When I was in college I worked the night shift at a gas station. One night a group of 4 high school kids drove in, and it looked like they were on a double date. They were apparently running on fumes and badly needed gas, but didn’t have much cash between them. They all came in and emptied the change from their pockets onto the counter and came up with $1.12 total. I punch in $1.12 as the pre-pay amount for their gas and the nice girl who was driving was appreciative that I had helped count out the change – there were a lot of pennies.

After this the girls go to use the bathroom while the boys peruse the small store. The aisles are angled towards the register so that I can look down them pretty easily. I see one of the boys clearly take a Snickers bar and place it into his jacket pocket – he made absolutely no attempt to hide this action.

I was about to call him out on it, but remembered that they hadn’t started pumping their gas yet. As they were walking out the door – “have a good night!” – I cleared out the pre-pay amount and typed in $0.59, subtracting the $0.53 that I knew the candy bar cost.

I then waited for the fun.

The nice girl starts pumping her gas and when the pump stopped at $0.59 she looks at me through the glass and raises her hand to make the international gesture for WTF. I motion for her to come inside and she’s a bit annoyed until I explain that her friend stole a candy bar, so I took the price of the candy bar off of the total amount.

The look of incandescent rage that crossed her face was beautiful! She took that anger back out to the car and opened the passenger door. Even though I couldn’t hear her, I could see her yell animatedly with her hands, and soon she started walking back to the store, candy bar in hand.

She placed the candy bar on the counter and said thank you, I put $0.53 back on the pump. I could see her still yelling at him as she finished pumping the gas and drove off.