A Very Oregon Experience: Pumping Gas
Jul. 6th, 2023 10:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerI forgot to mention on the way to hiking Susan Falls on Monday we stopped to fill gas in our car. As an American that's normally a non-event, a basic thing of life I've been doing since before age 16. Except this was in Oregon. It's one of the two states in the US that ban self-serve gas. A 1951 law cites the reasons as youth employment and life-threatening dangers. Yes, it cites those two arguments in consecutive sentences. Pumping gas is so dangerous, let's make kids do it for menial wages! 🙄
...Actually Oregon only partly bans self-serve gas. Diesel has always been self-serve, and starting several years ago Oregon amended its laws to allow self service for gasoline in rural counties. When we stopped at a Shell station umpteen miles outside Roseburg I thought we were in one of those rural areas. Drivers of a few other vehicles at the pumps were operating the pumps themselves, and no staff were on hand to pump the gas for us. I started up the pump as Hawk went inside to buy a snack.
Hawk came back out and told me the the cashier inside was aghast that we started pumping our gas. It turns out we were not in a self-serve area. "OMG, do you need any help with that??" the cashier asked, belatedly.
"No, we're from California," Hawk said.
What Hawk should have said was, "No, we're from the 48½ states in the US where this is normal."
...Actually Oregon only partly bans self-serve gas. Diesel has always been self-serve, and starting several years ago Oregon amended its laws to allow self service for gasoline in rural counties. When we stopped at a Shell station umpteen miles outside Roseburg I thought we were in one of those rural areas. Drivers of a few other vehicles at the pumps were operating the pumps themselves, and no staff were on hand to pump the gas for us. I started up the pump as Hawk went inside to buy a snack.
Hawk came back out and told me the the cashier inside was aghast that we started pumping our gas. It turns out we were not in a self-serve area. "OMG, do you need any help with that??" the cashier asked, belatedly.
"No, we're from California," Hawk said.
What Hawk should have said was, "No, we're from the 48½ states in the US where this is normal."
