to clean. The aquarium costs more money to maintain than it makes for the store, and a sizable portion of the sampled market demographic didn't even notice that the dinosaur was there in the first place. Say what you want about McDonald's lovely food or their weird, lowest-common-denominator ad campaigns, but at the end of the day most of their decisions actually do make sense on a very broad level. And they're a very broad company. That's the nature of business on that level. I mean, can you think of a single WalMart or Target that has regional character? edit: RPATDO_LAMD posted:At least he isn't circumcised. oh now ya done it Radio Help has a new favorite as of 12:39 on May 31, 2015 |
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May 31, 2015 12:19
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God bless the queen etc...
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May 31, 2015 12:37
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I'm only mad cuz I'm jealous of your free air pumps dude 
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May 31, 2015 12:41
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Radio Help posted:I'm only mad cuz I'm jealous of your free air pumps dude It all evens out. We need to pay £125 a year tax to own a TV. That's a lot of air, though.
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May 31, 2015 12:44
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Holy poo poo that's like $7,000 USD. My patriotism is restored!
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May 31, 2015 12:46
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reformed bad troll posted:It all evens out. We need to pay £125 a year tax to own a TV. On the other hand, the TV licence gives us the BBC.  At least until the Tories ruin it. 
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May 31, 2015 14:01
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Super Waffle posted:Every gas station I've been to since I started driving (10 years ago) has a card reader right at the pump, you literally can't pump gas without swiping first, is this not normal?  my impulse sales.
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May 31, 2015 14:15
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Yvonmukluk posted:On the other hand, the TV licence gives us the BBC. The BBC wastes loads of money buying american shows for channels no one watches, and paying Danny Murphy (and others) to be a thick, dour oval office about the football. It needs to be razed to the ground asap.
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May 31, 2015 14:33
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Does anyone have an opinion as to why McDonalds is doing so bad? I think it's from years of alienating their regular customer base of poor people and old people while failing to attract the people they're targeting because they're McDonalds and they're awful.
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May 31, 2015 15:25
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cheerfullydrab posted:Does anyone have an opinion as to why McDonalds is doing so bad? They've taken a PR beating, starting with super-size me. I think after that McDonald's=Bad became a part of the cultural narrative, especially for young people who now have grown up and possess purchasing power. It's sort of what happened to soda, except I think I started hearing about people just dropping soda from their diets to lose weight some time around 2001 or 2002. Now coke and pepsi are a little freaked out that 'drop soda to lose weight' is pretty much a no-brainer at this point, as it's really cutting into sales. Doubly so since those studies came out linking diet soda to the death of intestinal flora. I think coke was making that High Protein super milk (only twice the price of regular milk!) and both brands tried a version that was sweetened with a mixture of sugar in stevia, in green cans. Because green means that it's good for you.
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May 31, 2015 15:43
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sassassin posted:The BBC wastes loads of money buying american shows for channels no one watches, and paying Danny Murphy (and others) to be a thick, dour oval office about the football. It needs to be razed to the ground asap. Hear hear. It should go to a subscribers-only pay model. I hate being forced to pay for it when I never watch the sodding thing anyway. Of course this means they would only get a fraction of their budget, so maybe they'll be forced to throw out all the poo poo and just focus on the decent programmes.
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May 31, 2015 18:33
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Full Battle Rattle posted:and both brands tried a version that was sweetened with a mixture of sugar in stevia, in green cans. Because green means that it's good for you. Coke's is called "Coca-Cola Life"
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May 31, 2015 18:38
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