Scott Powers
Forums Member
Joined: 30 Jan 2008
Posts: 8
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#1 · Posted: 31 Jan 2008 08:44
Here's a story I heard on the news. It would fall under the category of "funny incident"...
A couple months ago, in northern Wisconsin, a gas station employee was closing up for the night and he went to manually change the price per gallon just like he normally does, but this time he accidentally misplaced a decimal point. He was supposed to enter $03.299 per gallon, but he accidentally entered $00.329 per gallon. That's 33 cents per gallon!!!
So the employee closed up and went home for the night without realizing that he made a mistake.
But guess what...people can use their credit cards to buy gas in the middle of the night even if no employee is present. And that's exactly what happened...
During the night, 42 people got away with filling up their tanks at only 33 cents per gallon. A local policeman was driving by and noticed an unusual amount of people getting gas, so he pulled over to investigate and when he noticed the incorrect price, he went and hit the emergency shut-off button and waited for the gas station manager to arrive at the scene.
After checking the computer, they discovered that 42 people had taken 586 gallons of gas during the night. That's almost 14 gallons per person if you average it.
I don't think that employee will EVER make that mistake again. I heard this story on the news and they never said whether or not the employee was fired.
That just goes to show how something as small as a decimal point can have such a huge consequence.
586 gallons@3.299 = $1933.21
586 gallons@0.329 = $192.79
So in one night, the gas station lost $1,740!
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