A Rant from Your Mechanic:

Actually, I was afraid of saying what I REALLY wanted to say....that there isn't anything worse than a woman of color trying to tell you you are overcharging for something....as they think they know how much EVERYTHING should cost. When I delivered pizzas, it was always a battle to get all the money from a woman that CLAIMED she had a coupon. When they were nice about it (almost never) I waived the need to present the coupon. When they were a witch....I became a real Scrooge. "No tickee, no pizza."

When one sees a stereotype come to fruition a few thousand times, one realizes that there is a degree of truth to many stereotypes.

Those who have dealt with the general public long enough tend to agree on this (at least in my experience they do).

When you throw in that particular woman who is "educated", that ship on her shoulder becomes the size of a redwood. lol

I cannot deny any of what the OP said. It is really the way it is. Had a school bus driver write me a note once asking if that was "Poo" ground into the aisle way on her bus, our responce "probably" not like we planned on cleaning it up. Yes, I am the scholl bus mechanic and no where in my contract does it say I have to clean up "Poo".

"You're ripping me OFF! You're ripping me OFF!"
How many times have I heard those words come from the mouths of people that if they just took better care of their E36 M3 wouldn't be paying me nearly as much to fix it. Retail has trained people to BE the squeaky wheel, often raising a fuss gets them something.

EastCoastMojo wrote: "You're ripping me OFF! You're ripping me OFF!" How many times have I heard those words come from the mouths of people that if they just took better care of their E36 M3 wouldn't be paying me nearly as much to fix it. Retail has trained people to BE the squeaky wheel, often raising a fuss gets them something.

There is/was an amazing thread over on tarckbike.com about bike shop tech war stories. I think I got PTSD from them lol.

The extremes--'hood folk and rich folk couldn't grasp the concept of their "new" 2-month old steel bicycle being rusted to nothing. My move was to pull out the seatpost (inevitably coated in "new" rust) and say "this is how I know it was regularly left outside overnight."

"Oh", said the upscale soccer moms.

The 'hood folks would incur more abuse/neglect into a bike in one year than I could in 10. I saw this so many times I couldn't count. Ponderous.

One of the papers was interviewing people at my bus stop about a proposed law to keep people from eating on the trains and buses. Not one of them seemed to believe that the problem we have with roaches and rats comes from the food and containers they leave laying around becasue they can't be bothered putting them in the trash. Some actually think we are planting the critters there to make the more miserable.

We have a stinky saturn that comes in here for regular maintenance. I had to drive it in with my head out the window.
felt gross sitting in the seat
AAAAAAAND somehow its at least 15 degrees hotter in the car because of all the crap in there
ps the stink is from cats, I'd say at least a dozen. And the lady who drives it apparently wears the same thing every time she comes for service, so she may only have one outfit, which I'm sure stinks.

At WalMart a car came in for oil and 4 tires with dried puke in the pass. floorboard. We did the oil because it was already over the pit but made something up to not do the tires so we wouldn't have to test drive it. terrible stench.

and this is why I chose a field where I do not have to deal (much) with the public

Yessir, the public can be real nasty to deal with. I'd say 98% of people are pleasant (or at least tolerable) to deal with, 1% are pissed and have a right to be, then there's that remaining 1%. And that final 1% are a bigger PITA than the other 99% all at once.

One more war story: I had a girl whose husband was deployed military bring in a Grand Cherokee with a lift kit. It was making a racket, the rear driveshaft was at the wrong angle because of the lift kit and that tore up the rear CV joint. She had dropped the car off, when I called her to explain what was going on and give her the repair estimate I tried my best to be pleasant in the face of a rage. I did not lose my temper etc.

Ten minutes later I get paged to the service managers' office. He wants to know why this girl says I had been making passes at her. Uh, no. Not that way at all. By that time I had been working there 3 1/2 years and had NEVER been accused of anything untoward, that's just not something I would do. But because of that accusation she wound up getting the repair for a dirt cheap price as a way of the dealership 'buying her off' because she threatened to sue.

I hate finding berkeleying fingernails everywhere. So many cars have had fingernails fall out from under the dash, they're on the carpet, center console, etc?

Clip your nails at home OR if you have to do it in your car, throw them out the berkeleying window.

SyntheticBlinkerFluid wrote: I hate finding berkeleying fingernails everywhere. So many cars have had fingernails fall out from under the dash, they're on the carpet, center console, etc? Clip your nails at home OR if you have to do it in your car, throw them out the berkeleying window.

this too...

I hate finding berkeleying boogers everywhere. So many cars have had boogers fall out from under the dash, they're on the carpet, center console, etc?

Pick your nose at home OR if you have to do it in your car, throw them out the berkeleying window.

My older brother is one of these people. I HATED sharing a car with him. It was absolutely disgusting. The girlfriend would probably be one of these people as well, but tries to keep it cleaner since she met me. She now stops at a trash can about twice a week just to get rid of junk. I'm not sure how she accumulates that much.

my cars get a little nasty due to my sinuses. I do try to clear out the snotrags every couple of days though

If I can't make it ready for an autocross run in under 30 seconds (take out the floormats), it's too dirty. I hate dirty interiors. Nothing is allowed to be left inside my cars unsecured.

I never understood how people could get their cars so full of crap... do people use their cars as a simultaneous garbage bins/port-a-potties/compost heaps? In college I was never able to build up that much junk in my van.