You may have heard about this by now: People are panic-buying gas. They’re lining up at pumps and blocking intersections and clogging our roadways. I can’t even get near the station to buy a damn breakfast taco. I roll my window down and ask if I can cut through the line and weasel my way into the lot. Hey, I’m not getting any gas. I JUST WANT A TACO. But no one hears my pleas. The panic is here.
So today I’m asking, has the panic hit your city yet?
Also, tell us how bad it is. Busy intersections are now traffic jams in my town. Any store adjacent to a gas station is completely cut off and that breakfast taco? Yea, you can forget about it, because even if you could get around the line for gas, what are you going to do when it’s time to get out of the lot?
My friends are texting me about the gas shortage as if I know anything about what is going on in panicked people’s heads. That’s what this is; make no mistake. There is no gas shortage. There is only panic.
But there was that pipeline hack and all the breathless coverage of it. The problem, then, is that the panic buying does actually create a problem! People buy up all the gas — hoard up all the gas, in some cases. This puts more strain on the supply chain, and makes the problem(s) even worse.
The pipeline hack slows gas deliveries in certain places down and we get a feedback loop where there isn’t enough gas going to where it needs to go. That makes the panickers feel vindicated, but really it’s the panic that exacerbates any issue in the first place. So, try not to panic. Vent instead. Tell us, has the gas panic reached your city?