Just one more rant, and then I'm done...well, for a while.

Pulled into a gas station late Saturday night. I didn't want to hit that station, incredibly the gas is $.10 cheaper per gallon just a few miles up the road, but I needed gas badly.

A woman was just finishing pumping gas into her vehicle as I pulled in. The nozzle was still in her vehicle as I alighted (love that word) from my truck.

She headed in to pay for her gas as I went to work with the pump I had pulled up to. Nothing happened. Couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. I finally walked to the cashier's window only to have her shout at me "I'm closed now".

That troglodyte watched me pull in while someone was still pumping, then threw the switch on me. She should thank any deity that she might believe in for the fact that she was safely ensconced behind concrete and thick glass. I'd have derived great pleasure from choking the life out of her.

Nobody gives a damn any more. "I'm closed now. I was open when you pulled in, but the second hand hit twelve while you were pulling your shorts out of your crack, so I flipped the switch". That sort of stuff makes me furious.

I can remember going to what's called a "POL Point" at Ft. Devens. POL is Army shorthand for Petroleum, Oil, Lubricant. In other words, a gas station. (I know "oil" and "lubricant" are redundant. Don't ask me...). The POL Point was manned by a civilian who had very little in the way of actual job duties. Soldiers pulled in, pumped the gas, and filled out the logbook under the civilian's eyes. He might have initialed their entries, I forget. Anyway, once we pulled into the POL Point and the attendant was sitting in his booth, watching a TV and eating a sandwich. He was always watching the TV, the only difference was the sandwich. We tried to pump gas, to no avail. I approached the booth only to have him preempt me by shouting (I really mean SHOUTING) "I'm on my lunch break". We sat there and watched him eat his sandwich and cookies until he finally looked at his watch and turned the pumps back on.

In other words, people can be real jerks.

And for the record, I was somewhat subdued in my reaction to Lunch Time Boy since I had recently had a very unpleasant experience with the garrison administrative clerks. I'd been trying to change my insurance and had been stood up by the admin types twice, which led to a blowup with the Non-Commissioned Officer in charge. He said something to me about "his soldiers" and I blew and told him I didn't see any soldiers, just a bunch of *(^&*) clerks. That resulted in a call to my team leader and a very unpleasant audience with the warrant officer in charge of the admin people. I was on good behavior for some time following that...