Last week, a gas station manager in northern California was dismissed after unintentionally putting the premium pricing at 69 cents per gallon, costing the store $16,000.
Customers, on the other hand, were overjoyed for the short hours that the price remained so low.
“I looked at the numbers, and it was 69 cents a gallon. So you know what I did? I hit that button, and it started pumping, and the dollar sign just stayed low,” Darryl Surita stated.
The last time prices were this low was in 1978, when the average gallon of petrol cost 65 cents in the United States.
As expected, a large crowd gathered at the Shell station on Sunrise Boulevard and White Rock Road in Rancho Cordova.
Darryl Surita also saw something that isn’t seen very often at gas stations these days.
The pricing was changed from $6.99 per gallon to 69 cents per gallon due to a missed decimal point. To make matters worse, the mistake took three hours to correct.
Former station manager John Szczecina has now admitted to making the mistake.
Szczecina was fired on Monday, and his family has set up a GoFundMe campaign to gather $16,000 for him to repay the gas station. As of Wednesday morning, little over $5,100 had been raised.
While Szczecina’s family is concerned that the station may sue him, business attorney Craig Simmermon noted that workers are immune from responsibility in situations like these when mistakes are made while executing routine tasks.
