I often drive through New Jersey (or Noo Joysey as the locals call it) as it is only twenty minutes from home. However if I am in or near there I will make a significant detour to avoid filling up with petrol. Why? Because all the petrol stations are “Full Service”. While that sounds fairly promising, it just means that they won’t let you operate the pumps yourself.
How does it work? You pull up next to the pump as usual. Then you sit there apparently invisible while the pump attendants lie in hiding. The only way you can get them to appear Mr Ben-like, is when you get out of the car and start messing with the pump/ paying for your petrol. At that point a usually bad tempered and dishevelled character appears like Mr Ben, transfers it a total of nine inches to the payment machine on the pump. They then generally need help getting the slightly fiddly petrol cap off before they set the pumps to dispense. One useful thing here in the US is a little prong on the pump handle that allows it to dispense until cut-off without you having to go to the trouble of holding the handle in. That’s presumably because, thanks to the enormous gas-guzzling blancmange mobiles they drive here, holding that pump might get perilously close to exercise. Anyway, my car has a small tank (about 9 US gallons if you are interested) so it fills up pretty quickly. Which generally means I then have to sit there waiting for the chap to take it out again…
Now I think there’s an extra charge embedded in the price of petrol for all this value adding service. I wouldn’t mind QUITE so much if they actually did something useful, such as checking your oil or cleaning your windscreen like they used to do in some of Continental Europe. But they don’t. The only small benefit is if it is really cold out, and you can sit in the warmth of the car. Mostly.