I can't see myself headed back to Oregon any time soon, but good. It was so frustrating trying to get gas behind a line of twenty five cars being "served" by a single slack jawed yokel taking smoke breaks between each car and God help you if you needed gas at night when everybody was closed.
New Jersey gas attendants can be surly, but my experiences driving there at least moved the cars through getting gas efficiently.
As someone from NJ I agree 100% with surly. Also you can get someone weird or the guy who just wants to talk the entire time. I really do hope this changes one day.
Having lived in NJ most of my life, and recently driving almost cross country to FL, the only benefits of living in FL is that there are like never any lines waiting for gas, and I don't have to wait for a guy to come out. I just pull up, fill up, and GTFO.
Now I'm curious about the situation that lead to that to that exception being added and if there was a death involved where someone held it in until morning when they should have just gone right away.
The state's 72-year ban on self-service pumps was due in large part to safety concerns for drivers. A state law cited "increased risk of crime and the increased risk of personal injury resulting from slipping on slick surfaces."
What an abomination of an excuse, and I live here.
That is a very good concern to have but even when the station’s had attendants, people still got skimmed at gas stations. It’s a concern that everyone should have at any place where you swipe or insert your card to pay. Banks, stores, ATM’s, etc
That must’ve been one of the most useless regulations. Is that just about jobs? I can’t really imagine it being a security risk issue or any other reason
Yeah, jobs. And yeah, it was fucking stupid. Imagine outlawing opening the front door to any business, so that every business would have to hire greeters to generate jobs. Same same.
It's just welfare, but in its cruelest possible form. If we're going to require someone to piss 8 hours of their day away contributing nothing to society (worse than nothing in practice... gassing up in Oregon took FOREVER cuz you'd be stuck waiting for an attendant to serve a backup of 15 cars) just so that person can collect a pay check... why not just give them the pay check with no strings attached? Then they can use that time to improve themselves, or at the very least, not spend their waking hours inhaling gasoline fumes and ruining their knees and such.
Protect people, not jobs. Robots and AI are replacing most of us soon anyway: mandating busywork is NOT the solution to getting food on everyone's table.
If enough people love it, then full service pumps will still hang around as an option. Personally as someone who lived in Minneapolis for 20 years, full service pumps would have been fucking amazing in the winter, but mandating them by law is just stupid.
The fact that full service doesn't exist even in the frozen tundra of MN leads me to believe very few people are actually willing to pay extra for it.
If enough people love it, then full service pumps will still hang around as an option.
Yes we all know that companies never cut out extras to reduce costs. That is why flying domestic gets better every year, when video games are released they have been properly QAed and dont need to be patched. I remember when I was a kid you had to bag and scan your groceries yourself, now every store has all these open registers where people do that for you.
Corporate world is like this as well. Back in the day I had to answer my own calls, we didn't have security or IT, or receptionists, or secretaries, and you had to make your own coffee. Now, I go to work in my nice office (thank goodness cubicals and open office are gone) and there are so many support staff to keep me focused on getting stuff done.
I am positive that a product that is effectively irreplaceable will be the same way.
I don't understand anyone who says there's long waits, because I never have that problem, even when it's crowded. Conversely, when I lived in the midwest, I would have to wait for people to finish taking their sweet time paying inside before I could get to the pump.
Here we have an attendant who handles the pump and most people don't even get out of their car. They just drive away when it's done.
Anyhow, it's not a big deal to me either way. I don't mind that there's people being paid for that, because our gas prices don't seem higher for it compared to our neighbors. But I also wouldn't terribly mind getting out and pumping it myself either
Also, how about electric vehicle charging? Do these attendants have to plug the car in for you? Just a matter of time before gasoline cars are obsolete.
No it's actually cheaper than Washington and California prices. Companies aren't going to lower their prices just because their costs went down. That isn't how the gasoline market works.
Electric vehicle charging is usually done at places you stop for a while, like department store parking lots. I don't see the stations at gas stations much at all
And they were never governed by the gas station laws
I was about to say. I appreciate every time they agree to pump my gas. The convenience, and the speed of just staying in your car is awesome!
Pick a better gas station is what I have to say to people that are upset at how the service was at one gas station.
