Gas Station Conspiracy?
Sort of tongue in cheek title, but while pumping gas this week, the thought crossed my mind, do gas stations “fix” the pump so it’s impossible to stop on a round number? Obviously this only applies to those who pay at the pump with some sort of plastic, but I’d guess that’s a majority of Americans.
Think about it, a lot of people have some form of OCD weirdness with numbers, and round things to the dollar. With many years of restaurant experience, I’ve seen it time and time again, people rounding the bill to the nearest dollar when adding a tip, even if that means shorting the server. I mean, what really does it matter if your bill is $43.61 instead of $43?
So back to the pump. Could it be a trick to get people to spend more money at their pump by making it nearly impossible to stop on the dollar? Think about it. You go to the pump, intending on putting $15 in the tank. As the pump nears $15, you slow down, and do the little shuffle of squeeze, stop, look, squeeze stop, look, “damn, $15.01”, and the proceed to go to the next dollar. That could easily happen again at $16, and now you’re at $17. Say it stops. You put the pump away, go about your business, not thinking about the extra $2 you spent that you didn’t intend to. If that occurs with 60% of the customers, that could be an extra $1000 or more a day. That’s a third of a million dollars a year, easily at the minimum, that they take in that we never intended to spend at that gas station. So do you think they are doing it?