robin hood or just robbin’ everybody except the hood folk?

i read something recently i really liked…

…and it goes a little something like this:

“always work on your character, not your reputation – because character is who you are, where as your reputation is just who people THINK you are…”

food for thought.

we all know gas prices suck, and supposedly with yesterday being memorial day this is when they start to REALLY suck (like they haven’t been there already this spring) – but one gas station owner near my place was seen as a “hero” for the everyday guy as he felt he was selling his gas at a “fair price” (just under three bucks a gallon) but his distributor disagreed, as every other place (including two stations within five minutes of him that the distributor outright owned) had gas more like around three and a quarter to three-thirty a gallon…and so they were losing money on the retail end. they threatened to stop selling him gas if he didn’t raise his prices to match everybody around him, which he saw as bullshit (i do, too) and said “you have to sell me gas – we have a contract!”.

it went to court after he ran the fuck out of gas – and the court sided with the distributor. how this is legal in a free-enterprise country i have no idea…well, actually i do – somewhere somebody is writing a check to make this happen. amazing what you can buy these days, isn’t it?

now, this is what was in all the papers and on all the news stations in my area – how this guy was trying to do right by us consumers and keep gas reasonable and “big oil” was out to fuck us. i agree with half of this – big oil IS out to fuck us. if you doubt me google quarterly profits for every major oil company out there – they’ve all been seeing skyrocketing profits since gas started to rise up again “because of unrest in the middle east” or whatever the fuck.

but he wasn’t trying to watch out for shit – he’s just better at math than you, or most people in my area. because while his low-grade gas was twenty-cents lower than everybody else, several cars (including mine) require higher-octane gas…and his premium gas was thirty cents HIGHER than anybody else. his mid-grade was about fifteen cents higher than anybody else as well. with all the people that don’t (or can’t) use the cheap shit he was drawing ’em in with the low-grade shit (that’s on the sign by the road, as is diesel, but the high and mid aren’t) and then raking it in off the higher end gas…

…”looking out for the every man” my ass.

what was funny was after the court shit he raised his prices to within ten cents of the others on the low-grade shit and the distributor was happy – but he KEPT the prices on the other grades elevated above everybody else…so i never stop there. i pull through once a month or so just to see how he fairs compared to what i pay in austin – his location is a hell of a lot more convenient for me…but this week i paid $3.88 a gallon for premium, and he was over four bucks a gallon on it. fuck all that…again – worry about your character, not your rep!