About eight years, the Refrigerator, then in print, ran an exposé on the irregular price structure of the City of Rochester's parking meters. At that time, if you fed the meters with nickels, you got six minutes per nickel (you paid .833 cents per minute). A dime got you 11 minutes (so you paid .91 cents a minute), a quarter yielded 26 minutes (which meant you were paying .96 cents per minute).

This article caused quite a stir, leading citizens to pump nickels only into the the downtown machines. The machines filled up with nickels so fast that the City had to hire extra staff to collect the coins more often. They finally raised the rate and went with a flat per minute rate.

I was reminded of that story when we spotted this sneaky pump redesign at the Coastal station out on Henrietta Road. Other stations are following suit. The three octane levels of gas have always been laid out in a row from most expensive to least expensive. A quick glance at this pump and you'd spot the bright red "Super" on the left and then assume the cheapest ("Regular") would be on the left. Wrong. I almost started pumping "Plus" at six cents more per gallon.

And then I noticed the yellow smiley face that says' "Smile. You're on Camera" - surveillance camera.