Can’t Get Gas But He Has Plenty Of Hot Air

I’m working at a gas station on a kind of slow morning. I’m manning the registers alone while my coworkers are in the back stocking. A teenage boy comes in looking pissed off and slams his hands on my counter.

Boy: “Your pumps won’t take my card!”

Me: “I’m sorry about that. I can take it in here. How much would you like to put on it?”

Boy: “I don’t know… This is stupid. Why wouldn’t it take my card outside?”

Me: “The pump alert just says it was a bad card read, not a big deal. I suggest getting around $20. If you don’t need that much, you won’t be charged for it as the payment doesn’t go through until you’re done.”

Boy: “Whatever.”

I put the prepay on the pump, he jams his card into the machine, and it doesn’t read the chip. I just ask him to swipe it, which he does. He enters his PIN and then turns to run out the door. My register rejects his card, so I yell at him to come back.

Boy: “What the f***? I have money.”

Me: “It said it was a network rejection.”

At this point, a message goes across my screen telling me the entire network is down.

Me: “Oh, my entire credit card system is down.”

Boy: “What does that mean?”

Me: “Unfortunately, I cannot accept card payments until it comes back up. The last time this happened, it only took—”

The kid slams his hands on the counter and gets into my face.

Boy: “HOW THE F*** AM I SUPPOSED TO GET GAS, THEN?!”

Before I could answer, he turned and stalked out the door. I watched as he went back to the pump and tried to pay again with his card. I called up one of my coworkers just in case he came back in, and I continued to wait on other customers.

My coworker came out to see what was going on as the kid suddenly got back into his car and peeled out of the lot… with the hose still attached to his gas tank. My coworker ran outside to get him to stop but it was too late. Our hoses have a breakaway, so it wasn’t damaged, but we still had to file a report with the police. We had multiple cameras and a perfect shot of his license plate.

The network came back up less than three minutes after it went down. No other customers were inconvenienced.