What if they had a pneumatic tube at the pump to send money to the register? I know they don’t do this so you have to go inside and buy shit but I can dream of a world with more pneumatic tubes in it.
Everytime I’m at the bank and see the little pneumatic tubes I’m saddened by the fact that they are not used everywhere
Yeah it really sucks
you CAN do that — go inside and say “$30 on pump 3”
you pay cash in advance and it cuts off when you hit $30
I always lowball it when I do this. Do they give you the extra back if you don’t use all of it?
No, you have to put the extra gas in your pockets for later, like a buffet
that’s what plastic shopping bags are for.
I hear styrofoam coolers are perfect for this
They are pretty standard here in Japan. You can pay cash or credit at the pump. Never a need to go inside. You select how much you want to pay, put in the money, and if it clicks off before the end it’ll give you change.
Matches the culture. I’ll give you a clue why they’re declining in population growth, zero interaction with other people.
ah yes I long for the halcyon days of socializing while filling up with gas.
Matches the culture. I’ll give you a clue why they’re declining in population growth, zero interaction with other people.
It does match the culture in the sense that Japan had been a mostly cash society until recent years. In addition, gas stations are not getting robbed as it is a much safer place than the U.S. (as an example).
As to your remarks, I see people interacting everyday. But since you purport to be an expert, I’d love to hear some more of your hands on experiences and observations regarding zero interaction with other people.
We’ve got stations in NZ where you register the car’s numberplate in the app. The station has cameras. You roll up, start pumping, and then drive off. It’ll bill you later.
Super simple and haven’t heard of anyone having issues with it
Oo, I know this one! Several reasons, all of them boiling down to fairly straightforward pragmatism.
The easiest answer is that storing flammable material inside a gasoline dispenser just generally sounds like a bad idea. Similarly, storing cash in the unattended pumps themselves invites attempts to steal the pumps, which not only would lead to expensive repairs but comes with the additional risk of causing a large gas spill or fire/explosion from damage caused in the attempt.
Additionally, gas stations are the most commonly robbed business regardless of country. Storing cash in the pumps means an attendent would have to physically go out and remove the cash from each one, a time consuming process where the attendant would be in the open, distracted and carrying large sums of cash next to several extremely convenient exit routes. And it adds an entire additional complex mechanical system to the pump, which introduces an additional vector for downtime if it breaks/jams/etc.
You can do that in the UK and many other countries, when paying by card. You guys only seemed to discover the merits of wheelie bins recently, so you’ll catch up at some point.
We have card payments at the pumps, and the garbage can thing was very much a weird NYC thing.
Manhattan (and to an extent NYC in general) is a fascinatingly odd case.
The reason why manual trash bag pickup stuck around so long is due to the near complete lack of useful alleyways and incredibly dense curbside parking, meaning that trash set out for collection had to either be placed on the sidewalk (the only available space) and carried between cars to the truck, or in the case of front load dumpsters wheeled out across the sidewalk from a restricted alley to a waiting hook loader (very few NYC alleys are wide enough to fit a compactor truck of any configuration, let alone allow them to orient for successful operator-in-cab pickup).
Add to that the complexity of most residential buildings or apartments not having a space where bins can be easily stored, and it becomes a pretty challenging problem to solve. Converting 30,000 spaces for the new Empire Bins / designated collection spots is a massive change to the city operations, but also the only way this could be feasibly implemented. The logistical issues have been so cool to watch being addreesed in real-time, super excited to see how the Sept 8th deadline plays out. 30/70 odds on no issues vs. Mad Max: Trash Armageddon.
(We’ve had modern wheelie bins for at least decades elsewhere in the country. Heck, the US invented both tip-loading for wheeled bins and compactor garbage trucks, though nobody can really claim wheelie bin invention; examples of proto-wheelie bins (wheeled trash carts per-business or large household which were emptied on a schedule) have been found in Pompeii, and there’s debate on examples being found even further back)