I Met a True Karen Sunday at the Titirangi Gas Station
Happened on Sunday, 13 October.
I had just dropped my son off at a birthday party and needed to gas up prior to heading out for a run with a group of friends a few hours later. I pulled into the gas station in the village at Titirangi. If you aren't familiar with it, there are two pumps. They allow two on the left and two on the right. If you use the left-hand side, you have a bit of a sharp right-hand turn to get out and back onto Titirangi Rd.
I stopped at the front pump on the right-hand side. I shut off the engine, popped the fuel cover, unbuckled, and opened the door. I went to the pay station. Enter Karen.
Karen came up to me and said "You need to move your car back so I can get out when I'm done". I looked at her little car, looked at the amount of room and replied that there was plenty of space. She said, "No, you need to move!". I replied that there was plenty of space.
While I was trying to do the pre-pay, she tried to remove my card from the machine. Rather than smack her, I put my hand in the way so that she couldn't remove my card. She hit my hand, but, since she is about 5' 4, she knew that she was not going to force me to move my hand (Legally, she assaulted me).
I proceeded to process the payment at the pay station to get ready to fill up. Karen then said that I was lucky that her child was in the car. I asked "Or what?". She said "I assumed that you would move". I replied "I assumed you could drive".
She said "Then I'll hit your car". I replied "And I'll take a picture". She then used the F word about eight times - In front of her child. She even said "You don't know who you're F-ing with". (Which made me think that she is a government employee) I said, "I don't care who you are - there's plenty of room".
Once Karen was done fueling up, she pulled around and tried to get as close to my car as possible. She then stopped, opened her door and said "Look, there's not even 20 centimeters on this side!", I stepped to the left and said "And a meter and half on the other side".
I bet she's a single mom. Because there's no way anyone would put up with her after a few weeks.
Oh, little blue car. If you know her, keep your distance - she's unstable. Sure, she could have been having a bad day and was on edge. But it wasn't even 10:30 AM. She didn't need to make her problems my problems.
Incidentally, after she drove off an SUV pulled in to where she had just been. I asked the driver "If he was done fueling before me, would he be able to get around?". He said "Sure, no problem".
Apologies to anyone named Karen.
Poll: Should the government levy industries that contribute to financial hardship?
As reported in the Post, there’s a $30 million funding gap in financial mentoring. This has led to services closing and mentors stepping in unpaid just to keep helping people in need 🪙💰🪙
One proposed solution? Small levies on industries that profit from financial hardship — like banks, casinos, and similar companies.
So we want to hear what you think:
Should the government ask these industries to contribute?
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58.9% Yes, supporting people is important!
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26.3% No, individuals should take responsibility
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14.8% ... It is complicated
Have you got New Zealand's best shed? Show us and win!
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Even Australians get it - so why not Kiwis???
“Ten years ago, if a heatwave as intense as last week’s record-breaker had hit the east coast, Australia’s power supply may well have buckled. But this time, the system largely operated as we needed, despite some outages.
On Australia’s main grid last quarter, renewables and energy storage contributed more than 50% of supplied electricity for the first time, while wholesale power prices were more than 40% lower than a year earlier.
[…] shifting demand from gas and coal for power and petrol for cars is likely to deliver significantly lower energy bills for households.
Last quarter, wind generation was up almost 30%, grid solar 15% and grid-scale batteries almost tripled their output. Gas generation fell 27% to its lowest level for a quarter century, while coal fell 4.6% to its lowest quarterly level ever.
Gas has long been the most expensive way to produce power. Gas peaking plants tend to fire up only when supply struggles to meet demand and power prices soar. Less demand for gas has flowed through to lower wholesale prices.”
Full article: www.theguardian.com...
If even Australians see the benefit of solar - then why is NZ actively boycotting solar uptake? The increased line rental for electricity was done to make solar less competitive and prevent cost per kWh to rise even more than it did - and electricity costs are expected to rise even more. Especially as National favours gas - which is the most expensive form of generating electricity. Which in turn will accelerate Climate Change, as if New Zealand didn’t have enough problems with droughts, floods, slips, etc. already.
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