When I was a child, we had 6 service stations within a short distance of our house: Gulf, Esso, Sunoco, Texaco, Supertest, and Shell. I lived right across the street from the Gulf service station. From about the age of 7, I worked at this ‘gas station’, helping the attendant. I swept the parking lot, washed windshields, pumped gas, checked and filled tires and checked and topped up engine oil. When I first started I was so tiny I had a heck of a time opening hoods and I had to stand on a wooden crate to check things under the hoods. My goal was to earn enough money to buy the good things in life: Cokes, ice cream and candy. While I don’t recall exactly, I think I earned 10 cents for a few hours of work. Not much, but the job made me feel grown up. And I liked having the spending money.

My childhood gas station experiences introduced me to many life lessons, including an alternative perspective on lying, cheating and stealing. I was raised to be an honest person, to tell the truth because lying was bad…even sinful. A number of the gas station attendants across the street from our house presented an entirely different set of rules. About half of them lied and cheated people. And kids from school – well, some of them broke the rules too…stealing from the gas stations.

Here’s a list of some of the lying/cheating/stealing I was exposed to at a very young age during my time at our local gas stations:

• Attendants charging for empty oil cans: attendants would tell the customer they needed oil then pretend to open an already-empty can and pretend to pour oil into the engine. The, the attendant
• Children jockeying pop dispensers to steal a pop: in those days soft drink coolers were crude and hard to use. Often, they jammed a bit and failed to deliver the bottle of pop. Children in our neighbourhood learned how to wriggle the bottle to solve the problem. Then, one of the most-creative kids learned how to get a pop without putting money into the pop machine.
• Attendants stealing money from the cash register…not all attendants, but some…taking a few dollars a day.
• Children stealing candy from the shelves when the attendants were serving customers at the pumps. Sometimes they worked in teams, one using a diversionary tactic to distract the attendant while the other went for the candy.
• Attendants refusing to pay the children for time worked.
• Children stealing hand tools from the tool cupboards. This was one way some of the children, especially the older ones, reacted when they were not paid for their work.
• Attendants refusing to give U.S. customers fair value for their U.S. dollars…and pocketing the difference.
• Children pooling their money to buy cigarettes [pretending they were for their parents].

I also recall the mechanics laughing about overcharging service clients for exaggerated auto repairs.

Looking back – when I read what I have written above, it might appear that I grew up in a very tough/poor environment. No – it was middle class Southwestern Ontario.

Regardless, at what might be considered a young and tender age, I was exposed to lying, cheating and stealing…not by wicked people – just by regular folks working in the auto sector in the 1960’s.

On the other hand…

I met some wonderful service station attendants who were put off by all the lying and trickery. These folks talked about fair play, their families, their aspirations and their goals.