It's Enough To Give You Gas

The big gasoline companies must think we’re stupid.

Every single long weekend that I can remember the price of gasoline has shot up into the stratosphere. And when it does, the gas companies tell us – with straight faces – how it isn’t because of their insatiable greed.

Well, it is.

Don’t let them fool you.

Having said that I’ve no doubt sent somebody – a gas station owner, I’m guessing – to their writing desk to write a Letter To The Editor explaining how it’s not their fault the price of gasoline went up just before this next long weekend and how it went up not because of greed on the part of the big gasoline companies but because the price of crude oil in Saudi Arabia went up or else the transportation costs of the crude oil purchased from Saudi Arabia went up or else blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…

And besides – gasoline is two and a half times more expensive in England.

So?

What’s that got to do with anything over here?

To be fair, it really isn’t the gas station owners’ fault. It’s the big gas companies who pull gas station owners’ strings. And this time around – probably because they got nervous when the government started snooping around after one too many long weekend price gouges last year – they changed their strategy. They got smart and pushed the price up a whole week before they normally would have done so. And that’s supposed to fool us and maybe it would have had I not secured the following audio transcript of what took place in the Big Gas Company’s boardroom a couple of weeks ago...

BIG GAS COMPANY EXECUTIVE NO. 1 (lighting a cigar with a fifty dollar bill and addressing a heavyset man who is sitting across the table from him in a high-back kid-leather chair): “Hey, Tony. Did I tell you how the wife wants to do the house up all in imported marble? She wants to hire some hot shot artist and get him to recreate The Last Supper in imported marble in the front hall in front of the mahogany staircase.”

BIG GAS COMPANY EXECUTIVE NO. 2 (shaking his head): “Sheesh, Franko. Where you gonna get that kinda money?”

BIG GAS COMPANY EXECUTIVE NO. 1 (leaning across the table and talking in a hushed tone): “Well, that’s just it. That’s a lotta money, right? But I was thinking. Maybe we could jack the price of gasoline up for the long weekend in August.”

BIG GAS COMPANY EXECUTIVE NO. 2 (looking nervously over his shoulder and then leaning into the table and talking very quietly, almost in a whisper): “Geez, I dunno, Franko. The feds almost got us last year when they did that study on long weekend gasoline prices. Remember what a headache that was? We were lucky to squirm outta that one.”

BIG GAS COMPANY EXECUTIVE NO. 1 (smiling, chomping down on his cigar): “But this time I got a plan, Tony. Listen to this. Instead of jacking the price up minutes before the long weekend we do it a whole week before. We’ll fool ‘em. And if anybody says anything we’ll say, ‘Hey – that wasn’t no long weekend. That was a week before the long weekend’. Then tell them how expensive gasoline is in England again. They eat that stuff up. Plus, we’ll get a whole extra week of profit on top of what we would normally get. You could do the front hall at your house, too.”

BIG GAS COMPANY EXECUTIVE NO. 2 (voice quivering, obviously impressed): “That’s brilliant, Franko. Absolutely brilliant. Let me kiss your ring. No wonder you’re the boss.”.