I just spent 45 minutes at the gas station.

“Why,” you might ask, “did you just spend 45 irretrievable minutes of your life at - of all places - a gas station?”

And I’ll say, “Because, my dear, dear friend, the people at the gas station are fucking deaf.”

“And what,” you might further inquire, “exactly do you mean by that?”

Therein lies the story.

I went over to Barnes & Noble to pick up some .NET programming books on my lunch hour. Hey, I can expense ‘em, right? So I got some good stuff to help me learn new and cool things.

I then went to Haggen to pick up some lunch items so I can put lunches together next week. Noticed they had some Dijon garlic mustard there so I had to get some. It’s… okay. Not what I was expecting. But I digress.

Finally, last stop before I came back to work, I stopped at the gas station. [In]conveniently enough, my cell phone rang just as the guy came to ask me what I wanted. I answered the phone (said “hang on a sec!”) and looked at the guy and told him, “Fill with premium.”

“Fill?” asks the guy.

“Yup. Fill,” say I, and go back to the phone conversation.

I finish up on the phone and look back to see how much money this is going to cost me when I notice that he’s filling my tank with regular.

Now, a bit of inside info: Normally when people ask for premium gas, it’s a ploy to look important or rich. Yes, I do seriously believe that. But sometimes they ask for it because their car requires it. I have a 2002 Acura RSX Type-S. The standard RSX requires a gas with 86+ octane rating or it will ping and knock; the Type-S requires a 91+ octane rating or it will ping and knock (and, I’ve heard, slowly just destroy things in there). Regular unleaded is an 87 octane; “Plus” unleaded is 89; Premium is 92. I have to buy premium or it fucks up my car.

I hop out of the car and stop the pump from filling. At this point, I’m pretty much screwed, though - I’ve got a full tank of regular gas, way too low on the octane for me to want to risk going anywhere.

I get the manager out there and he’s all, “Well, we can stick a can of octane boost in there and that’ll bring the octane level up where you want it…” Cool, let’s do it. “…But we don’t have any right now, so you have the choice of going to get some yourself or waiting for one of my guys to go get it and bring it back.”

I’ll let you in on a secret: I don’t know jack squat about cars. I don’t know where to shop for parts, which parts or chemicals to shop for, or what I’d do with them if I did. Besides which, I’m not driving the car because it’s got the wrong gas in it.

So I chose to wait for the guy to bring back some octane boost. He was pretty quick about it, only about a half hour or so, but damn, that’s 45 minutes at the gas station.

Lesson learned: Watch every move everyone makes around you or someone’s going to fuck up your shit.