Gas station in transition 1
| 'My' gas station wasn't all that great . . . |
The recent price hikes have made me think about gas stations. I have a lot of experience with this, and not just as a customer. In the very beginning, she was actually a lifesaver for my
wallet. And this is how it happened:
I could always afford a car; my mother paid for the taxes and insurance because I was studying about 20 km away, but I had to find a way to earn the money for petrol, which, of course, depended on the number of
kilometres I drove.
An acquaintance's father ran a gas station; at the time, it was one of the new budget brands offering slightly lower prices than the established brands. No, the gas station really wasn't new, but it
had a car wash with a lifting platform.
As I said, the gas station was run by a somewhat older master car mechanic. How did he earn money to support his family? Of course, just as today, not necessarily through the sale of gasoline and diesel,
perhaps supported to some extent by profits from oil.
By the way, on one of our trips to France, we almost fell for a nasty trick: one of the gas station attendants, yes, they still existed back then, didn’t fully insert the dipstick to check the oil level,
trying to make it look like there wasn’t enough oil.
If the only option is 2-liter containers at completely inflated prices, you can imagine how much they made in a day. No, luckily we had checked it just before. And besides, tricks like that weren't common at
'our' gas station. You can't do that to local customers either.
Sie lag übrigens an der nicht gerade wichtigsten Ausfallstraße einer Stadt mit ca. 50.000 Einwohnern und spülte genügend Kunden/innen hinein. Ein paar Cent (damals Pfennige) pro Liter beim Tanken zu
sparen, war schon immer eine Domäne deutscher Autofahrer/innen.
Only in this country? One can imagine that things were similar in a country as car-obsessed as Italy, but not so much in France, for example, even though people so often speak of the Gallic
spirit of contradiction. Back to the way things are in Germany.
You’ve probably already guessed what the biggest source of extra income was, especially because the boss was a master auto mechanic. Cars in the past not only consumed more fuel and oil, but also required more
maintenance and repairs. So you could set your (speedo) watch by when a particular repair was due again.
I had specialized in the so-called bushing of kingpins on the front of VW Beetles. From my father's workshop, there was still a perfectly fitting adjustable reamer left over, so I always had a repaired set of kingpins and
shoulder bolts on hand.
I was paid in fuel, and I was happy with that. In a certain sense, the gas station became my home, though that certainly wasn’t because of its particularly cozy decor. One met there anyway
and chatted a bit.
What a change today. For better or for worse? In any case, we were more familiar with the product being sold and knew it fairly well. Today, it has become more of a virtual
experience and, more recently, has even become the object of aversion or even hatred?
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