It was one of those rare occasions, a bright November morning, and I was at my local Esso service station fuelling up. After paying at the pump, I selected Esso Supreme, removed my Mini Cooper Countryman’s gas cap, grabbed the pump’s nozzle and inserted it into the fuel tank opening. Suddenly, my ears were hit by a wall of insipid sound. Turning, I discovered a commercial playing on the gas pump’s video screen. An announcer was yammering about something called “Esso Medals.” A pro hockey player appeared on screen and blathered about how inspirational the Esso Medals had been to her when she was a kid. I almost broke my fingers flailing them against the screen in an attempt to make it stop.
And so, what should have been a quiet contemplative experience was interrupted by a jarring, commercial intrusion. Chalk one up for “gas pump topper ads.” Maybe Esso should send a few “Most Dedicated” Esso Medals over to whatever demons of advertising conjured this one up.
They had struck again.
By “they” I mean “them” and by “them” I mean corporations pitching their garbage. Nowhere and nothing is spared. There was a time, say 40 years ago, when we were relatively free from advertisements. We only encountered them on television and radio, in magazines, newspapers, billboards, public restrooms, urinals, movie product placements and on hats and clothing.
Now they’re everywhere.
Take “gas pump topper ads” as an example. Pumping gas at a self-service station has been a “Moment of Zen” for me, what Merriam Webster defines as a “state of calm attentiveness in which one’s actions are guided by intuition rather than by conscious effort.” It was a minute in which I could silently become one with my surroundings. If someone was filling at an adjacent pump, they might engage me in a friendly conversation (hopefully not) but if they did, I would welcome it as a brief moment of convivial chat. When the last drop was delivered, the encounter would stop and my Moment of Gas Pump Zen would end.
And they’ve taken that away.
Of course, gas pump ads are not new. They’ve been around for a while, but I suppress their memory and am surprised each time one appears on screen. Google offers videos showing drivers how to mute some models of gas pump advertising. Hint: try pressing the second button from the top on the right.
According to “out-of-home media company” AllOver Media, gas pump topper ads offer advertisers “maximum traction” because they “engage consumers in undistracted moments as they go through their daily routines” and “use unavoidable advertising in a place that’s easy to notice and welcomed by consumers.”
Excuse me while I pop a few Gravol.
So, let’s get this straight. I pay you money for your fuel and in exchange you blast “unavoidable advertising” in my face. Got it. Next, you’re going to tell me that I am going to pay a small fortune to carry a small portable screen around with me 24 hours a day that not only fires ads and propaganda disguised as “content” at me but also orders me to look at it by beeping and vibrating.
Surely, those responsible for such a relationship owe us a few answers. In search of a little background, I contacted the major fuel companies with the following innocuous questions:
- Do they show gas pump advertisements at the pumps in their service stations?
- If yes, when did they begin showing gas pump ads?
- How long is the average gas pump advertisement?
- How is the volume that the advertisement is played at determined?
- Can a customer mute a gas pump advertisement?
Only Shell answered. Their media relations officer sent a cordial reply saying they would get back to me and four days after my e-mail I still haven’t received any answers. Apparently, big fuel corporations have the right to use unavoidable gas pump advertising, and we have the right not to ask them about it. My guess is that the people who make gas pump ads hate them as much as I do, but they tolerate them because gas pump ads make them rich. If they made me rich, I’d like them too. I’m many things. Call me inconsistent and irrational, but don’t call me a hypocrite.
I am currently seeking old-school gas pumps that are free from unavoidable advertising. As a driver, I cherish my quiet gas pump Moments of Zen and will do what I can to preserve them. Mock me if you wish, but they are a chance to sit with my existence and realize I am alive. I do this so that I do not find myself one day reciting a line from Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, “So all that was going on and we never noticed.”
Let me live “every, every minute.” Let me look at everything hard enough. Let me not spend and waste time as if I had a million years. If I can’t do that, at least let me stare blankly toward the horizon while I pump my gas.