Having grown up in the east, and the size of MEGA GAS STATIONS that let cars just SIT PARKED IN THE GAS STALL was the true goal of this bill. It was about commercializing the "store" because there is no profit in the gas industry.
I'll still search out and return to gas stations that employ attendants.
How is having one attendant pumping gas for six vehicles faster than me pumping my own?
Answer; it's not. Source; I live in Oregon. Fun fact; due in part to this law, Oregon has relatively far fewer gas stations than other states, so picking another station often is not a viable option.
I fuckin'hate it. Most people I know hate it. I know maybe a handful of people who like it, but they are the exception. In any case, we still have the full-serve option, except for in rural Oregon.
I live in Oregon most of my life. I moved to Montana for work for a period of time and moved back to Oregon. I absolutely hate having my gas pumped. I found it so much quicker to pump my own gas. Though when I traveled to and from Montana I noted there are a lot of idiots that don’t know how to responsibly pump their own gas. The only time where I somewhat even remotely hated pumping my own gas was when living in Montana and pumping when it’s -30F outside.
I love having it done for me. It helps that I have fuel efficient vehicle that I only use when other methods aren't practical. Get gas once every month or so and get to sit back in air-conditioning.
I grew up in WA state but have been in Oregon for 20 years now. I've become accustomed to someone pumping my gas, but it'll be like it was. I guess I don't understand the big deal either way.
I drove through Oregon and that threw me off when I was at the gas pump. What a weird law. Someone must have super fucked up to get that law pushed in the first place lol.
As someone from NJ and recently took a trip with a friend in his Tesla, no. Most likely because the law never included language for it because it never existed when it was put in place. I also doubt anyone is going to adjust this either not only because it is stupid to do so but because NJ has even had some rumblings in the past few years about ditching attendants and will most likely happen someday, just who knows how soon.
Pumping gas isn't hard to do. I drive through Jersey sometimes and although I'm always happy that their gas runs a bit cheaper, I'm always annoyed that I can't just get out and do it and be on my way.
When I did the job in OR about 10 years ago, it wasn't expected. More of a "oh hey here's a dollar for washing my windshield while it pumped" or "$48.60? Here's a 50, keep the change", if anything.
When I was a kid, gas stations in Indiana had "self-serve" and "full-serve" (they pump it for you) options. I'm not sure why they stopped. Probably to save money by hiring less people.
Self serve drives up gas prices due to insurance. Insurance goes up due to a couple of people smoking while filling gas and gas station without anyone being the favorite place for looters. The self serve campaigns advertise how gas will come down due to it, but it actually goes up. So question is who you want to pay - insurance companies or min wage employees...
Oregon has the fourth most expensive gas by state. New Jersey is pretty high up there, although admittedly cheaper than its neighbors by a few cents. I would doubt that full vs. self service has any real impact on gas prices
The reason West Coast states have expensive gas is that there are no pipelines connecting them to the rest of the countr, specifically Texas. Washington and Oregon produce zero crude oil. California can't produce enough for the whole West Coast so a majority of oil has to be shipped by a more inefficient way, causing prices to go up. This is reflected by the fact the 4 most expensive states for gas are California, Washington, Hawaii and Oregon.
I live in the UK and for as long as I can remember and probably considerably before that (and I'm not young) fuel has been self service.
I also have seen plenty of people smoking and using phones (surely the bigger danger is backfiring cars though). You know I cannot recall a single news story about a fuel station exploding due to this. I reckon that's the kind of story that makes it onto the news. Not to say it never happens, but with the amount of fuel pumped daily, I'd expect it to be a common event yet I cannot recall a single time I heard about it happening.
So, feels like insurance companies fear mongering stations into higher payments to me. Sure it's possible, but highly unlikely.
Because it is bull. A cigarette doesn't burn hot enough to light gas on fire. If anything it would be the wood matches, you know that thing no one has anymore. There is a reason why sailors are allowed to smoke on tankers.
The rare station around me that offers full service, is always more expensive, usually 10-15 cents per liter (40-60 cents per gallon). So that logic doesn't hold up.
If this were true, full-service gas stations would be common in places where they're not mandated by law because it would be cheaper and more profitable for the owners. They are not.