I’m 100% being petty about this and I don’t give a shit.

I took my car to a Shell station last week. Not my usual spot — I was in the area doing something else and figured, I need to get my brake pads and oil changed why not knock it out while I'm out.

The mechanic says $90 for the oil change. A little steep for a Shell station, but I needed it done. Then he says something like, "So everything's gonna be $250." At least that's how it came across — like $250 was the all-in total.

I come back after running my errands. Bill's ready. The guy at the counter says $340.

I asked him to break it down. The $250 was just the brake pads. The oil change was $90 on top of that. That $250 figure was never explained to me clearly upfront — it was kind of dropped in a way that made it sound like the total.

So I go back outside and talk to the mechanic directly. I tell him, "You can't charge me $250 for one hour of labor at a Shell station?" He's trying to explain why it's justified. I'm not buying it. I tell him: if I knew it was gonna be $250 just for the brakes, I would have gone straight to Toyota, sat in the AC, and had some free coffee.

He doesn't budge. Fine.

I go back inside and ask to speak to the owner. The manager says he'll have the owner call me. Nobody calls. A few days go by. I call back myself. Same manager. He tells me the owner is on vacation.

I tell him: "If you're not gonna let me talk to the owner, I'm gonna escalate this — I'm calling corporate, I'm emailing them, the whole thing." He hangs up on me.

Can you believe the nerve of this guy? The owner is conveniently on vacation, the manager hangs up on me when I ask to escalate — I'm starting to think nobody there actually wants to resolve this.

So I actually did it. I called Shell corporate and reported the whole thing. The pricing ambiguity, the manager refusing to connect me with the owner, all of it.

Here's what actually bothers me about this.

It's not the $100. I mean, I do care about the $100 — that's real money. But what really gets me is the principle. This is a small business. The owner presumably opened this shop because he wanted to build something, serve his community, make an honest living. And then he's got a mechanic pulling this kind of stuff, and a manager who's either in on it or just doesn't care enough to fix it.

If you're a small business and your people are out here nickel-and-diming customers with misleading pricing, you're not building anything. You're taking advantage of the people who don’t know what market rates are for auto repairs. Like how many old ladies have you done dirty like this?

I reported it to Shell corporate. I'm thinking about taking it further — reporting to the county, wherever I can. Not because I want to burn this place down, but because I think the owner needs to know what's happening under his name.

Am I being petty? Maybe. But I think sometimes the only thing that changes bad behavior is consequences.

What do you all think? Ever had something like this happen to you? Did you let it go or push back?