Sure, gas prices are high. But that’s not the point of this post. The point is that when I filled up the Jeep this morning, the guy in front of me was filling his Suburban. He put in 20.2 gallons at a price of $2.969 per gallon. A calculator claims that this is $59.9738 worth of gas. The pump claimed that this was $60.00 dollars worth of gas.

The guy who pumped the gas called the manager out to discuss the issue. I needed to get to work, so I didn’t stand around to hear how things worked out, but it was an interesting problem. In retrospect, I wish I had stayed to hear it out. Now obviously, the problem was just that with gas prices so high, and with a being able to drink 20 gallons of fuel at one sitting, you’re bound to expose round-off error, right?

Well, yes and no. The pump claims accuracy to tenths of a gallon. That means that, if it was just a matter of the pump being well on it’s way to 20.3 gallons from 20.2, then it should be no more than 1/3 of a buck (.2969 dollars) off of “accurate”. (which it is)

In other words? Gas costs too much.