Sunday, June 08, 2008

An ode to Stupidity

to aasonawane,
anilbpai@HPCL.co.in

Dear sir,

This morning at 9-20 AM I had gone to your petrol pump at Sector –V, Bokaro Steel City, Jharkhand for a refill. After filling in petrol in my car, a Santro Xing XP, number ________, the attendant collected cash and returned change. But he did not fit the cap of petrol inlet and left it on the roof of the car as I drove out. Later when it was detected, the cap had already fallen somewhere on the road and had been lost. I have contacted the Station owner and apprised him of the gross negligence which has caused me great inconvenience. The matter may kindly be looked into.

Yours truly,

Self-explanatory, my dear Watson. How stupid can somebody get? Granted, I chipped in with my share of carelessness. I should have put an ear out for that Krat-krat sound of the cap locking. Shouldn't have left without having heard it. But it was a Sunday morning and I was with a friend, and our daughters in the car, coming back from the pool. Ravenous. I had but one thing on my mind. Breakfast. I think I am entitled to proper redressal . The owner has promised to replace the cap at his expense. Unfortunately, our town is a godforsaken place. The local Hyundai service center say they can arrange the spare in a week, hopefully.
We live on hope in the meantime. Hope, and a little sugar, maybe.

p.s. I now think every car should come fitted with a beeper for the fuel cap left open. An essential feature for a country of duffers, what?

Update, Monday 10 PM:

I'm grudgingly impressed. The Pump manager has used his sharp mind and brought me a fuel cap this evening which fits and locks and makes the krat-krat sound just about perfectly. Only, it's a spare for Maruti Alto. I was not in a mood to nitpick.
Lessons to be learnt,
a) Fuel caps across makes and models are interchangeable
b) Hyundai Auto sucks. They would've taken a week to get the spare Maruti had on their shelves.
The manager chap also took it in writing from me that my grievance was amicably settled. I was in a generous frame of mind. I readily obliged.

3 comments:

Narendra shenoy said...

My car has a little plastic cord that attaches the cap to the little trap door hatch like an umbilical cord. Hyundai's fault they haven't thought about it. Can't rely on human beings not to make mistakes, no? Look at our Government, for instance.

But I can relate to the feeling of being pissed off. You must have been close to putting out the contract on the petrol pump guys. Commiserations!

Partho said...

Tell you what, that's a great idea, that cord of yours. I'll now go tie something around the new cap and never let it detach from the womb.

Our Big Corporation impressed me. See update for info on redressal.

Sud said...

be careful what you ask for from car makers, I have test driven a car that bongs at almost anything, to a point where you cant really tell which bong is for what.