You pulled in because the little orange light came on, not because you wanted a conversation. You are already late, it is already raining sideways, and all you need is gas. The pump, however, has plans. The pump would like to get to know you first.
Insert card. Remove card. No, not that fast. Insert it again and leave it in. Now remove it, quickly, but not suspiciously quickly. Enter your ZIP code, because apparently gasoline is now a secure transaction between you and your hometown. Get one digit wrong in the rain and you get to start the whole relationship over.
Are you a rewards member? Would you like to become a rewards member? Would you like to save ten cents a gallon today, with an asterisk doing most of the work in that sentence? The pump is not asking. The pump is recruiting. Somewhere behind that sun-faded screen is a loyalty program with quotas, and you are standing in wet socks being pitched like it is a timeshare presentation with a nozzle.
Do you want a car wash? You have not even bought the gas yet and we are already upselling the bath. Do you want a receipt? Do you want to add a fuel additive, a snack bundle, a charitable donation rounded up from money you have not technically spent? Each question gets its own screen, its own cheerful beep, and its own three-second pause while the pump thinks about your answer like a game-show host stretching for drama.
Then comes the grade selection, which should be the simple part, except half the buttons are worn blank from ten thousand previous interrogations. You press where Premium probably lives and hope. You lift the nozzle. Nothing happens. Please select grade again. Please lift nozzle again. Please see cashier. Please see cashier is the pump equivalent of a shrug — after all that personal data, the one moment you need a human, the machine sends you inside to find one.
The truly insulting part is the speed. Inside the store, a person can sell you gas, a coffee, and a questionable hot dog in forty seconds. Outside, the pump needs a full interview, a credit check warm-up, and a marketing seminar before a single drop moves. And if you walk away mid-question, it beeps at you, wounded, like you stood it up.
Remember when getting gas was one step? You paid, you pumped, you left, smelling faintly of gasoline and freedom. Nobody asked for your ZIP code. Nobody tried to enroll you in anything. The pump was a pump, not a kiosk, not a billboard, not a tiny glowing telemarketer bolted to a concrete island.
So you stand there, answering question seven of nine, rain finding the back of your neck, watching the person at the next pump go through the exact same interview. Two strangers, side by side, both being screened for the privilege of buying the thing the station exists to sell. The tank is still empty. The pump, at last, approves. Was that so hard, it seems to say. Yes. Yes, it was.