FUEL FOR THOUGHT
Sorting the facts from fiction at your local gas station
Gas station manager Elizabeth Manetta would like you to know two things about fuel: she doesn’t set the price and it doesn’t make much of a profit.
And please don’t go ballistic if she asks for ID when you buy a pack of smokes.
“Customers are the best part of the job, but some get upset about the little things,” she said. “We had one the other day who tore a strip off the cashier because there wasn’t any washer fluid in one of the buckets.”
Manetta has seen it all from the other side of the pumps. She started working at a station as an after-school job in the 1990s, and liked it enough to stay in the business. She now manages a station in Brooklin, Ont., northeast of Toronto.
It’s a corporate store, meaning the fuel company owns it, contracts its suppliers and pays the employees, Manetta included. Stations may also be franchises, where owners run the business under head office’s rules, or privately owned stores that operate independently, but pay to have a fuel company’s name on them.
There are still a few stations with no company affiliation, but they’re rare and mostly in rural areas, Manetta said.
“You need a name behind you to sell gas these days. People want that brand, plus they have the loyalty programs for points.”
Most stations have a store attached because that’s where the money is, Manetta said.
“Regular gas has a tax of 45 cents a litre, and diesel is 39 cents. The company pays it when it comes off the tanker, and the tax is the same whether gas is a dollar or $1.50.
“Then there’s the delivery charge, and then the profit. I’m not sure what they make right now because I don’t see the invoices, but when I worked for an independent, she hardly ever made a halfcent or a cent on fuel.”
If all the local stations are around the same price, that’s no coincidence, she said. Three times a day, Manetta has to check the competition and report it to the company.
“I don’t set the prices; that’s all controlled by head office. Each store has a different strategy, and head office might say you can be two cents cheaper, one cent cheaper or match it.”
Fuel prices do tend to drop at night to bring in business, and everyone follows the leader, she said.
“Maybe it’s an independent and they want to sell more, or they know they paid 90 cents for the load, and they can sell at 93 and still make money.”
At one time, Manetta had to lower a measuring stick into the underground tanks to see how much fuel she had left. It’s now all electronic, with sensors that tell both the store and head office when the tanks need refilling, and that measure the fuel’s temperature and detect any water in it. They also let her know how much fuel has been delivered.
“When I started in 1994, I had to crawl on top of the tanker truck and open it up to make sure they put all the fuel in the ground, and they weren’t ripping you off and taking some to sell elsewhere,” she said. “Health and Safety would sure be on me for that today.”
The underground gasoline tanks hold only regular and premium. For mid-grade, the pump mixes the two in the correct proportions.
It’s illegal for drivers to fill up while the vehicle is running, while they’re smoking, or to let children operate the pump. The no-cellphone rule isn’t so much about sparking a fire, Manetta said, but to prevent distraction.
Inside the store, Manetta’s customer service reps have to know and enforce all these rules — and then some. They must ask for identification each time from anyone who looks underage when buying cigarettes or lottery tickets, even if they know the customer.
“Customers swear at us when we ask, because they don’t want to go back out to the car to get their licence,” Manetta said.
“But I need to ask, because the next person in line could be a health inspector who says, ‘Why didn’t you ID them?’ and if I say, ‘Well, I know them,’ that’s not good enough.
“The business gets fined, the cashier gets fined, and the cashiers don’t have $500 in their pockets to pay it. We get mystery shopped, including from the lottery corporation.
“It takes two months to train someone where I can leave them with the store. They have to know the rules at the pump, how to process a sale, whether it’s credit card or debit or gift card.
“They have to ID for cigarettes and lottery, check the washrooms, keep the store clean, watch for theft. They need to know the products, and what to do if the computers crash or the pumps go down. It’s a lot of work for minimum wage.”
And Manetta is in there too, cleaning and restocking whenever it’s required.
“It’s a team effort,” she said. “It’s why my store looks the way it does. Everybody does all of the procedures.”