So, here’s the situation: You’re pumping gas, and you want to be efficient and get exactly, let’s say, ten dollars worth. In order to achieve such a feat, you will have to gently squeeze the handle at the right moment and very, very gently drift it up to the next dollar. We all know how hard this is, and it gets twice as hard with gas near $2.00 per gallon.
So $9.00 arrives and you start getting ready to hit that perfect $10.00. $9.55 … $9.56 … $9.57 … $9.58 … $9.59 … $9.60. $9.60?!?! Damnit I’m a moron. Yep. There sure are one-hundred cents per dollar. Ooops. Forty cents to go. Start over!
Please, join me in saying “Ahhh! I’m not the only one!”
Jeremy Cole 
You know what’s really odd? When I was in Japan it became apparent while riding with a friend that the Japanese pump to a round number of litres, not dollars. So motorists would pull up to a gas station and ask for say… 10 litres, and not even really care how many dollars (ok yen) it came to.
I read on Slashdot a while ago that if you pump your gas to 5, 10, or otherwise even increments, you’re more likely to get a fair amount of gasoline. These are the units that the various departments of weights and mesures use to ensure the gas pump readouts are legitimate, and so the pumps tend to catch up at these numbers (not dollar marks but gallon marks, rather). I don’t know if this belief is true or not.
Yeah I’m guilty as accused.
I blame it on my old bedside clock that had running/tumbling numbers like many of the old gas station pumps. Now of course everything is @#$@ digital – so we were just calculating on clock time cause we were watching the clock numbers. Makes sense right?