[matt-attack]

It didn’t really occur to me until reading a lot of messages in this thread, but I realized how normal it used to be one going to a gas station to enter the shop to pay in cash. I remember as a kid whenever we went to a gas station my dad would always be careful he goosing the trigger of the gas pump to line up the decimal point on the rolling dial. That was just part of going to a gas station. You basically walked in put down a 2 $20 bills and said “40 on three“ for example. For you millennials, this meant put $40 on pump number three. But let’s say your tank only took 35-ish dollars in gas. Well you didn’t wanna be left with spare change, so you always just squeeze the trigger just enough until the meter read and even dollar figure.

For the first decade of my driving life that’s how I did it as well. But that now seems to be such a distant memory as I am 100% of the time just paying with a credit card at the pump.

[Slartie]

The "40 on three" thing is something I got very used to during US road trips, because most US pumps didn't accept foreign credit cards in order to pay at the pump. I tried it a few times, it basically only worked on one or two out of ten. The other eight or so asked for a Zip code to be entered, and regardless of what I entered - my real German zip code, a US zip code from the vicinity of the pump, all zeroes - the pump refused it. I could use my credit cards to fill up by going to the shop, handing it to the clerk asking her/him to authorize a certain pump, which they would usually do as long as they were allowed to keep the card in their possession until I filled up. Then after filling I would have to retrieve my credit card, which would then be billed with the exact amount I bought.

All in all a very inconvenient process, and I had to explain it to some clerks because they weren't used to it due to the locals all being able to just pay at the pump if they wanted to use a credit card. I quickly switched to just getting a stash of $10 and $20 bills from an ATM, estimating whether I could fit $20 or $30 worth of gas into the vehicle and pre-paying that amount, leaving a bit of space in the tank for the convenience of not having to walk into the store a second time.