Gas stations about to have a Y2K problem when prices exceed $9.99 9/10

[rten@mastodon.social]

@benaar simple solution: switch to metric units and you can divide the prices by ~3.8

[ii_infinitum@mastodon.social]

@atomicbird @benaar @tjw I still remember gas stations who just painted a 1 in front of their price displays on the pumps. Late 90’s took care of the last of that.

[kimlockhartga@beige.party]

@benaar oh yeah. It had not occurred to me.

[baloouriza@social.tulsa.ok.us]

@benaar I'm old enough to remember when they struggled with $1 on mechanical pumps, and they fixed it by using a "1" sticker and changing the mechanism slightly.

Which is stupid when the correct answer was "stop selling gas in gallons and start using liters like normal people".

[caspercdn@mstdn.social]

@benaar
Per litre like the rest of the civilized world

[foobarsoft@mastodon.social]

@caspercdn @benaar Quarts would be easier. Litres would cause people’s heads to explode.

Honestly quarts probably would too.

[dxzdb@mastodon.social]

@benaar 101 = $10.10 might be done

[fishidwardrobe@mastodon.me.uk]

@benaar no, it's fine. i remember when this happenned in the uk they just pasted up sticky "1" to the left of the price ticker.

[davew@mastodon.online]

@caspercdn @benaar There was at least one gas station in Memphis TN that did just that: switched the pumps from gallons to liters and priced accordingly

[nedley@pdx.social]

@benaar Plus ça change… https://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/nyregion/15four.html

[aburka@hachyderm.io]

@benaar they may finally have to drop the 9/10s bullshit

[druid@ioc.exchange]

@benaar All this winning.

[atomicbird@mastodon.social]

@ii_infinitum @benaar @tjw I remember them setting the pumps to half of the price per gallon and then doubling that when people paid. (There were of course no automated payment systems then, always had to pay a person)

[baloouriza@social.tulsa.ok.us]

@whybird That was around the time the US passed $1/gal. I have living childhood memory of 69.9¢/gal regular (leaded) gasoline, and 84.9¢/gal unleaded.

The two lowest prices I've ever paid for gas would be CA19.4¢/l in Vancouver, BC in the late 1990s, and (thanks to an idiot running the station incorrectly setting the pumps) US8.8¢/gal in Tulsa a decade ago (it would have been $8.888 if I used a Walmart discount card).

@benaar

[baloouriza@social.tulsa.ok.us]

Sorry for the edit spree, I swear I can type.

@whybird @benaar

[baloouriza@social.tulsa.ok.us]

@whybird And US currency actually has a symbol for that.

$0.001 = 0.1¢ = 1₥

@benaar

[baloouriza@social.tulsa.ok.us]

@whybird "You quoted 25 mils, not 25 cents."

@benaar

[baloouriza@social.tulsa.ok.us]

@whybird Also depending on where you bank and where you spend your money you might actually wind up with your bank account denominated in mils. As happened to me when I was running my own trucking company as a sole proprietor, and both PetroCanada and Pacific Pride were billing me in mils, so after I was done with that, my bank account always ended in an effectively unspendable 7₥ for years, since it's legal to round to the nearest cent on wire transactions here.

@benaar

[demallien@mindly.social]

@benaar it’ll be fine. Just like with y2k, when we went through the date and nothing happened , people were just imagining there would be a problem /s

[baloouriza@social.tulsa.ok.us]

@whybird There's rules for rounding but the choice whether or not to round is up to the seller and the buyer, with the tiebreaker being what's customary (4 down, 5 up; mils get rounded to the nearest cent, nothing else rounds). With Republicans eliminating the penny without implementing a plan, cash transactions are increasingly becoming Interesting here to say the least.

@benaar