If it was cheaper to hire a Chef to cook meals, I wouldn't understand all the noise about making it mandatory either.

Bad analogy. If you want ammunition, I'll give you the following. Having an attendant pump your gas sucks because:

1. They screw up what type of fuel you want. Or how much of it.

2. When you yell at them to fix it, they have no idea what you're saying, because they don't speak English.

3. At a busy station, you have to wait for five minutes for them to even get to you.

4. And then you have to wait for another five minutes for them to come back and finish off.

5. If you have the tag you use to pay for gas on your keys ... well you have to hand your keys to a stranger. Same with a credit card, when you could have simply swiped yourself.

I can go on, but really, at the end of the day, this isn't a big deal. There are far worse things to complain about.

But my point is that it is indeed cheaper to hire a chef to cook meals -- in some cases, but that doesn't justify making it mandatory.

You're taking, as given, the claim that attended fuel pumping is cheaper -- but that's only true sometimes, just like with the home chef, especially if (as in my ignorant aristocrat example) you factor in opportunity costs, which was the point.

When people insist that attended fuel is cheaper in terms of sticker price ... well, that's dubious, but let's assume, for whatever reason, it is (maybe there are insurance savings?). It still has a higher opportunity cost for several reasons, many of which you just listed.