Lutha Mahtin posted:

It's pretty easy to spill gas if you aren't paying close attention. You can put the nozzle into the car wrong; even if you're just a little off this can do it. You can have a car where the door covering the gas cap is on a spring, and you wedge it open at first but then it snaps closed and sends the nozzle flying out onto the ground. Some part of your car can be screwed up so it doesn't trigger the auto-shutoff part of the pump/nozzle. You can even pull the nozzle out of the car with your grip around the trigger, and spray gas as it comes out because you squeezed down on it. Or you can "top off the tank" after the shutoff clicks, which doesn't actually top off the tank but instead starts filling up the line that runs from the tank up to the opening.

Source: I worked in a gas station for a zillion hours in high school. We had a big barrel of this special material we used when people spilled fuel onto the ground. It looked kind of like pebbles for a fish tank, or some of those fancy salts that are opaque and kind of pink-colored. This was applied to the spill by using an old bottle of wiper fluid someone had cut the bottom off of (to make a scoop), so you would scoop up some of the stuff out of the barrel and go put it on the spill. It was really absorbent so usually just a few sprinkles would cover the liquid, and when it was nice out you could let the mixture sit there for a bit and then scrape it into a dustpan and dispose of it.

This didn't matter during the biggest spill I had to deal with, though. I remember once in the winter when some lady I'd never seen before (small town, knew everybody) spilled just a ridiculous amount of gas outside. I don't know the volume, but it created an area about ten feet in diameter of varying gasoline-ness. This happened after that point during winter where the snow has become a permanent fixture on the ground around the pumps, and this mixes with all the dirt on tires and people's shoes, so her spill created this sort of liquid minefield of little puddles and glazes on top of and in ruts and hills within the snowmuck. So I'm carrying scoop after scoop of the solidifier out there, it's cold as poo poo, and when I'm done I can't even clean it up because it's all mixed in with the shitsnow. The kicker is that everyone else coming to get gas after her now steps on the snow-dirt-gaspebble stew, and tracks it into the store. Good thing I was a master mopper

That solidifier stuff also worked on puke, which is something I'm sure you were all wondering. Bright and early one summer morning I watched as a dad and his son were walking to the front door of the store, and the kid is clearly dry-heaving. So his dad says "well just puke it up", and the kid proceeds to yak out this delightful orange goo directly in front of the single door into the convenience store. They come inside, buy their snacks or whatever, and leave. At no point does the dad have the kid go into the bathroom to rinse out his mouth, nor does he inform me that there's a glob of liquid Apple Jacks and stomach acid directly in the way of everyone trying to enter the store. The gas chips worked on it though

e: wow this post turned into some pretty gbs poo poo