Membership-Only Gas Prices

I am sure that all of you are familiar with the discount membership-warehouse store-club concept.  This week, I paid a visit to one those clubs for the first time in many years.  I don’t live close enough to a club for the discounts to be worth the cost of driving there.  The club of choice was the one named after the founder of the smiley face discount store.

Upon arrival, the club was crowded (of course, as this is the holiday season), and parking anywhere near the store was a challenge.  So, I began the typical pursuit of the perfect parking place, you know, one as close as possible to the front door, even though you need some additional exercise.  After two trips around the place, I turn into what looks like a traffic lane, only to discover that I have just pulled into a very long line of cars waiting for gas at the discount club filling station!

The membership-only club offers membership-only gas prices, usually about twenty cents cheaper than the average American gas station.  So, here I am trapped in the middle of 200 cars waiting for their turn at the pump of cheap gas.  Desperately looking for an escape as I don’t need gas, my tank is full, and even if I did, I wouldn’t wait this long if the gas were free!  The wait for your turn at the pump is running about an hour, as indicated by an electronic sign that is seemingly there just to mock my predicament.  I have successfully found retail-purgatory!

My passenger bravely jumps out of the car to politely ask some fellow drivers to our right if they would allow us to pull over into the parking lot.  We have managed to escape the grid-lock of cheaper gas prices and so it is on to the experience awaiting us inside the shopping club (more on this in another blog).

Now, I have looked at this situation and I have some questions.  The savings of fuel as a club member is about 20 cents per gallon.  Is that savings worth an hour of your life, not to mention the absolute headache of navigating the line of crazed discounters?  Does everyone have an hour daily to kill while waiting for your turn at the pump, I know, lunch right?

If my mathematics are good then here is the breakdown: the average tank size of vehicles on the road is about 15 gallons, if you are saving 20 cents per gallon, the total savings is $3.00.  Is an hour of your life only worth $3.00?  Not to mention the fact that some people burn more than three dollars to drive to one these clubs for the discount.  This qualifies as retail-insanity and seems to be the norm in this country.  We never really stop and use any sense in making purchases we simply use the fact that one thing is cheaper so that must be worth it.

Maybe it is coincidence that everyone going shopping that day happens to run out of gas just as they arrive at the store, I doubt it.  Or is this further evidence of the constant quest to find discounts for everything that we use since wages are not going up?  In any event, these places are a nightmare of time-killing, frustrating function.

Talk to Ya Later

The Grumpy Old Fart Customer @2018 All Rights Reserved