penny wise and pound foolish

So the other day, I found that I needed to run to the grocery store (I think I was out of wine) during E's soccer practice. The store is about 2 miles away from her school (where she was practicing). Easy Peasy. Should be a quick drive over and a quick drive back.

I was singing along to Five for Fighting as I drove up to the stoplight, not paying much attention, until I noticed that there was a very large back-up from the grocery store up to the light where I was attempting to turn in, and down the road. I was NOT going to be able to turn left into the store parking entrance without pissing off many, many drivers and possibly causing an accident.
"Huh." I thought. I did a u-turn and back-tracked to take the other entrance into the store, thinking there must have been a fender bender in the parking lot backing up traffic. But I was wrong.

They were selling gasoline for $2.99 a gallon at the store's gas station. The average price around these parts is about $3.50 a gallon. As I drove in the direction opposite to the line that had formed across the parking lot, I tried to smile and flirt in order to cut across to get into a parking space, then finally just bullied my way through the line, irritating a nice elderly lady. And while I did this, I did a quick calculation. They were offering gas for $0.50 cheaper than the average. Most cars take what? about 15 gallons? We're talking a price savings of a whopping $7.50. I am not exaggerating when I estimate that cars at the end of the line had probably a 45 minute to hour wait to get to the pumps. (This is to save $7.50, remember)
Because I'm a dork, I googled around to find that every 30 minutes of idling costs about a 10th of a gallon in wasted fuel. So an hour of idling would cost 2/10 gallon or $0.70. That would lower the savings that these folks were getting to $6.80.

My state currently recognizes the minimum wage as equal to the federal minimum wage, or $5.85 per hour. So these people were sitting in cars, emitting CO2 into the atmosphere, in order to receive a discount on gas only marginally better than minimum wage for the time they spent sitting in line. What they would save, relative to minimum wage, was 0.95.

(boggle)

What is WRONG with people!!!???