I hope this is not my legacy

I stopped at a Texaco petrol station at about 11pm yesterday. I got out of my car, grabbing for the nearest unleaded pump before being stopped by a strange metallic voice over the forecourt tannoy. “Pay for fuel before pumping!” I looked around, and sure enough there were several sheets of A4 paper stuck in the window of the adjoined Costcutter emblazened with the same words, behind which the attendant stood. I strolled over to the booth to pay, requesting £30 of fuel, where I was informed that the pump would not automatically stop when it had pumped the amount I had paid for. I was fairly taken aback by this, but proceeded to fill up my car- slowing the pump as it reached £29.85, and very gently squeezing the last few (very precious at 109.9 a litre) drops out to satisfyingly stop the digits rolling at exactly £30.00. I had a little panic attack considering what on earth would happen if I sneezed and went over £30.00. Would I have to walk back to the booth and give the woman a few coppers, or would she “let me off”. What if I just drove off, assuming no-one would care about the 13p accident and consequently wake up to a court summons? That probably wouldnt happen, but there probably would be an awkward moment trying to navigate the situation, which there (as far as I know) is no precendent or etiquette for.

Is Rugby really [em]that[/em] rough that businesses cannot trust people to pay for fuel or, possibly more importantly, the police to enforce the law? I mean, how often can people possibly steal petrol? A pre-requisite for this crime (unless you are very stupid) is using fake number plates or a stolen car. If there are that many stolen cars being driven around that petrol stations have to take precautions so that they dont lose a reasonable amount of profit, then I would hope that every single station would be forced to install the automatic number plate scanning systems which you see at, for example, Tesco. Since this doesnt happen, and I don’t hear anything much about levels of car crime, I don’t expect to be treated with caution by Texaco.