[Sca-cooks] OT, OOP--'Full Serve' in Oregon

[Wanda Pease]

Nah!  Lots of mileage in this old horse yet.  Just roast an onion and shove
it up it's....  No.  Don't go there (Regina has been re-reading the James
Herriott books again)

I hate pumping my own gas.  I've done it for years, and see no reason to
continue prove I can do it.  So I give a 17 year old, or a senior, or even a
recent immigrant a job.  Every "choice" station I've ever seen means you
have a choice between doing their work for them (you didn't see the price of
gas go down when they started firing the "Friendly Texaco Man" did you?) or
paying .20 a gallon more (Charleston, SC 1992).  I may pay within .02 to .05
cents a gallon more for gas in Oregon versus some (not all) stations in
Washington so I can't understand the enormous mark up for "choice" stations.
I see this as the same as these new "self-service" food markets.  It means
the market can put more of it's fairly unskilled workers out on the streets,
charge you exactly the same price they always have for your goods, and make
you pay for the privilege.

I notice there may be an age thing here to think about.  I would not have
allowed my 85 year old mother to pump her own gas.  Not because she was
senile (she wasn't) or incompetent, but because the arthritis in her hands
made the nozzle very difficult for her to hold onto and work.  Since
osteo-arthritis runs on both sides of my family, I rather expect this to be
a problem for me in the not too distant future.

Also, several companies put the dratted buttons that turn the tank on higher
than it was comfortable for her to manipulate.  We won't talk about those
tanks that deliberately hide the buttons/crank arms/other methods of turning
the darn things on!  (Regina who once fought for 35 minutes fighting with a
blasted Californian pump before the owners could figure out what she'd done
wrong!)  I think engineers get paid extra when they find a spot to put the
on-off switch on anything, computers included, where no sane person would
think to look for it!

Many of us may be in this situation in the next few years as the warranties
on our bodies give out.

Regina Romsey


-----Original Message-----
From: sca-cooks-admin at ansteorra.org
[mailto:sca-cooks-admin at ansteorra.org]On Behalf Of El Hermoso Dormido
Sent: Monday, July 01, 2002 2:03 PM
To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] OT, OOP--'Full Serve' in Oregon


On Monday 01 July 2002 02:08 pm, Laura C. Minnick wrote:
> But we all know it's illegal to speed- however, knowing that the fine is
> DOUBLE is a bit more of a deterrent...

Well, that was my point - the signs didn't say "you will be fined for
passing on the double yellow line", but was instead worded as a "friendly
reminder", which gives the appearance that the sign-maker expected that
people wouldn't KNOW what the double-yellow-line means...

> There are two states that forbid self service- I think the other one is
> Vermont. And I don't think we can prove or disprove any intent of the
state
> to infer that we are not competent. The law came from the State Fire
> Marshal- take it up with them.

Just in case anyone was getting the wrong idea from my previous posts on the
subject, I wasn't actually implying that Oregonians were incapable (or, for
that matter, even that the Government literally meant they didn't think
Oregon citizens could handle the task safely) but just that the law
FORBIDDING
self-service (rather than "mandating availability of full service") was
easily
misconstruable...