No Keg Money For You
PHCN had not supplied electricity for over 24 hours and counting. The freezer was getting warm and we needed to protect our precious edibles. Thankfully, our bigger generator had been brought back to service recently; so, all I needed to do was get some fuel to fill it up. I collected some cash from mum and headed out of the flat with two yellow 5 liter kegs in hand.
My street lies parallel to a main road: "Ipaja road" in Lagos state. On this road, there are three separate fuel stations, all within a distance of less than a kilometre. This means (fortunately) that I usually do not need to travel far to get fuel. As I stepped out of the house, my mind tried to decide on the one that was going to get my patronage. I had two parameters in my consideration: distance, and affinity of the attendant staff to demand a tip referred to as keg money. For distance, two of them were within an approximately equal distance from my house. The third would cost me an extra five minutes to reach. Ironically however, I decided to go for the farthest one: Mobil; not without good reason though.
Sometime ago while passing through Mobil station, a poster on each of their fuel pumps had caught my attention. They advised us (customers) never to give tips for buying fuel. Knowing my country though, I strongly doubted that the announcement held any real weight. In spite of my doubts though, I was determined to take them on, using the poster to my advantage.
