When people say times have changed, you need evidence for it.

Well, here’s some for you.

Travel in time with us back to the ’90s, and picture a gas station that isn’t very busy. Now that we’ve set the scene, picture a crazy customer making crazy and unsettling demands.

In this story, one Redditor remembers one particular customer’s scheme to score free gas from the police. See the story below for more info.

Your pumps charge for air.

When I was in college, I worked in a small gas station. This was in 1990 in a smallish town, before you could pay at the pump.

Customers could pump first and pay when they were done.

I was sitting behind the counter. It was a Sunday afternoon, so I was listening to a football game on the radio, wishing that my shift was done.

It was a really slow day, maybe a customer every five or ten minutes.

But not for long…

I watched a customer pumping his gas and could tell by his body language that he was upset as he approached the shop to pay me. He burst through the door, yelling, “Your freaking pumps pump air!”

I asked him what he was talking about and he told me, “the pump is pumping air! I’ve pumped a lot of gas in my life, and I can tell the difference between liquid and air. Your pump is charging me for air!”

I told him that I didn’t think this was possible.

He was very insistent, so I asked for more information.

And the customer insisted he was right…

He said that the pump indicated that he had pumped ten gallons, but he knew the difference between liquid and air, and he wasn’t going to pay for air.

The equipment at the station was pretty old and when there wasn’t a lot of other noise, you could hear the pumps pumping.

They made a high-pitched whine, so even without looking, you could tell when someone was pumping gas, so I knew that he had pumped some.

I asked him what the gas gauge in his car said, and he replied that it was broken, so he couldn’t get a reading from it.

But then, the unthinkable happened.

He continued to yell at me for a few minutes, telling me that he wasn’t going to pay for air.

Finally, he stormed out, and as he left, he turned and yelled, “I’m going to go home and make a bomb. I’m going to blow this freaking place up!”

He got in his car and sped off.

So, the OP had a logical next step — call 911.

He hadn’t paid and had just threatened my life, so I called 911.

I had gotten his license plate number, so the cops were able to track him down pretty quickly. They went to his house and talked to him.

About an hour later, an officer came to the store to tell me about their conversation. The cop told me that the guy was just really upset and wasn’t really going to bring a bomb in.

Now, here’s the wildest part of all this.

The cop even paid for the gas.

Times sure have changed.

I doubt that a bomb threat would be handled so casually anymore.

Does Reddit have stories like this? What do they think was going on with that customer? Let’s read the comments below to get a better idea.

People were immediately suspicious.

And others reminded the OP what the consequences were nowadays.

One Redditor had thought this was going to end differently.

And one reader had a very good point.

The customer ran a very good scam — that would never work nowadays.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.