Gas

I don't drive that often (I don't have a car in Sydney, so it's really only when I'm down in Melbourne) and I do quite enjoy it. I'm not crazy about traffic and parking but the rest is pretty fun. But I do get stuck in a kind of existential tail-spin when I go to a gas station to buy gas (and yes, I know australians usually say 'service station' and 'petrol', but I got into the habit when I lived in the US. A harmless affectation?).

First, I have to make sure I'm not buying gas from an evil company (Mobil being the prime example), and if I can, I'll go for BP and Shell (although isn't Shell just a bit evil?) I'm not obsessive about it, but unless the car's really running out I'll usually wait until I find a gas station that I'm comfortable with. But there are some where I'm not sure. What about Caltex (I can't remember its moral provenance) or some of the no-name ones? And what about 7-11? Does the fact that they sell slurpees make up for any ideological shortfall in the gas? I suspect so. Any enterprise that makes slurpees can't be all bad.

That's just to start. The gas station near where my ex lives, when you buy gas the guy asks 'do you have coupons?'. I've been asked this before and it always sets me to panicking. Should I have coupons? Am I paying twice as much as everyone else? Or are the coupons themselves evil in some way? Because of my training and my work, I cling to the belief that if you're in something and you can't immediately see who's being played for a sucker, it's you. So I'm very mistrustful of the whole thing, and I wish they'd just the same price for gas no matter what sort of stupid card you have.

At the Coles supermarket near my ex's place (she seems to be in a Bermuda triangle of annoying loyalty schemes) as they're putting your stuff through the checkout they ask whether you have a fly-buys card. I know nothing about this scheme, almost deliberately, but my instincts tell me it's just plain wrong. I feel like standing as tall as I can and saying "do I look like the sort of person who'd have fly-buys?" but I resist the temptation, although I did do something like this recently when someone asked me for a light for a cigarette.