HEY EVERYBODY, FREE GAS!
Weeeell, not exactly free, but close enough, apparently, for a previously law-abiding, 45-year-old Lincoln, Nebraska woman, Dawn Thompson, to embark on a life of crime. I would love to hear what rationalizations she used to convince herself that what she did was okay. I’d bet anything that she employed a bunch of them.
Her gas-stealing rampage began to unravel when Lincoln Police got a call from Bosselman Enterprise’s loss prevention manager on Oct. 20, 2023. A Pump and Pantry had reported that someone was ripping them off. An investigation revealed that the convenience store’s gas pumps had received a faulty software update a year earlier in November of 2022. The update managed orders and reward cards, but it also allowed anyone who swiped a rewards card twice to shift a pump into its “demo mode.” Once it was set in that sequence, gas was free as far as the pump was concerned. One rewards card had been repeatedly used to fool the pumps, and police traced it to Thompson.
Incredibly, she had been getting gasoline without paying for it between the update and June 1, 2023—seven months. (They run a tight ship at Pump and Pantry!) In that time her special card tricked a pump 510 times, often multiple times per day, resulting in a gas heist of 7,413.59 gallons at an average price of $3.76, for a total of just under $28,000.
Wait, where was she driving to use that much gasoline? It turned out that Dawn was a nice person and willing to let others derive benefits from the free gas. A freind told police that Thompson would let her use the card to get “discounted fuel.” She paid Thompson $500 for the $700 worth of gas that she pumped in ten visits to that Pump and Pantry. That still leaves 500 visits to the Magic Pump: Dawn must have other friends.
Dawn surely convinced herself that she was just stealing from a faceless big oil company that wouldn’t miss the gas. Maybe she was in thrall to the belief that “anybody” would do what she was doing, a variation on the first rationalization, “Everybody Does It.” Maybe the thing just snowballed; she vowed that each time was the last time, then thought, “OK, just one more. Never again.” I’ll have to go through the Rationalization List and check off which ones Dawn was likely to have embraced. I also need to search my memory banks to recall which fables, fairy tales and Greek myths Dawn’s story resembles. If she had read any of them, maybe her ethics alarms would have pinged.
Certainly there are lots of people at fault here: the pump programmers, the asleep-at-the-switch Pump and Pantry managers, Dawn’s friends who didn’t tell her to stop when they learned of her burgeoning gas-stealing addiction. Ultimately, however, Dawn is responsible. She’s going to prison. And it all could have been prevented if after the first time she realized that the pump wasn’t charging for gas, she went right to the manager and alerted him.
The Golden Rule had this one covered. I wonder if Dawn had ever heard of that…
Ethics Alarms 
Almost certainly Dawn will fall back on 36, “They should have seen it coming”. The fact that the gas station should have realized much sooner that someone was pumping gas for free is beside the point, of course.
I’m betting she’ll also bring out 1, 2A, 10, 19, 32B.
I just thought of something. When I worked in customer service, there would be occasions in which customers would trot out an excuse for why they didn’t owe us money based upon some rationalization that they were not at fault. The reasoning was, “It’s not my fault so….”
I can’t find this on the rationalizations list, but I’m betting that Dawn will argue, “The system glitch was not my fault, so why should I be prosecuted?”
Or a variation of the old grifter’s motto – “If they fell for it, they deserve it.”
I can’t find this on the rationalizations list, but I’m betting that Dawn will argue, “The system glitch was not my fault, so why should I be prosecuted?”
I think this would fall under Hamm’s Excuse.
I think you are right.
…and had Dawn applied the Golden Rule and informed the station manager, she would likely have received much more than jail time. She may have been profusely thanked by by management. Bosselman corporate (assuming they were informed) could have gotten involved and maybe thanked her publicly by showing her face in an advertisement as an example to be emulated. They may have given her an actual gas card good for six months of free gas.
But even if she got nothing in return, she would have been way farther ahead of where she is now.
In a small town like the one where I live and work, the owners of the local gas stations are my neighbors, and quite likely clients of the attorneys I work for, and I couldn’t imagine depriving a neighbor or client of part of their livelihood, like this gal did. On the other hand, I could (but won’t) tell you stories about how the other side in a client’s lawsuit reacted VERY poorly when a ruling went against them. (The poor reaction generally just got that person in even more trouble with the local courts.)
How did the woman know about the glitch? That seems like an odd bit of esoteric information to have in one’s back pocket. I can’t remember the last time – or the first time for that matter – that I thought, “well, now, if I swipe my credit card twice, I get free stuff.” Usually, it’s about seeing if I have any more credit on my card to pay for whatever it is I am buying.
jvb
I would guess it was an accidental find. Maybe she swiped the card once and thought it didn’t register or didn’t hear a confirmation tone and then swiped it a second time, wala!
Jack,
I believe you missed an exacerbating factor in your analysis. This woman is worse than just stealing $28,000 worth of gas.
“A freind [sic] told police that Thompson would let her use the card to get “discounted fuel.” She paid Thompson $500 for the $700 worth of gas that she pumped in ten visits to that Pump and Pantry.”
This jumped out at me. I once had a card that gave me discounted fuel from my employer’s pumps. I stayed honest, so when I bought fuel for family and friends at the discounted rate, I PAID for the fuel and didn’t have them pay me back. However, in this case, Dawn “bought” her friend’s fuel and had her “pay her back”. Now if I were this friend, I’d be grateful for the $200 savings in gas, but that’s not what really happened.
Dawn not only stole all this gas, but she was charging a reduced rate to her friends and family. She got a free (to her) $500 from this friend. That was 10 visits. How many more friends “paid her back” for their discounted gas over the other 500 visits? How much additional money did she make in what amounts to selling stolen goods?
While the theft of $28,000 worth of gas is huge, I think the sales aspect of this is even worse and needs to be mentioned.
”I also need to search my memory banks to recall which fables, fairy tales and Greek myths Dawn’s story resembles. If she had read any of them, maybe her ethics alarms would have pinged.”
The Ring of Gyges springs to mind:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_Gyges
-Jut
Wow…completely misfiled that one, but it is perfect.
yeah, I was going to mention it in response to another recent post here, but you didn’t quite tee it up like you did here.
-Jut