The Old Media rarely if ever take the time to write about the economics of gasoline prices, but instead treat the commodity as if it were above economics and therefore subject to gratuitous manipulation by evil people in power, including individual retailers, who are just as subject to the market price of gasoline as are consumers.

That being the case, it should be no surprise that when a worker for a Wilmington gas station mistakenly set the pump price at $0.359/gallon (i.e., 35 cents) instead of $3.359/gallon, nobody informs anyone working at the station but acts as if they are justified in taking advantage of them.

The Star-News reports:


… hundreds of people … found temporary relief [What a euphemism!] from $3-plus gasoline prices today after an employee accidentally set the price at 35 cents at the Kangaroo Express station at 17th Street and Wellington Avenue, employees said.

The trouble started about 9 a.m. today when an attendant at the BP station punched in 35 cents instead of $3.35 for premium-grade gasoline, said employee Shane Weller. The mistake wasn?t noticed until about 6 p.m., when crowds jammed the pumps and caused traffic jams on nearby roads, Weller said.

By that time news of the low-priced gas had spread like wildfire through e-mail and word of mouth, he said.


The quotations in this article are atrocious. No one seems the least bit ashamed of deliberately taking advantage of a fellow citizen, just because he sells gasoline:

  • ?I wasn?t sure if it was true, but I decided to come out here and check it out,? Canty said. ?I didn?t have anything to lose and everything to gain.?
  • ?A lady came up to me in the parking lot and told me that gas was 35 cents so I hopped in my car and drove,? said Mitchell from her late-model Oldsmobile.
  • ?People had been coming in all day stiffing us, not telling us nothing,? Weller said. ?They knew something was wrong because regular gas was still $3-something a gallon, and when have you ever known premium gas to be lower than regular??
  • After the price returned to normal people continued to flood the gas station, hoping to take advantage of the low the price.
  • Mitchell said people didn?t mean any disrespect. They were probably looking for some relief, she said.

The upshot is, the station lost who knows how much money in a single day, an employee may lose his job, and seemingly no one in Wilmington had the honesty of character to notify the station of the obvious problem. They themselves found it. Granted, it doesn’t speak well for their powers of observation and reason to have taken 10 hours to discover the mistake, but it says worse for Wilmington.