Contributed by Josh Fryfogle
Recently, I was at the gas pump, when I noticed this fly. He was just sitting there on the pump, watching me, so I watched him. The gas was pumping away, I was invading this fly's personal space, when I heard the click. The pump stopped exactly on $10, but I was filling up.
I stood there for a moment, wondering what went wrong. Putting the pieces together, I realized that I had not entered my PIN number after swiping my card. Apparently the fly caught my eye, and I didn't even notice.
I went inside to tell the attendants that the pump had stopped at $10.00 even, and that I had wanted to fill up. They asked if I had prepaid $10 in cash, and I hadn't.
But someone had.
I told them I would like to fix it, and they both looked perplexed. The young fellow behind the counter told me, “It's your lucky day.” I told him that somebody else paid for my gas and I would like to make it right. Both attendants agreed that they didn't know how to do that.
Now, we know that this is a relatively simple problem, except that their system doesn't make it readily apparent. They didn't know how to do it in the system.
I'm back out at the gas pump, struggling with what is the right thing to do in this corporate conundrum. As I put in my card info to finish topping off my tank, behind me I hear a man say, “I put 10 dollars in that pump and drove off…"
He was polite, an older gentleman with a kind spirit. He had prepaid and forgot to get his gas.
I smiled and told him my story, and how happy I was that I was still there when he came back. He was happy too, and I told him to pull up to the next pump and I would put ten dollars on my card in his tank, finally straightening out this minor moral dilemma. We talked, his name was Dave. While the $10 went over to $10.47, we got to enjoy the feeling of goodness between us, and we were both edified by it. Dave apologized, fishing fifty cents from his pocket, as we tried once again to get square with one another.
I owe Dave three pennies still, but we're both happy with that.