System 13

This afternoon I pulled in to the Kroger fuel station, as the van’s gas gauge was hovering around an eighth of a tank. And I do mean hovering – it has a bit of a mind of its own, and so it moves up and down quite freely. Knowing how much gas is in the thing is a bit of a crapshoot. Due to that, when it hits an eighth of a tank, it means it’s time to get to the fuel station before the machine stops rolling on command.

I got out of the van, opened up the gas door cover, and unscrewed the gas cap; everything going normally, thus far! I pulled out my debit card and glanced at the screen on the pump. It was asking me if I was a Kroger Plus member. I am, but I didn’t have the card on me, so I put my debit card in, then pulled it out. I had it in my head that doing so would bypass all of the Kroger Plus stuff, and lead me to the “credit or debit?” bit. However, instead, the machine told me to reinsert the card. Okay. I insert it, then dutifully removed it when told to do so. The machine’s response?

INVALID LOYALTY

This was the first time in my life (that I can recall, anyway) where a machine has informed me that my loyalties are invalid. Suffice to say, I got a good chuckle out of it. (I also got some gas out of it, after cancelling back to the starting screen, and following its weird rules; no, I’m not a Kroger Plus member; I’d like to pay outside, not at the window; credit, not debit please; no, I don’t want to enter my PIN, just give me my receipt already.)

The only other thing I can recall that is similar is MS-DOS (remember that beast?) informing me that I’d given it a “bad command or filename.” Who’s it to judge the morality of my commands?

I still think, though, that INVALID LOYALTY wins the award. I’ll put my loyalties where I wish, Kroger fuel pump.