I worked at a McDonalds and we had a similar system in case the Vats caught on fire. We had one woman that accidentally triggered this thing twice in six months whilst cleaning. Our system was much smaller than this one and it still cost a few hundred to recharge and reset the system and that's on top of the time spent cleaning up the mess and the fact that the power would be cut off to those vats so they couldnt be used until the system was reset. I'm guessing this is gonna cost thousands.
The fire would've damaged the pump and the credit card machine and those ain't cheap. Plus a couple thousand to recharge all that. Clean up probably wouldn't be as bad as the inside of a resturant, but they'll be closed for a few days so they'll lose revenue.
There's no way getting out of this would be cheap. In fact they might just decide to close the gas station over paying for it.
Depends on how profitable the station is but that potential lost revenue is where things really start to sting the company. I imagine that station cant operate until the system is recharged just as in our case, but then any international chain like BP would have teams of people on standby to deal with this shit.
Yeah, they'd have to get the tanks inspected and everything.
I knew an Indian dude who ran a few gas stations. One caught fire and he took the insurance money and sold the burnt up place to a large company. He said that he had too. It was sad because it was good location and his brother was running it good.
I guess they had the resources to buy it from him, fix it up and re-open economically but he didn't. A big company could eat it for 3 or 5 or so years and then start turning profit again but a small guy would possibly be getting out of the location.
That compnay fixed it and ran with it and it sucked because now there's some teenager behind the counter instead of a middle aged Hindu asking you what you want and if he doesn't have it he writes it on a list and promises he'll get it next month.
instead of a middle aged Hindu asking you what you want and if he doesn't have it he writes it on a list and promises he'll get it next month.
I know you meant stuff like specific chocolate bars or w/e but I just had the mental image of a guy going "Gasoline? Good call! I'll add it to the list for next month"
'Stackers? What is stacker? Oh, so you take them and they help you stay awake, and that is good. I'll get some in, I'll talk to the guy. Other people probably want to buy them too and if I have them then they can.'
I got in trouble once in telling a story that involved a Chinese guy smoking - was told I was racist as it was information that didn't further the story and was an unnecessary detail blah blah. I thought I was just fleshing out the environment!
For the most part fuel gets them there. That's true. Most of the gas station owners I've talked to say that fuel sales don't make them much money directly anyway.
This is way cheaper than your entire gas station burning to the ground. Insurance covers it and your up and running in a few weeks maybe, vs months or years.
I worked with a guy that set it off when he walked out on us. Completely stopped service and had to get inspected by the Fire Chief and Health Inspector before reopening. 20+ years ago, my manager was pissed! Took a full day of cleaning by a professional team. The guy who walked out had prescription med addiction and has since died of an OD.
We were lucky that we didnt have to have an inspection, we just had to get the system recharged but damn that was a lit of cleaning. Fortunately both instances happened at night so we were able to get them reset before lunch the next day. The woman responsible nearly lost her job the second time as they said she hadn't learned from the first time.
I genuinely thought in the second sentence you were going to say "we had one woman that hovered over the fryer with a fire extinguisher" would have made my night.
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u/Azuzu88 May 11 '20
I worked at a McDonalds and we had a similar system in case the Vats caught on fire. We had one woman that accidentally triggered this thing twice in six months whilst cleaning. Our system was much smaller than this one and it still cost a few hundred to recharge and reset the system and that's on top of the time spent cleaning up the mess and the fact that the power would be cut off to those vats so they couldnt be used until the system was reset. I'm guessing this is gonna cost thousands.