The Fuel Stop

On this particular Saturday I was getting ready to head on out with my newly acquired catch for a short to and fro road trip across the Rift Valley in our beloved motherland Kenya.Just like our first date I had saved enough money to drive ourselves there and have a decent meal and a reasonable amount of drinks,to me this was no easy fit I had to work at a part time job to prove my meat and also because one I was trying to look the part,two I was dating one of the hottest out of my league kind of girls at school.See I was in the type of campus where kids got some huge German and British luxury machines fully equipped with fueling cards that did not seem to have a limit.I digress,at my alma mater I was lucky to have met Scott and his beyond lovely sister Tracey, both were white with a touch of that African magic that never cracks,nappy beautiful hair with blue eyes and she happened to be the angel I was dating at the time and in addition to their attractiveness they had the pockets to back my perception of perfection.Since I forgot to mention I got the car in-order for me not to look useless in the eyes of her brother despite them knowing my financial situation and also to present the notion that me and him could go beyond exam cheating buddies and sadly that was where our similarities ended apart from being humans.
I wore one of my best clothes combo and in my head I was looking better than usual and off I went to the car hire offices to collect my newly hired Toyota Allion after which I took the liberty of going to shop for snacks and cold refreshments.I was excited because hey which girl's brother would agree to being friends with the guy his sister is dating as well as be a part of the trip we had planned for months,these thoughts helped me ignore the fact that the queue at the cashiers' desks was long and the building was stuffy.A few minutes later a bunch of suppliers walked in with boxes on their shoulders,due to this they were hunched forwards and couldn't see where they were going all I heard were whistles and then a few ladies complaining and two men jumped to the side almost falling on a stack of tissue paper.All I wanted to do after this was to pay for my items and leave the supermarket but then there was the issue of the queue and that lasted approximately twelve long minutes.
We were all finally pointed towards the right direction and the last thing to do was to fill up the tank and be on our crisps,cider and laughter filled way.Shortly after filling up,the car started jerking as it cut out power especially on the high rev ranges,being the man that I was I downplayed it and kept on going,however,the problem was that I was sitting with two of the biggest petrol heads in the world who both had AMG and M powered vehicles and to be honest knew more about cars than I did at the time,they saw through the veil of pretense and advised me to park on the side of the road so as to run a minor diagnosis on the engine.I did as advised and opened the bonnet,to be particularly honest I had no idea what I was checking,the only thing I could ever do on a car was to change a flat tire with a functional one but still I went ahead and just stared at the engine.
My three passengers came out and laughed at me hysterically and since I was still confused i laughed on with them.They quickly scanned the engine and immediately knew what the problem was.Tracey advised me to start working on bleeding the system and showed me how to as they hurried to get a matatu to go get fuel from a different filling station.An hour or so later after refilling and running the car for a while we were on our way and it ran quite well for the rest of the day.
When I got back to Nairobi after dropping off my dates I went back to the fuel station to confront the manager and the staff member who had served me,James the pump attendant agreed that he had served me but they refused to take responsibility of it because I had no receipt to show the time and the date.I was in utter shock and decided that this argument was not worth my time and effort.However on getting home I went on to spread the negative story to my folks,brothers,friends and neighbors about the experience heck I even told my dogs just in case they die and reincarnate as humans living close to the fuel station just as an extra precaution after all it was off the highway on our way home.Two years later despite discounting their prices and having free fuel days the station closed down.
In Business,statistics show that it is 5-10 times more expensive to acquire a new customer and it also shows that 95% of the clients a company loses tell others about their negative experiences with either the product or services purchased thus contributing to an 85% loss of new and existing businesses.This statistic is relevant in proving really how important customer experience is to the survival of a business venture.

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