Mildly Infuriating

In my neck of the woods, gas station owners have sharpies which of the 10 buttons is the mute button.

So as soon as the ad plays you just press mute.

It is God awful though.

Never understood this. Sincerely hope that any place trying out here is shunned.

EVs will hopefully put the tactic out of business forever. 'Plug in and fuck off somewhere else for half an hour' is not a position you can really advertise in.

Unless it becomes 'watch ad to enable charger' 😬

Well, sure, but not on our gas pumps. Only on TV and radio. And in magazines and movies and at ball games, on buses and milk cartons and T-shirts and bananas and written on the sky. But not on gas pumps. No, sir-ee!

It started happening a few years ago in my area. Maybe like right before the pandemic?

For a while some of the stations had a hidden option where you could hit one of the unmarked selection buttons and it would at least mute the ads. But starting around the end of last year they took that option away.

The only stations I know of that don't show ads are Costco (and I assume Sam's Club too, but idk). Plus they have slight discounts on gas because they are member only. But my local Costco station is such a headache to get through these days - even at around 9pm after the main store closes - that I not just go to a local Shell or Valero and resentfully try to ignore the fucking ads that always play.

Yep. And a lot of the gas stations in my area have the auto-hold latches busted or removed, so you have to stand there and have a super loud ad screamed in your face. Which is why I now have a pack of reusable zip ties in my car that I will slap on the fill handle if I come across a pump like that. And no, that’s not dangerous - the stop mechanism in the pump handle operates such that the handle depresses further when the auto-shutoff engages, so it does not disrupt the safety of the filler mechanism.

Can one accidentally disable the annoying shilling screen whilst jostling the nozzle toward the intended vehicular orifice?

Small knife/chopstick etc through the plastic grate in front of the speaker does the job too

Am I the odd one out, because I find it incredibly easy to ignore ads.

I haven't lived in the US in a while, and every time I visit and one of these things starts shouting at me, I wonder how anyone tolerates this shit.

Occasionally you'll see one button that's more worn, maybe bottom right iirc, that mutes it. Doesn't always work, though.

Go ad lite for 5.99 a month or full ad free for 12.99. terms and conditions apply* Meaning they will be changed to be worse when we want more money.

You can just say you're from NJ lol, it's not like any other state has an employment scam where you're legally required to hire people to perform the simple, relatively safe act of pumping gas. At least not since WA finally trusted people to pump their own gas a few years back.

Edit: Sorry, OR not WA