When I see the words “We Serve” along highway service roads in unfamiliar communities, it is important to make a special effort to find a way to stop at the business that promises this particular assistance or courtesy.
In August of 2016, I wrote a column about this topic — the scarcity of full-service gas stations and the need to “fill-er-up” oneself, with or without any previous experience.
Not so much has changed in the eight years that have gone by, with perhaps the exception of even fewer full-serve places to stop. A profound and heartfelt thank you to the stations with live attendants at the pumps who ask: “what’ll you have today?”
My response, “Please fill it with regular, and would you also wash the windows? Thank you.”
What follows is the original column from 2016:
“The lessons learned at the parent’s gasoline and bulk oil business are serving me quite well in the decades that have seen the “service” removed from the service stations.
“I was a tomboy in a small community where no restrictions were placed on me for what tasks I should be undertaking as a girl. When I wasn’t frustrating my mother with my inability to learn how to knit and sew, I was happily tagging along with my dad as he sold white, purple and amber gasoline plus cans of grease products.
“I was a frequent passenger with him as he made farm-to-farm deliveries, filling the customers’ on-farm tanks from orders phoned in, or based on regular standing weekly orders in the busy farm season.
“But I was also trained in how to pump gas for customers who dropped by to have their cars filled with amber gasoline. Sometimes I even got to run the pump when a farmer arrived with a small barrel to be filled with purple gas. It was important to carefully drain the pump hose of purple gas before filling a car’s tank with amber — police stops were common in search of urban drivers using purple gas meant for farm trucks and equipment.
“Fast forward to the present day in which self-serve has become a regular duty of the travelling public.
“We first noticed a proliferation of self-serve gas bars when we visited the East Coast provinces in 2008, 2010 and 2013. Ditto for British Columbia in 2015 and Ontario in 2016. (It was the same in Yukon in 2017.) Here at home our favourite gas station still provides full service which means an attendant will fill the gas tank and even wash the front window. (A special request will sometimes have the back window washed as well.)
“At first I was annoyed that most gas companies were going to self-serve without reducing the price of gas in relation to the savings on labour. But now I am resigned to the fact that when we travel, we will most likely have to pump our own gas.
“That means I pump the gas based on my previous experience and training, and Housemate becomes the window washer and he goes inside to pay the bill — a satisfactory division of labour. I have become somewhat adept at judging the number of litres the tank will take, based on the kilometres travelled and the litres previously required to fill the tank. The automatic shut-off is quite advanced technology — unlike the washer I learned to place on the pump handle back in my learning days.
“There is still an element of excitement when we do come across a full-service outlet somewhere during the journey. But sometimes that full service doesn’t come with a smile or a thank you or an offer to wash the windows. At such a stop, the grumpy attendant did not wash the windows nor did he put the gas cap back on properly — resulting in a warning light coming on to alert us we’d better stop and tend to the problem.
“So, I’m happy to have gas pumping training, but I will continue to look for full-service signs and when I don’t hear the three clicks of the cap being turned, I will get out and give it my self-serve twist of the wrist.”
Joyce Walter can be reached at ronjoy@sasktel.net
