Texaco's Remarkable Service

[fakename]

In California, pumping your gas is the Only way you will get gas. I dont think in Thailand, they would like you to pump your own gas, since maybe you put in a few liters, then started the pump again.

As someone pointed out before, these kids that are pumping gas, are not quite the sharpest knives in the box, often they are playing with each other, and dont always know what is going on around them. I dont think some kid was mad at farangs and so didnt want to give you gas, he just didnt figure out what you were doing there. Some appear to be not much over 10 years old, so thats a bit young, for handling something as dangerous as gasoline, but this is Thailand, and if you can drive a motor bike, with two or three friends on it, down Sukhumvit, you can do anything!

[ThaiBob]

In California you must use a credit or debit card at the pump. No cash. You can prepay inside the office first then pump your gas if you wish. Very, very few full service gas stations remain.

[jbrain]

I use this Caltex station about 80-90% of the time when I fill up in Pattaya, both for my car and my bike. Always appreciated the staff there, they are usually very courteous and service minded.

However I did have a similar bad experience a month or two ago. I came in on my bike and took the spot that the previous bike had just used to fill up, the attendant walked off, most likely to hand in the cash of the last sale, as he was walking back again to the pumps, an mc taxi drove in on the other side of the pump and the dimw-t started serving him instead of me. Haven’t seen that guy around there before or after, so maybe we were just both unlucky with some temporary staff.

I'm glad at least one member reports a similar behaviour at that particular pump, so it is clear that it isn't an isolated incident.

I almost got the impression that some wanted to say that I all dreamed it up, or that it was my fault.

[Payboy]

The attendant was probably Burmese. So this is likely foreigner to foreigner racism here.

[Rajab Al Zarahni]

Whenever you experience something strange,surprising or unusual like this there's a temptation to immediately arrive at a hostile or paranoid explanation. That explanation might be right but equally might be wrong. In such circumstances it's a good idea to think of all the other, possibly innocent explanations for the same events. More often than not it's innocent explanations that are the truth behind apparently hostile events.