Tensions High at Our Gas Pumps

Editor's Note: the following comes to us from Catherine Johnson of Irvington. Have a letter to the editor you'd like to share? Email krista.madsen@patch.com, or blog it.

At the Tarrytown Hess station on the Corner of Broadway (Route 9) & Route 119, only two employees are working, and they're doing a heroic job keeping order and civility.

My husband and son have just returned from the station; they shared the following account:

A man driving a white Mercedes butted into the line, and the two employees told him, three times, to drive away from the pump and go to the back of the line. (My son heard one of the employees say, "Get the eff out of my line." I was on the phone with him when it happened.)

The man refused to move.

The two employees then physically blocked the pumps, with their bodies, to prevent the man from pumping gas. The man was NEXT TO THE PUMP, and they would not let him grab the hose. As the employees were blocking the pump, a very small young woman came up and yelled at him, telling him to get in line and wait his turn.

My husband says it was clear the crowd would have enforced the employees' rules if the man hadn't finally relented and driven away. The crowd wasn't a mob; no one was threatening the man. Instead, the crowd was backing up the employees.

The irony: by the time the employees resorted to physically blocking the pumps with their bodies, the line was twice as long. If the man had just gotten in line in the first place, he would already have had gas.

Instead, he went away with nothing.

There were two police officers across the street at the time, but they did not involve themselves.

_ Catherine Johnson, Irvington

P.S. I want to stress the two guys are amazing. Also...there were at least two cars that tried to butt in and both were big Mercedes. My husband and son both say the bigger and more expensive the car, the worse the behavior.

Were you able to get gas in Ossining or Croton?