We don't pump gas, we pump fists

It's a well known fact that the biggest no-no in the Garden State is trying to pump your own gas.  I discovered this first hand the very first time I stopped to get gas in New Jersey.  A bearded attendant screamed at me in broken English to "Put the pump down before I hurt someone."   

This seemed laughable at first as I've been pumping gas before I could even drive. (Grandma E used to give me a dollar to pump the gas for her when I was a child)  I discovered that pumping your own gas is completely illegal, on par with running over a nun escorting ducklings across the street or badmouthing the Phillies

This escapes me.  I don't understand why I'm not allowed to do this myself.  In forty-eight other states anyone everyone (even 7 year old me for a crisp dollar bill) can pump gas.

 Is there some sort of special gas station school somewhere?  Like an ITT Tech for sticking a nozzle in a tank and hitting a button?  Perhaps a class in advanced receipt delivery?

Apparently I'm not alone,  Adam B. Schaeffer of the National Review agrees.  In his article, I want to pump myself he states,

This might have made some sense in 1949 when the law was passed and when most of the population still smoked and stupidity could conceivably kill at the gas station. But times have changed and pumping gas is a safe activity that almost everyone but the handicapped can perform with the greatest of ease. Pay-at-the-pump technology is standard at gas stations coast to coast. Motorists fly through stations with the breathtaking efficiency only Americans can take for granted. That is, except in New Jersey and Oregon — the only two states atavistic, sadistic, and masochistic enough to still require thousands of "professionals" to waste time, money, and inconvenience customers. Read the full article here

I'm totally with Adam on this.  I don't understand why I must sit and my car and wait for an attendant to come over to perform such a simple activity. Put the pump in the car, pay, wait, replace pump and drive off.  Instead, you must wait....and wait...and wait. 

Honestly, if you want to perform a valuable public service New Jersey.

HOW ABOUT YOU BAG MY f#$%ING GROCERIES??


Bagging your own groceries wastes time and inconveniences everyone. During the time I'm bagging my groceries I could be doing the following:  handing my savings card to the cashier, navigating the 97 buttons on the debit card machine and signing my receipt. 

Instead, I must frantically stuff items into plastic bags before the cashier hits the total button like some supermarket sweep style duel. 

Even the seediest, scariest upon scary, pants shittingly ghetto grocery stores in Virginia bag your groceries for you allowing you to spend that type completing the transaction and move out of the way.

 To be fair, the occasional nice cashier will place the items in the bag if you only have a few.  But what I really want to see  see is an ex-Walmart greeter or a pimply faced teenager standing at the end of that register strategically sorting my items into appropriate bags.  How about we send all those gas station attendants to grocery bagging school instead?


AND DAMN IT, I WANT SOMEONE TO ASK ME IF I WANT PAPER OR PLASTIC!