That Time I Almost Drove off Without Paying at the Gas Station

Getting a discount when you're filling up your vehicle is cool. Driving off without paying for it, however, is NOT cool.

Has something like this ever happened to you? My wife and I were running some errands the other day, and needed to fill up the tank in our SUV. My wife, knowing that we'd accumulated some points on our loyalty club card, figured out we'd be saving more than 30 cents a gallon -- not a bad little savings, right?

So, I dutifully grabbed the card from my SUV to use at the pump. The problem is, I wasn't quite sure how to use the discount card at the pump. As it turns out, it couldn't be easier. You just follow the prompts, swipe the card when it tells you, and collect your discount.

The problem, though, came when, out of what I can only describe as a force of habit, I got the discount card swiped, put the gas cap back on and was about to drive off -- without having paid for said gas.

Oops. Turns out that, because I always use our debit card when I buy gas, after I swiped the discount card, my feeble brain processed that as having swiped the debit card. Which I hadn't actually done! So, it probably looked like we were about to high-tail it outta there without paying!

Luckily, I noticed it right away, and even though we'd driven away from the pump, we were still in the parking lot of the convenience store. So I went in right away and settled up.

But, thanks to my absent-mindedness, you could have been hearing about me on the news as Rochester's latest gas thief -- even though I didn't mean to not pay. Geez. You can't take my anywhere anymore!