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The moment that changed my life was standing frozen at 40 below with splinters in my hands from a gas dip at 7-Eleven, realizing I was going to do it the same way next time — and that made me go back to high school at age 21.

Dave describes the low point working at 7-Eleven doing gas dips in freezing weather, getting splinters, and having the epiphany that he'd just do it the same way next time — which made him realize he had to change his life and go back to finish high school. ✦ AI generated

Dave Plummer · Lex Fridman · 2025-08-29 · original ↗

plays this moment only · 28:31 — 29:57

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What are some memorable moments from that time at 7-Eleven?

Probably the worst moment for me. I mean, I got held up at knife point and stuff and that's all entertaining, but the worst, the most, the suckiest part for me was doing the gas dips. You've got a long, it's like a 15 or 20 foot wooden stick and it's measured in gradients of inches and feet and you drop it into the gasoline tanks and then you bring it up and you measure where the gasoline sits because there's no electronic sensor. So I'm doing that and the first time I do it, I drop the pole and I re-drab it. Well, that's about 1000 splinters of wood into your hands and it's 40 below out and that really sucked. Oh wow. I realized I don't want to do this for my whole life. I knew that. Okay, so you stand there frozen with splinters in your hand. And at some point I have a revelation about my life that next time I'm going to do it differently. And then how ludicrous that is hits me about 3 seconds later, right? And I think that was really the moment for me where I realized that I've got to do something different.

verbatim transcript · starts at 28:31

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