My Life

What do you do by 9:00am?

Ok, now the other part of the story.

Let me tell ya. I run a pretty big store, it’s very busy since it’s right off a major highway.

The genius that put one 12,000 gallon tank under the ground for 87 octane could not have been a relative of Einstein's! I sell so much of it, I have to have a load delivered about every 24 to 36 hours.

That being said...

In the process of scheduling the little ladies car to be towed, I was going back and forth doing my paperwork. All of a sudden I realized, the numbers just weren’t adding up. I had too much fuel in the 93 octane tank and not enough in the 87 octane. I started going back through the paperwork comparing what the read out showed, versus what the driver’s paperwork showed. Sure enough, the driver had dumped the regular gas into the super tank. I freaked! I shut down the pumps, got my boss on the phone and then proceeded to get his boss on the phone.

The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) was going to love this! Not to mention my customers with high performance vehicles that had already put 87 octane into their expensive cars designed for a higher grade.

That’s about the time that the little lady and the policeman showed up. She came into the store upset that I had had her car towed. I explained to her I had ordered a load of fuel to be delivered that morning, and the truck wouldn’t be able to dump the fuel with her car where it was.

This is when she tells me that that wasn’t true. Mind you, I already had several irons in the fire at the moment and her comment almost sent me over the edge! Geeze, I was only on my third cup of coffee!

She proceeded to inform me she had blown the tires at about 1:00am Sunday morning. The fuel truck arrived about 30 minutes after that and the driver told her she was fine. So she thought it wrong of me to have her car towed! How was she to get to work? And she couldn’t have thought of this Sunday after she sobered up?

I explained to her that I had two tankers coming to deal with a fuel issue. I also had a grocery truck coming to deliver the groceries and too many problems of my own right then. I gave her the number of the wrecker company and told her to take it up with them.

Yeah, that was pretty much the moment that all my customer service skills went flying out the window!

Justin (another one of my cashiers) had just arrived to help with the grocery truck as she was leaving. He makes some comment about how “fine” she really was. Things were starting to click! Call me slow!

I was informed by Thomas (my graveyard cashier) via Justin, that Little Lady and the driver of the fuel truck had really hit if off. Quite a ‘bout of flirtation had taken place. Hence mind on other things...not paying attention to what you are doing! We’re talking 9,000 gallons of highly flammable, no, combustible stuff here! One really should pay attention when dealing with it!

Back to the story. One tanker arrived to siphon the super tank and then dumped it in the 87 and 89 octane tanks. Another tanker dropped 93 octane in the appropriate tank. The semi arrived and unloaded the groceries. Exhausted yet relieved, we re-opened for business. And what do you do by 9:00am?

Of course, I no longer know the octane of the regular no lead or the mid-grade gasoline. But I can tell you they are high.

All I can say is, had I known she was in part responsible for the whole ordeal, I would have asked the officer for her name and address so I could send her a bill!

Total cost? Not a clue!

It’s not my fault that it happened, and it’s not my companies fault either. The petroleum company is responsible for the bill...but my company owns them as well! At least it was all taken care of before the EPA found out. And no, none of my customers complained about the gas or the performance of their vehicles due to the mishap.

I just wonder what line that driver is using at the unemployment office?