Published in On Our Selection News November 7, 2013 

Discovering you have money issues at a checkout is always ten times worse when that checkout is at a service station.

When you’ve forgotten your wallet at a grocery store, you can abandon your trolley and walk away. But when you’ve got a car filled with unpaid-for liquid, you can’t exactly put it back on the shelves.

Over the weekend, I stopped at a fairly busy petrol station to fill up my noble silver, and slightly hail damaged, steed. I was only going to put in a certain amount as I had a crisp $20 note in my wallet, but I decided to go the whole hog and save myself the hassle of having to return to a fuel station in the near future.

I was feeling pretty good about the situation – I engaged in a bit of banter with the dreadlocked guy behind the counter, inserted my card in the machine without a glitch and the machine made very satisfying sounds as the buttons were pushed (using en EFTPOS machine without the button sounds is always an off-putting and deflating experience for me).

Everything was coming up Milhouse. However, things took a turn for the worst when my card declined. I’m trying out this foreign concept called “saving” and so I’ve been attempting to trick myself into curbing the spending by transferring much of my money into a different account. The budget was going great until I discovered the local op-shop was stocked with fantastic-former-dance-costume leotards, which put my meticulously crafted (and somewhat unreasonable) budget out.

I just had to make a quick transfer. No worries, right? Except that during the time that I grabbed my phone from my car and lined up again, I had lost my bankcard. It wasn’t in the usual segments of my wallet. I even checked the massive pile of unnecessary receipts I keep for some reason.

The servo was quite small, so when the pumps were in use, cars had to line up, and being a busy road, it never took long for the line up to spill out onto the road. Not only was I that annoying person who had to transfer money, but I was creating some serious congestion. Whoever uses the saying “stopping traffic” in a positive way has clearly never held up several pre-morning-coffee soccer mums before.

After making two trips from inside the station to my car, I began to loose hope. Even though I’d tried to make it obvious that I had lost something by looking under my car and keeping my eyes fixed on the ground (which conveniently meant that I didn’t have to make eye contact with the grumpy motorists), I still had a kind lady approach me asking if I needed money, which made the situation even sadder.

Just when I was about to crumble right there on the servo floor next to the over-priced chocolate bars, I looked in my wallet one last time. And in the zipped compartment (which I didn’t check because that is a strict coins only zone), there was that cheeky little card. My relief was on par with my embarrassment as I sheepishly lined up for the third time. Yet while I could feel the hate searing into my skin from the many waiting cars, I was glad because at least I was able to leave.