Oregon’s Senate has repealed a 72-year prohibition against self-service gas, with new legislation requiring gas stations to staff half the available pumps, while allowing the rest to be self-service. The bill, responding to industry staffing shortages, also prohibits charging more for full-service than self-service, likely leading to the phasing out of full-service pumps.
Meanwhile, I live in a country where probably over half the gas stations have no personnel at all.
I remember one service station testing the concept of having staff help with gas, and it felt really awkward.
I live in Washington. I remember one time crossing the border from Portland, Oregon to Vancouver, Washington. What’s funny is that Portland has two rivers. The Willamette to the South and the Columbia to the North. The Columbia is the border with Washington. During that trip I stopped for gas, and figured that since I just crossed a river I must be in Vancouver. I got out and started pumping gas only for a guy in an orange vest to come screaming at me to stop like I was about to blow the place up, which is weird because as many of you know it’s not that hard to pump gas? Turns out I was in the strip of land in Portland that’s between the Willamette and the Columbia, and so I was still in Oregon.
Just a little funny anecdote about this whole situation.
Smell that? That’s the smell of FREEDOM.
And the smell of gas because I’ve never learned how to pump and it’s all over the ground please send help.
So… are we celebrating a bunch of people losing their jobs?
Its a dumb job
Pointless jobs, yes
The article snippet quoted here literally says this was in response to industry staffing shortages…
There is no shortage of workers. There is only a shortage of employers willing to pay.
Sure, but that’s entirely beside the point here. Nobody is celebrating people being laid off en masse. The law changed because these jobs were apparently not being occupied to begin with,
Then this is a capitulation we shouldn’t have made. These companies tried to coerce us into letting them get away with not hiring people, despite us having a law intended to make them hire people, and we have allowed them to get away with it.
“Make work” laws are terrible policy.
You’re forcing consumers to pay a human who is only there to inconvenience them.
There’s a reason we don’t have laws protecting buggy-whip makers. People need to find new jobs that provide value to society.
Celebrating the removal of an asinine law that forbid people from doing a common task themselves.
Now we can only make fun of New Jerseyans for being too stupid to be trusted around a gas pump.
Hey leave us alone. We’ll figure it out in another 72.
If you have not experienced the lines for gas at an Oregon Costco, you’ve really missed out. End of an era.
People in Oregon really don’t believe me when I say I never waited in line for gas when I lived in other states.
