Car Troubles
I have an early model truck (I hate the term “late model” when talking about the age of a vehicle) that requires a lot of maintenance to keep it running. Over the course of time that I have owned this vehicle, I have put an alternator, a fuel pump, tires, radiator, battery, serpentine belt, and a starter solenoid into the beast with my own two hands. I have also done all the regular stuff like putting oil in it, and changing bad hoses. Most of the time minor annoyances like those repairs don’t get under my skin, it’s a good truck and I don’t think I will ever buy a new car because I can’t fix the new stuff coming out. So anyways, most of these types of inconsequential fix it jobs are easy to do if you have the time, knowledge and the tools, but I can see where an average driver can get pretty upset about these things because “car won’t go.”
When “car won’t go” and a person can’t fix it himself what does he do? He usually takes it to an auto mechanic and has the work done. That, or he has it towed over to his red neck brother-in-law’s yard and they spend a whole Saturday afternoon tearing into the engine compartment and tearing into a 24 pack of beer, but I deviate…
The mechanic is such an important part of our society. Since we drive just about everywhere and we trust all of that travel to our totally complex and incomprehensible automobiles, it is vital that a mechanic be available when one of the millions of moving parts under the hood of a car fails. Yes, without the mechanic there to decipher the hieroglyphic ciphers of Detroit under our hoods (bonnets) our society would crash and we would be back to hunting mastodons for our supper.
That’s what the mechanic wants you to think. Yeah, cars are a bit of complex engineering, but they aren’t as complex as they would have you to believe. But since most mechanics trust that you are the average Joe out there who just opens the smoky hood and scratches your head in utter stupidity when a simple hose comes loose, they will lord it over you and your pocketbook like a prince demanding taxes. This doesn’t attitude doesn’t just happen with auto mechanics, I have seen it in IT professionals, accountants, lawyers, and again, I deviate…
With that sort of attitude in mind, let us jump into the story. The other day I was in one of those huge auto mall service centers and I was standing in line with an ill fitting alternator. The part I had bought did not fit right and I was returning it to swap it for the correct part. It must be noted that if you are going to do your own repairs on your vehicle, it always pays to take the faulty part out and take it to the parts store with you the first time around. That way you can be sure to get the right part the first time and avoid having to spend more time waiting in line. Hey, I never said I was a genius.
At the front of the line was a couple (a man and a woman, obviously married) who were obviously flabbergasted by the depth and scope of the repairs they had been attempting. They had done all they could and were now giving in to the inevitable tongue lashing that the mechanic would give them for attempting to escape from his awesome wisdom and power. With a smug look, he took out a fresh clip board and walked out to the parking lot with them to examine the carnage they had committed. You could just tell by the swagger in his stride that those two were going to be taken to the cleaners. In the line in front of me, another guy, covered in grease, shook his head and sighed.
During my time in line, I kept an eye on the goings on out in the parking lot, and so did the grease covered fellow in front of me. He actually took a more active interest in the bloodletting out there than I did, I suspect because he had more knowledge about cars or had run into their type of repair work before. Over the course of those few minutes, the shop’s clipboard man got down on his knees near the driver’s side door and scribbled a bit on his papers. I could see the girl member of the couple actually wringing her hands as the mechanic spoke and wrote. After a small bit of discussion, they all walked back towards the store, becoming angrier and angrier at each other as they walked.
Finally, just as they entered the doors, the anger erupted. “Six hundred dollars?” the guy shouted loudly as he held the door open for his wife. The mechanic didn’t reply, he just calmly re-entered the store and made his way back to the service desk, a self-satisfied look on his face. An overall miasma of displeasure filled the room as they all gathered there; you could see the quaking rage in the husband and unwholesomeness about the mechanic as he began to type into his little console at the desk. It was all shattered in one second…
“Hey guys, let me take a look at it” said the man covered in grease.
With those words, it felt like spring had come again for the couple, melting the frozen chill of the mechanic’s ire and sweeping away his scorn with a few fresh gusts of warm air. The couple visibly relaxed and smiled. You could actually see flower petals floating on a sweet scented breeze and rainbows shining down upon us from the stained drop ceiling of the auto shop. The line moved along and the grease covered generous Samaritan finally finished his purchases. They all went out to the wounded vehicle together. Unintelligible words of displeasure tried to come out of the mechanic clerk’s mouth as they literally escaped his clutches.
The guy got down on his back and wriggled under the driver’s side of the car to look at what was wrong. After a few cursory movements, he jumped to his feet and trotted over to his van parked on the other side of the parking lot. Once in his van, I could see that he was digging around inside it and he finally hauled out a largish metal tool box. He then trotted back over to the broken car and got back down on the ground. After a few seconds of scrutinizing the contents of his tool box, he brought out a socket wrench and wriggled back under the car.
I was busy returning my alternator at that time, so I didn’t see what the man did to the car, nor did I ever find out what the actual repair job was, but I did see what happened to the couple and their car. In a matter of minutes, the grease covered Good Samaritan had managed to get the car running right again. The husband patted him on the back and reached back into his pocket for his wallet. The grease covered paladin shook his head no and I could almost hear his words of refusal of payment through the thick auto shop’s plate glass window.
With my exchange finished, I tried to get out into the parking lot as quickly as I could to ask the couple what had been wrong and how it had been so miraculously repaired without the power of the mechanic bent on the fixing. I was too late; the car slowly moved out of the parking lot and crept into traffic. I turned to ask the grease covered white knight what the deal was, but all I got from him was: “Man, six hundred bucks? Mechanics are assholes.”
