Maria Huber will soon see the yellow numbers on the scoreboard in front of her Gas station let it jump around. But first she has to make sure she doesn’t make a mistake. So she switches on the PC, like she does every morning between six and seven o’clock, and enters her competitors’ postal codes into the fuel price calculator, about 8224 for the neighboring Kaindorf near Hartberg in Eastern Styria.
Huber manually transfers the competitors’ prices onto a piece of paper and then the “juggling” begins. That’s what she calls it when she calculates how much diesel can cost at her pumps. What sounds like a game is dead serious business for her, and she stubbornly blocks questions about her magic formula. The result, on this Friday morning at the beginning of April: 2,107 euros per liter. Five cents less than last night. In the afternoon it will look different again; Maria Huber juggles often, about three times a day. The most important thing for a gas station accountant like her, says Huber, is control.