Oregon’s Senate has repealed a 72-year prohibition against self-service gas, with new legislation requiring gas stations to staff half the available pumps, while allowing the rest to be self-service. The bill, responding to industry staffing shortages, also prohibits charging more for full-service than self-service, likely leading to the phasing out of full-service pumps.

  • Nailbar@sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    Meanwhile, I live in a country where probably over half the gas stations have no personnel at all.

    I remember one service station testing the concept of having staff help with gas, and it felt really awkward.

  • bermuda@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    I live in Washington. I remember one time crossing the border from Portland, Oregon to Vancouver, Washington. What’s funny is that Portland has two rivers. The Willamette to the South and the Columbia to the North. The Columbia is the border with Washington. During that trip I stopped for gas, and figured that since I just crossed a river I must be in Vancouver. I got out and started pumping gas only for a guy in an orange vest to come screaming at me to stop like I was about to blow the place up, which is weird because as many of you know it’s not that hard to pump gas? Turns out I was in the strip of land in Portland that’s between the Willamette and the Columbia, and so I was still in Oregon.

    Just a little funny anecdote about this whole situation.

  • Pete Hahnloser@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    If you have not experienced the lines for gas at an Oregon Costco, you’ve really missed out. End of an era.

    • Another Person @beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      People in Oregon really don’t believe me when I say I never waited in line for gas when I lived in other states.

        • half_fiction@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          Sure, but that’s entirely beside the point here. Nobody is celebrating people being laid off en masse. The law changed because these jobs were apparently not being occupied to begin with,

          • argv_minus_one@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            Then this is a capitulation we shouldn’t have made. These companies tried to coerce us into letting them get away with not hiring people, despite us having a law intended to make them hire people, and we have allowed them to get away with it.

            • deegeese@sopuli.xyz
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              1 year ago

              “Make work” laws are terrible policy.

              You’re forcing consumers to pay a human who is only there to inconvenience them.

              There’s a reason we don’t have laws protecting buggy-whip makers. People need to find new jobs that provide value to society.

    • ipha@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      Celebrating the removal of an asinine law that forbid people from doing a common task themselves.