- cross-posted to:
- technews@radiation.party
- cross-posted to:
- technews@radiation.party
Oregon’s Senate has repealed a 72-year prohibition against self-service gas, with new legislation requiring gas stations to staff half the available pumps, while allowing the rest to be self-service. The bill, responding to industry staffing shortages, also prohibits charging more for full-service than self-service, likely leading to the phasing out of full-service pumps.
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Now we can only make fun of New Jerseyans for being too stupid to be trusted around a gas pump.
Hey leave us alone. We’ll figure it out in another 72.
Omg, tell me about it. Moved to NJ and everyone is clueless when they leave the state and have to pump… Ok not everyone, but the number is above zero. 👍
I grew up in farm country NJ. One day I drove to Pennsylvania with these two girls(I think I was high school senior at the time) because it was the closest 24hr Walmart. On the way back I needed to get gas and wanted to get a pack of smokes cause it was cheaper there. I gave one of girls my debit card, told her to put 20 in the tank and went into the store. I took a piss a bathroom, got out went to the counter and the guy was laughing. He said “these girls must be from NJ”… “why do you say that?”… “they have been trying to pump gas and can’t get it started”
We watched them for 20 minutes before I felt bad and went out and pumped the gas. They were not the smartest girls but wow…
Smell that? That’s the smell of FREEDOM.
And the smell of gas because I’ve never learned how to pump and it’s all over the ground please send help.
… you stick it in your car, pull the lever, and wait for it to stop on it’s own … hardly needs learning.
I was doing it before I was 12 because my mother was disabled. If you can’t figure it out, you might be an idiot.
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Honestly these days it’s trivial to look up how to do something. I get that not everyone is technically inclined, but it’s just as easy to look the next car over and watch what they are doing.
I have more trouble figuring out why the pump won’t read my card than putting the gas in my car.
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I generally tap where possible, but yeah skimmers are an issue both inside the stores and at the pumps themselves.
This freedom smells suspiciously like poverty.
I live in Washington. I remember one time crossing the border from Portland, Oregon to Vancouver, Washington. What’s funny is that Portland has two rivers. The Willamette to the South and the Columbia to the North. The Columbia is the border with Washington. During that trip I stopped for gas, and figured that since I just crossed a river I must be in Vancouver. I got out and started pumping gas only for a guy in an orange vest to come screaming at me to stop like I was about to blow the place up, which is weird because as many of you know it’s not that hard to pump gas? Turns out I was in the strip of land in Portland that’s between the Willamette and the Columbia, and so I was still in Oregon.
Just a little funny anecdote about this whole situation.
Meanwhile, I live in a country where probably over half the gas stations have no personnel at all.
I remember one service station testing the concept of having staff help with gas, and it felt really awkward.
That’s interesting, I live in a country where the compete opposite happens, you don’t touch the pump at all, a lot of people don’t even leave the car usually. The gas station staff does it, never heard of one here where you could do it yourself.
Might sound fancy, but it’s just mistrust.
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I live in Oregon and moved here from a self pump state, personally I love not getting out of my car to pump gas. Doubly so when it’s shitty out. I hope most places around here keep the gas pump people. They probably will tbh because native Oregonians would have a fit, especially old timers.
I also love not having to get out to pump and rarely ever have to wait in line. The longest I’ve ever waited for gas was in NorCal off I5 where every single person ahead of us wanted to spend 30 minutes inside the convenience store buying snacks while the pumps were running outside.
I forsee stations cutting all their staffing as they have a financial benefit to do so. We should also expect card skimming to increase as nobody will be monitoring the pumps now.
If Costco cuts those jobs there will be riots. Oregon wouldn’t be able to process it.
So… are we celebrating a bunch of people losing their jobs?
Its a dumb job
So are about 80% of the rest of the jobs.
Pumping gas may be one of the absolute dumbest jobs though. We don’t need to pay people for the sake of paying them…
The article snippet quoted here literally says this was in response to industry staffing shortages…
There is no shortage of workers. There is only a shortage of employers willing to pay.
Sure, but that’s entirely beside the point here. Nobody is celebrating people being laid off en masse. The law changed because these jobs were apparently not being occupied to begin with,
Then this is a capitulation we shouldn’t have made. These companies tried to coerce us into letting them get away with not hiring people, despite us having a law intended to make them hire people, and we have allowed them to get away with it.
“Make work” laws are terrible policy.
You’re forcing consumers to pay a human who is only there to inconvenience them.
There’s a reason we don’t have laws protecting buggy-whip makers. People need to find new jobs that provide value to society.
I was a little shocked the first time I heard some states in the USA still have this. In my country attended petrol/diesel pumps is a 40+ years old thing. Probably about time to get rid of it?
- It’s not good if people are loosing jobs, but the world has been like this for hundreds of years. There’s countless of occupations through the ages that are gone now. For better or worse, time moves on relentlessly.
According to the companies that stand to directly benefit from this new law? I haven’t noticed a shortage of workers at any station and I have to fill up every 4 days.
Celebrating the removal of an asinine law that forbid people from doing a common task themselves.
Pointless jobs, yes
If you have not experienced the lines for gas at an Oregon Costco, you’ve really missed out. End of an era.
People in Oregon really don’t believe me when I say I never waited in line for gas when I lived in other states.
Costco has lines regardless of whether it’s self serve though
Yup, only place I’ve ever waited for gas (outside of a hurricane or blizzard being imminent) is in NJ. Then they always try to divert me into a lane with the pump on the wrong side which I’ll have none of because I know they’ll just drag a dirty rubber hose across my paint, it’s bad enough that they touch my car at all. (Though I realize that’s mostly a me issue)
oh no I’m right there with you. I used to try to avoid having to stop for gas in NJ or OR at all costs until I got a car that wants 93, but we only have 91 in CA but they have 92 in OR so I just deal with it (it gets noticeably better fuel economy).
In college, I always opted for AM/PM gridlock roulette over whatever was three cents more across the street with no line. By adult time, I learned when stations I wanted to use were busy and rescheduled getting gas around that.
They rightly shouldn’t. Either you’ve been lucky, don’t drive much, or are stretching the truth.
We’re self-service in California and our Costco gas queues are also asinine. Are they just that much worse over there?
Didn’t they already allow self service in rural areas or was this somewhere else? I feel like I saw videos of people pumping gas in weird ways.
Oregonian here, you are correct. This headline is kinda click baity, but they did expand that rule so it’s not completely off.
But yeah, if an area had under a certain population they were not required to staff the gas pumps. Higher population density areas it’s still required. Well, was still required. That’s gone now haha
Yes, but only for the last couple of years. Most Oregonians have never pumped gas.
During the pandemic, I think?
How does it lead to the phasing out of full service pumps when it requires half the pumps to be full service?
Because in another 5 years the staff shortage will be so bad that they can’t staff the pumps, and their Congress will then remove full service pumping from law completely. Granted, some stations (the largest nicest ones with lots of convenience store offerings) will probably keep some full-service pumps as it will always help with bringing people into the store, but a lot of the rural stations will definitely become self service only.
Nah, there are people that really need those jobs. The guy at my local station has a brain injury, but he kicks ass a pumping gas quickly. Dude is in great shape from constantly running from pump to pump. Some people need a simple job and that’s fine.
People will tend to prefer the self-service pumps, which will push in favor of fully removing the requirement.
So now it’s just NJ?
Now we’re going to have even more unemployed homeless people. Wonderful.
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