Travelers get angry over cost of fueling up

Compare, contrast and cool down
At Craig’s Service Center, an independent station in Middletown, N.J., station owner Craig Copeland hasn’t seen anybody “freaking out or having fits.” Copeland said, “Generally it’s under the breath comments like ‘what a rip-off’, and complaints about having to pay $80 or $100 for a fill-up.”

Copeland has trained his attendants to agree and side with the customers. “Instead of engaging with angry customers, we try to educate them. Instead of defending the high gas prices, we try to explain.”

And sometimes, they just laugh. “It’s the folks in the SUVS who complain about paying $4 for a gallon of gas while drinking a $4 cup of coffee or a $4 bottle of water. They’re paying the equivalent of $40 a gallon for coffee, yet complaining about $4 a gallon for gas. If they’d cool down and put it all into perspective, they’d realize $4 gas is really a bargain.”

Adapt with anger management skills
In San Bruno, Calif., an anger management consultant who also owns a gas station is helping his customers combat gas rage with a stress-relief dunk tank. According to the station’s Web site, “As gas prices skyrocket, you can combat your anxiety by dunking a Shell employee ... You deserve it.”

If dunking isn’t therapeutic enough, the service station offers free popcorn, cranks up live music on Saturdays and awards free car washes to customers who rant at cashiers.

Jonathan Wulf thinks the dunk tank is great idea, asking, “how can you get angry if you’re having fun?” Wulf is a licensed clinical psychologist associated with Swedish Medical Center in Seattle and offers a few additional anger management tips for folks who don’t have a dunk tank at their hometown gas station:

• Instead of getting mad, try being grateful that you even have a car, that you have a car that works and that there aren’t really long lines at the gas station.
• Don’t wait until your tank is empty. If you can put in $30 worth of gas instead of $60, it may not feel quite as painful.

Seek help from above
Getting angry definitely won’t change the price of gas, but some folks think praying will. A Baltimore, Md.-based public relations consultant (and Seventh Day Adventist) has been touring the country leading prayer circles at gas stations. Rocky Twyman’s “Pray at the Pump” movement has touched down at gas stations in Washington, D.C, San Francisco, Detroit, St. Louis and other cities.

And while praying (so far) doesn’t seem to be helping, at least one motorist believes it’s certainly worth a try. That tire iron-wielding doctor in California now preaches patience to other exasperated motorists, and suggests they “pray for something to happen so prices go down.”

Harriet Baskas writes msnbc.com's popular weekly column, The Well-Mannered Traveler. She is the author of the “Stuck at the Airport” blog, a contributor to National Public Radio and a columnist for USATODAY.com.

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