So I pulled into a “76” station this morning and filled up my tank at a digital self-serve pump. When the tank was full, I put the gas spigot (is there another word for that that I’m forgetting?) back in its spot, and pressed “No” for the receipt. Then, the digital readout chose to tell me:

“Completion Successful.”

So what, exactly, is the alternative? An “unsuccessful completion”? An “incomplete success”? Isn’t the mere fact that I completed the transaction at all a success? Couldn’t it just say “Complete“? Or maybe, even, “Success!” (with the exclamation point, of course). What would an unsuccessful completion be, anyway, considering that it had already approved my card and let me pump the gas: me spilling the gas all over the ground? The gas pump exploding? Of course, the LCD screen wouldn’t be able to tell me anything about how unsuccessful it was at that point anyway.

It just seemed like an oddly redundant thing to have the pump say, rather than a simple “Thank you” or “Have a nice day!” Kind of a bad Chinese-menu translation type of thing, but not where you’d expect one. And me, being a former copy editor, just had to say something about it.

“Cover Friday” will return next week, unless I have another run-in with a terminologically challenged gas pump.