There Ya Go
Acouple months ago on this page, I shared an incident where I was followed to Tara’s house from the Airport Road. The man who followed me and got out of his truck couldn’t wait to criticize me for passing him as we got closer to town because of the high deer population in that area (I still haven’t seen a deer in that area, but moving on).
The moral of that story was how cooler heads prevailed to avoid some kind of blown-up conflict. He politely spoke his peace, I listened and we both went on our merry way.
Last week, I found myself in yet another incident that if it had happened between two different people, things could’ve gotten ugly.
It was Wednesday. I pulled into the Casey’s parking lot to fill my tank like I do all too often, and when I approached the pump, I noticed there was an $8 credit.
This must be my lucky day, I thought to myself.
Now, the right thing for me to have done would’ve been to go inside and explain the situation. I’m ashamed to say, I didn’t. All I knew was there was $8 worth of petro waiting to be pumped and that I didn’t have to pay for it.
So that’s what I did. I pumped.
When the pump shutoff automatically after hitting $8, I proceeded to fill up the rest of my tank. While that was happening, a man approached me, saying the gas was his — it should’ve went to his Pump No. 3, not my Pump No. 7.
Like the aforementioned driving situation, the man wasn’t rude or anything, and neither was I. It would’ve been easy for me to say it wasn’t my problem, that the gas was just sitting there — I mean, is it really stealing, or was it just good fortune?
Yes, I could’ve been obstinate about it, but that’s not me. Plus, since I was already feeling a bit guilty for pumping the $8, I chose to be cool about it.
After my tank was filled, I did the right thing and went into the store where the man was waiting, albeit impatiently (super ironic and annoying considering it was his fault to begin with). I asked the cashier what I had to do to make things right and she told me to just pay for 8 bucks, which I did.
This wasn’t paying it forward, it was just doing the right thing. And I’d like to think I beat karma to the punch.
This should serve as another reminder that if people play their cards right, there doesn’t have to be any de-escalation if there is conflict resolution. What happened last week was the result of a simple mistake made by a consumer, but you know as well as I do, if either one of us would’ve been nasty to the other, we might have had a situation — one of those that someone would record on their phone, and then it would’ve gone viral and blah, blah, blah.
I’m no saint for handling the situation like I did (I still feel icky about trying to sneak that gas into my Jeep; it happens when you have a guilty conscience), but I do pride myself on being level-headed, because that’s what prevents anger and hostility. That’s how you avoid making a scene.
Plus, from the looks of this big dude, if things had escalated, it wouldn’t have turned out well for me.
In the end, he drove away satisfied, and I left Casey’s knowing I did the right thing. These days, $8 worth of gas doesn’t go every far, but being a good person still does.
