About Being an Oregonian

Gasoline sets Oregonians apart from most all other Americans. The reason is simple: This woman is a wanton lawbreaker.

For those of you that don't know, pumping your own gas in Oregon isn't generally allowed. There are exceptions, of course, but every year someone moves to Oregon and starts bellyaching about how awful it is that you can't pump your own gas.

Today in a guest opinion piece in The Oregonian Murr Brewster explains this and the soul of Oregonians, better than I can. Enjoy!

BY MURR BREWSTER

Guest columnist Brian K. Pinaire ("Just let us pump our own gas, already," July 16) would really like to fill his own gas tank. Somehow, this feels like freedom to him. Perhaps I have a few more seconds than he to spend in quiet contemplation while I listen to my car radio, but I have a different take.

People think this is a matter of choice, and that the choice to pump one's own gas has been taken off the table. Actually, everywhere self-service has been offered, full service disappears. When Maine went for self-service, my disabled sister was able to locate some stations that offered a full-service pump, if she had a lot of time to wait, and a lot more money to spend. Effectively, it was not a choice.

Ostensibly the reason we don't have self-service in Oregon is that it's dangerous: We  will surely set ourselves on fire. Clearly this is not true. You can't get anything to stay lit in wet Oregon. But every few years we put it to the ballot again, and we smack self-serve down every time. Part of it is pure orneriness.

We like that we are just about the only state that prohibits self-serve. We feel special. We like feeling special. That's why we walk around in the rain all day wearing flannel shirts, shorts, sandals and a nice pair of wooly socks. We dress that way to go to the symphony, too. We think we look just fine.

We also were the first state to gin up a bottle bill, requiring a deposit on bottles and cans containing carbonated beverages. We're still sailing proud on that old dinghy, the fresh breeze from 1971 whipping up our hair, obscuring the new acreage of non-carbonated beverages sprawling across the 7-Eleven that we don't  require a deposit on. We're green, baby. Could be mold; can't rule that out.

But however we've stumbled into this way of doing things, I think we're onto something with the gas stations. Year after year, we Americans lose more and more of our service jobs. We make ourselves, essentially, unpaid employees of every store we frequent. We keep farming all our work out to ourselves; we're like Wal-Mart and China at the same time. You can't get anyone to answer the phone. You find your groceries, check yourself out, bag them up, load them into your car. There wouldn't be butchers if they could figure out a way you could back a hog into a meat slicer.

Thanks, but no. I'll stay inside my car and remain dry and odor-free while some nice person, a person with a job, feeds my car and takes my money from the window. Why would I want to take her job? I don't.

The rest of you can keep piling on work for yourself, but don't blame me if one day you wake up to discover that YouTube is really a self-colonoscopy kit.