What is it about New Jersey and Oregon that makes their drivers lazy wimps?
New Jersey residents aren't primed about pumping their own gasoline.
A new poll shows nearly two-thirds support the state rule requiring that only station attendants can pump gas in the Garden State.
Forty-eight states allow self-serve gas pumps. Only New Jersey and Oregon do not.
[. . .]
The poll finds Democrats and women are more strongly in favor of having their gas pumped by someone else than are Republicans and men.
Only manly men dare to get out of the safe car and brave the elements while pumping their own gas, which leaves out the gals and the Dems, natch.
I remember when self-serve began, sort of trickling into one station at a time. A lot of people, men and women of all political persuasions, were intimidated by the idea and would drive out of their way to find stations that still pumped it for you. But self-serve has become such a taken-for-granted part of the public landscape that one of the biggest laughs in "Back to the Future" was the scene where a car pulled into a gas station and was swarmed by attendants in uniform.
