A scathing indictment of the petrochemical industry

When you find yourself in times of trouble just remember that in all likelihood you're smarter than a petrol pump.  I know I am.  Not necessarily smarter than a person who pumps petrol, that's still up for debate.  But I'm definitely smarter than the machine which pumps the petrol (known in the US of A as "gas" because it is liquid) into my car.

When I was filling up early one brisk winter's morn, I realized that the pump was just trickling the fuel into my car.  It took a minute or so just to get a dollar's worth, which these days is really only 20 mL or so (again for Americans amongst us, 20 mL is roughly five and a half drachms).  So I hung up the pump and went inside to speak to The Lady. 

"Pump one isn't going", I said. 
"Just hang it up and start again.  It's a bit cold today so it takes a while to start", she replied.

So I went out and tried again.  No luck.  So I hung it up and tried again.  No luck.  And again.  No luck.  By now it was almost lunchtime so I abandoned that pump and tried the one next to it.  Too easy this time.  The fuel gushed forth in a joyous stream.  I felt like I'd just had my prostate reamed out.  I went inside with a grin on my face but The Lady scowled at me.

"You were hanging it up too fast", she says, "It got confused".

Confused??  It should be pretty obvious that when I use the petrol pump, I want petrol.  There's not really any other option for it.  It can't give me milk or wine or blood.  It can either give me petrol or not give me petrol, and seeing as it was not giving me petrol until I arrived and attempted to instruct it otherwise, I'd have thought there was limited scope for confusion.

Maybe I'm just over-thinking this.