Pay inside or pre pay only at your gas station. This is a great signal for the amount of trust/criminality in a given area.

Recently, a gas station I regularly use that had a pay inside option no longer does that. It makes me wonder if there were too many incidents of theft or if they just want to be proactive. Either way, there is less trust.

Trust itself is an invaluable thing to have. Not having it is a sign of bad times ahead. And no amount of money makes up for a lost in trust.