> Admittedly, I became irrationally angry about this. It felt like an invasion of my mental space. Here I was pumping gas, already paying money to the business, why are they continuing to invade my mental space, which is the last bastion of "freedom" an individual can have?

I just had to leave a comment on this -- Your observations are quite well-written and not pretentious at all. Have you considered writing a French-language 20th century existentialist city-novel? Joking aside, this is pretty much exactly how I feel whenever I listen to obnoxious radio ads in Ubers.