I am honest, honest!

Part of my series on fun with Safeway staff.

Safeway's petrol station has a special offer on Petrol. This is unsurprising, since petrol is their main commodity. What would be more surprising is if they had a special offer on, say, sun-beds, but I digress. Anyway, the offer is more of  a loss-leader to get people to use the main store. If you spend £20 in the store, you get a discount on the petrol of five pence a litre. I had recently both spent over the designated sum and emptied my fuel tank - the ideal opportunity to get a discount of £2 on my fuel.

Reaching the inside of the petrol station's kiosk, having filled my tank, I realised that I could not find the little slip of paper in my wallet that had the words "petrol discount voucher" on them. I was certain that I'd received such a voucher. After a brief search, I found the till receipt from my visit. I showed this to the person at the checkout, who politely told me that I needed the credit card slip, which would have the petrol voucher printed on it... obviously!

I told her that I would search harder and did so, for about 5 minutes, at the back of the shop. It's amazing how much crap sits in my wallet! I had to give up in the end. With my tail between my legs (metaphorically, not literally), I returned to the till and told her I'd have to find the voucher and use it later. In fact, I'd pretty much decided that I knew where it was; I'd put it aside for safe keeping - on the shelf in the hall at home. However, the lady at the petrol station was having none of it. Despite my obviously not having the voucher, she insisted on giving me the discount.

So, if you want to scam Safeway's petrol station, follow these steps:

1. Go in and spend a couple of minutes rifling through some random papers in your wallet
2. Flash a till receipt at them so they see the date, but not the total, and tell them you're entitled to the discount
3. Look crestfallen when you're told that it won't give you a discount
4. Claim to have the voucher "somewhere"
5. Spend a long time looking for it
6. Look really upset, while bravely admitting that you cannot find it and therefore WANT to pay full price.

If I had been scamming, then I would feel really guilty right now. The nice lady even took the trouble to make a handwritten voucher with some cover story on it about the original having been chewed up by the till. I promised her that, if I ever found the original voucher, I would destroy it - and not take a second tank's worth of discount out of Mr Safeway's pocket.

This I did. Honesty is the best policy.

>> Cutting it fine

19 April 2002
Ashley Frieze