On Nov 9, 2010, at 12:08 PM, Jack Davis wrote: > As I sat in this area waiting for my car, I got the feeling these signs were > YELLING at me and were intended to intimidate. I think he's dealt with the > public just a little too long. :( > I had the camera and flash in the car, so with the owner's permission took a > couple shots. He thought it was funny when I told him what I intended to do > with the shot. Actually a good guy. > Well, I didn't get yelled at and surprisingly my "repair" was free. Tried to > force a @20 on him, but was no use. They put a new bolt and nut on the > starter of my wife's 240SX. I wonder if it's possible they feel guilty about > some past charges. Nah, auto mechanics with a conscience? Right!
I would not want to try to make a living as a mechanic. I've got several friends that have, and it's a rough business. First of all, they need to pay their employees whether they have work or not. If they don't have enough mechanics, then repairs take too long, and they lose business. If they have too many, then they sit around idle, costing money and not making any. Then, there is the difficulty of diagnosing modern cars. It used to be that diagnosis was the easy part of car repair, now it can take two days to track down a corroded wire connection, so it costs them $400 to find out that they need to spend 1 minute to clean a wire connection, and people still expect diagnostics to be free. Then, there is the question of whether you pay them to repair what is wrong, or to make sure that the car doesn't break down on you someplace. Meanwhile the BAR runs sting operations to nail "unscrupulous" mechanics who recommend repairs that "don't need to be done". I've heard cases of someone bringing a car in, claiming that they don't know how old the belts are, then the mechanic getting find thousands of dollars for replacing "nearly new" belts. Yes, there are crooked auto repair places out there, but it's a really rough industry to be in. What's the difference between a surgeon and an auto mechanic? The surgeon washes his hands *after* he pees. > > A bit of human interest(?) > > Comments? > > Jack > > http://photolightimages.com/aspupload/detail.asp?ID=542 > -- Larry Colen [email protected] sent from i4est -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
