It was one of those scenes that could only happen in York County.

Nowhere else but here, not across the river in Lancaster County, which always seems like our older, more sophisticated sister who lives in a McMansion, reading The New Yorker while sipping Dom Perignon, looking down at us, what with us all living in trailers, watching "Amish Mafia" and pounding Budweisers.

Not down the road in Maryland.

Not anywhere else.

It was lunchtime, and I had stopped at my nearby Rutter's Farm Store - also known as the Quickie Mart of York - to grab a sandwich. It's a pretty busy store, particularly at lunchtime, with people lining up to buy iced tea and hot dogs and enough lottery tickets to fund a senior citizen bus trip to Saturn.

Usually, the line moves quickly, except when the aforementioned lottery people get in front of you, exercising an investment program that seems to hinge on being able to match pictures of pirates on scratch-offs. Or when someone gets to the counter with their purchases and seems incredibly surprised when the person behind the counter asks for money because they were completely unprepared to pay for their stuff and have to spend 40 minutes rifling through a wallet for cash before giving up and using a bank card that turns out to be overdrawn - and then they try to write a check, but they don't have a pen and they go searching for one...

But I digress.

On this day, the woman at the counter was a tiny, gray-haired woman, wearing one of those plaid little-old-lady coats that you only see on elderly women and hipsters. She had come in from the gas pumps, holding her receipt, which she studied intently, after fueling up her Oldsmobuick or whatever it was. (The smaller the elderly driver, the bigger the car. It's a rule.)

She looked a bit like Betty White, only smaller, a kind of dwarf Betty White.

She approached the counter, after waiting her turn behind some lottery people, and told the guy behind the counter that there was something wrong with her receipt. The guy took it from her and looked at it and shrugged. It looked fine to him. Whatever could possibly be wrong with it escaped him. He asked her what the problem was.

And she said that the gas pump didn't give her a 4-cent-a-gallon discount on gas.

The guy looked puzzled.

The woman explained that she had swiped her Rutter's Rewards card and that was supposed to give her a 4-cent-a-gallon discount. Instead, she said, if you look at the receipt, you will see that it gave her a 1-cent-a-gallon discount.

She was confused.

So was the guy behind the counter. He called the manager over and the woman went through it again. She wanted her 4-cent-a-gallon discount.

The manager looked at the receipt and figured out what had happened. If you don't have many rewards points - earned by buying stuff at the store, like coffee or iced tea or sandwiches - the discount from the points can be as little as one cent per gallon. But if you use your rewards card at the pump, you can get an automatic 4-cent-a-gallon discount. When you start up the pump, it asks on the little screen whether you want to cash in your points or take the automatic 4-cent-a-gallon discount.

The manager explained that to the woman, carefully, and the elderly woman said she thought she pushed the right button, the one that would have granted the 4-cent-a-gallon discount. In fact, she was sure she pushed the right button.

Even if, apparently, she had not.

Which is something she would never admit to. Even under torture.

That was beside the point. It didn't matter whether she pushed the wrong button or not. She just wanted her discount.

The people behind the counter, as well as those waiting in line, exchanged glances that, translated, said, "Are you serious?"

She was.

So now, the manager had to figure out how much the store owed her and how to give it to her. (Whatever they pay these people, if this is the kind of stuff they put up with day-to-day, it's nowhere near enough.)

The woman had bought 11 gallons of gas. At three cents a gallon, that's 33 cents.

The woman said she wanted her 33 cents. 

The manager gave her the money.

So, to review, this woman, who had just spent about $38 on gas, had argued with two convenience store clerks during the lunchtime rush to get a discount that amounted to a savings of 33 cents.
