[Freakin]

I've been filling up my gas at Safeway gas stations occasionally. They generally have pretty competitive prices, and they offer discounts to 'club' members. I would always look around at other peoples' pumps to see what kind of discount they were getting. I woudl get like 3 cents, they were getting 6-10 cent discounts per gallon. WTF.

It was pretty obvious they were basing the discount on how much you spent at the grocery store in the previous week/month/decade, but I am 25 and we don't cook very much. I had to figure something out to get a better discount.

I'm at the pump one day and have a realization--there are many people who don't want grocery stores monitoring their buying habits. These people still want their grocery discounts for being a member, so they sign up under a fake phone number.

I go to the pump, and enter 425-555-1212 as my phone number.

"You have qualified for a $.12/gallon discount today"

VICTORY. I had never seen any of the pumps that I spied on give that big of discount. I'm not sure how many people use that number, but it is obviously a popular one. I'm going to try out different numbers over the next couple months. 425-123-4567, 425-555-1234, etc. I'm also going to try these out at a local chain that offers total-bill discounts if you've bought a certain amount in the previous month. So if you buy more than $500 worth of groceries in October you have a 20% off coupon you can use in November. I hope to get lucky and find one of these accounts with an unused discount.