Gas station show down

So let me start off by apologizing to the lady who I apparently cut off getting gas yesterday. I am afraid we are going to have to agree to disagree on the specifics of who was wrong, but I am sure we both seemed like a$$holes to each other.

The problem centers around a poor design to the gas stations along the mass pike. M, I and the Fishers spent a wonderful weekend in Boston doing touristy things. On the way home we stopped in Sturbridge to get gas before entering the never ending state of Connecticut. After discharging some personal liquids and restocking for the next 4 hours, we stopped to get some gas and encountered the design flaw. In order to get the maximum number of pumps into the already existing space the designers decided to create a long 2 pump deep gas station that runs parallel to the highway. It sort of looks like a starting gate at a horse race. At the end (entrance) they have a sign pointing all travelers to the left. Of course the problem is each pump has 2 sides and most cars (at least most American cars) have the gas tank opening on the left. So there are huge lines for all of the lefties waiting for gas.

Now the design of the station clearly displays to me that the designers intended people to enter at one end (the Front) and exit at the rear. It doesn't seem as if the designers thought about the gas opening bias and they didn't make the hoses long enough to reach around to the other side of the car. So there are vacancies (or at least no lines) at all of the righty pumps. Impatient lefties see no line for the other pump and start doing crazy things like backing into spaces and going against the flow of traffic. This just messes everything up. All of a sudden you have people facing each other at the pumps and backing up into traffic (some of which is trying to bypass fuel altogether) and general confiscate as to who was where and when.

So I travel past all of these middle pumps and spy an opening at the end I pull up and it turns out that the first pump is out of order. The second pump has someone at it but she is clearly almost done. And I happen to be right behind her. After waiting a few minutes I notice someone sitting out to my left on the phone, and she seems to be waiting for something (her location makes it a bit hard to tell if she is waiting for gas or just for one to exit the plaza so she could lead/follow. Besides her gas opening is on the wrong side to be using this pump (at least facing the right direction).

The person in front of me finishes and I start to pull up and at the same time the other lady starts to pull around as well. It is now obvious that she was waiting to get gas and was trying to use "my" pump in the reverse direction. Now I am pretty much at the pump before she tries to move and there is a car behind me so it would be hard to back up as well.

So she gets out as has some words with me. They were fairly civil (she didn't ever take her phone away from her ear), and she ended by calling me rude. I may admit to secretly knowing that she was waiting for gas and that she was there before me, but I can't feel too bad about it because I still believe this could all be avoided by simply putting in longer gas hoses.

I experience this same problem in NJ on the turnpike, except that their gas hoses are long enough to reach both sides of the car. They have to put signs up letting people know it is okay to use both sides. I'm not quite sure why Sunocco can get longer hoses and Exxon can't. Especially since they are making so much money these days. It couldn't cost more than a few hundred thousand dollars to put longer hoses in. And we would all be much better off for it.