Gas station manager fired for setting price to 69 cents in California

He got canned.

A California gas station manager was fired after accidentally setting the price of premium gasoline to just 69 cents per gallon.

John Szczecina made the mistake at a Shell station in the Sacramento suburb of Rancho Cordova last Thursday.

“I looked at the numbers and it was 69 cents a gallon,” resident Darryl Surita told local CBS station KOVR last week. “So you know what I did, I hit that button and it started pumping and the dollar sign just stayed low.”

On June 11 in San Francisco, premium gas is priced at $6.99. (Jeff Chiu/)

The gas was supposed to cost $6.99 per gallon, costing the station an estimated $16,000 in just a few hours, KOVR reported. Szczecina owned up to the error.

“I put all three prices on there, except the diesel. The last one kind of didn’t go. So, I just took responsibility for it and said yeah it’s my fault,” Szczecina told Bay Area ABC affiliate KGO.

Szczecina said he’s worried about getting sued by the station. Such a lawsuit would be unlikely to succeed because employees are protected under the law if they make a mistake while simply doing their job.

Gas hasn’t cost 69 cents per gallon since 1979, according to the Department of Energy. Prices across the U.S. have exploded, and President Biden has been negotiating with Saudi Arabia in a desperate attempt to increase supply. On the campaign trail, Biden said he wanted to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah state,” but he’s backtracking because of the gas crisis.