I made a late night stop at the petrol station last night in order to get my diet coke fix. I find that drinking carbonated caffeine just before bed is vital in order to attain that feeling of exhausted insomnia that I’ve come to know and love. Ahead of me in the queue to pay was a woman who was trying to provoke the lady behind the till into a debate about the current high cost of fuel.
I don’t understand the reasoning behind things like that. It’s not like the poor beleaguered cashier has a hotline to the BP board of directors stashed under the counter:
“There’s a woman here in Huddersfield who’s complaining that it costs her nearly fifty pounds to fill up her tank these days sir. I think it might be time to reduce the costs to below £1 a litre againâ€
“Thanks Maureen, we’ll see what we can doâ€
It’s the same thing in fire safety lectures. Every year the NHS makes me attend one of these in order that they can absolve themselves of all responsibility when I accidentally burn down the hospital. And every year you can guarantee that half way through someone will start whinging about the 1996 European regulations on Fire extinguishers. These dictate that instead of the traditional collouring of red (water ) cream (foam) black (CO2) or blue (powder), all different types of extinguishers should all be coloured red, but with a small cream, black, or blue band signifying it’s contents.
The levels of distress and fury that people can whip themselves into over this issue is absolutely incredible. The legislation was brought in twelve years ago, but for some reason they seem to believe that ranting about it to a moonlighting firefighter in a drafty NHS training room is somehow going to get the regulation’s overturned. The worst thing is that these idiots inevitably make the session over-run, thus negating the only positive aspect of mandatory training courses – the possibility of sneaking off home early.
Mind you, the woman at the petrol station did have a point. Fuel prices are rather high at the moment. It was £1.07 a litre last time I filled up. But I’m certainly not going to embarrass myself by complaining to the petrol attendant about it. No, I’ll be far too busy complaining about the price of their diet coke to do anything like that. (“£1.60 for a two litre bottle?! It’s not like they have to pump it out of the ground! Get me the chairman of Coca-cola on the phone right now damnitâ€).
