You know how it is. You’re driving down some remote B road in rural Britain and your petrol tank is running low. At last you stumble on some tiny petrol station selling some fabulously obscure brand of petrol such as Anglo or Burmah. When you pull in, the weirdest thing happens — a live human being walks over to your car and offers to fill your tank.
Theoretically, we should be delighted by this. But most of us under 60 probably find it faintly disquieting. Filling a petrol tank is now something we prefer to do for ourselves.
Of course there may be a Freudian explanation for the male urge to fill up. Yet our preference for self-service seems to apply to a lot of other activities not involving nozzles or pumps — such as booking flights, buying books, withdrawing cash or supermarket shopping.
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