With fuel prices soaring, motorists clambered to a local gas station in Rancho Cordova, California, to fill up their tanks after a glitch caused prices to drop to 69 cents a gallon.
The glitch took place Thursday at a Shell gas station, CBS 13 reported, with one person, Eddie Surita, describing the scene as "crazy."
"It turned into a circus within a matter of minutes," he said.
Darryl Surita, who posted about the glitch on Instagram, said he managed to fill up his tank for just $14.
"I looked at the numbers and it was 69 cents a gallon. So you know what I did? I hit that button and it started pumping and the dollar sign just stayed low," he said. "I started looking around and everybody had a smile and they kind of were not looking at you in your eye."
CBS 13 reported that the decimal point in the advertised price was mistakenly moved, with $6.99 a gallon for premium becoming 69 cents a gallon.
"I’ve never seen gas this price in my lifetime — could you imagine that?" Surita said. "This is history right here."
It took three hours for the gas station to fix the error. Manager John Szczecina was fired Monday.
"Well, it was a mistake that I did," John Szczecina told CBS 13. "And I thought, 'This is a nightmare.' I put all three prices on there except the diesel, but the last one kind of didn’t go."
The gas station lost $16,000.
"So I just took responsibility for it and I said, 'Yeah, it's my fault, and I'm to blame,'" Szczecina said.
Now Szczecina and his family have started a GoFundMe account with the hopes of raising the money that the gas station lost in revenue and pay it back, CBS 13 noted. Szczecina is applying for jobs.
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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