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Tales from the auto shop: Epic time bandit old man
Here is the story of a man we shall call Phil my days with words Phil is literally in his 80s, retired so long from a position so different he can't relate to the fact that I have other auto repair customers to serve, therefore other duties to attend besides dragging every conversation out as long as absolutely possible, because PHIL is lonely and bored and honestly does NOT have anything better to do today, BUT he is determined to project an image contrary to that, which compounds his annoyance factor exponentially.
Once again, Phil has dropped in late on a busy morning and has gone 12 rounds on the question of "You can't just fix it right now in a hurry while I wait?" and gotten the same answer 12 ways along the continuum from NICE to UNABASHEDLY ANNOYED. Now he has a whole new game plan to roll out.
"When do you want me to bring it in for repairs, then?" It seems like a straightforward question, right? One that can be resolved with a one sentence answer, and perhaps a counterquestion and answer of one sentence each? No, Mr. Phil My Day With Words is REALLY asking is, "Let's play a game of Guess What Day I Don't Have Anything Else Planned And Might Be Able To Bring The Car. You get UNLIMITED GUESSES and there is NO PRIZE if you manage to win!"
Today is Monday. I say, "How about drop it off tomorrow morning?"
I can't do it tomorrow, I have something planned. (stares expectantly.) Yeah, I have to go bowling. I bowl. (stares) No, I can't DO it TOMORROW. I bowl, you see.
Okay, how about Wednesday?
Wednesday I go to the DOCTOR! (Stares at me angrily as if I was supposed to have known this and not suggested it.) I go to the DOCTOR on Wednesday, can't bring it Wednesday. Wednesday won't work.
I don't dare utter the word Thursday once Phil finally winds down. We stare at each other a moment. Phil takes a deep breath and begins explaining away Thursday at length; his wife is very sick and that is the day he has to do... I don't know, a bunch of stuff; the words run together and my mind starts to drift to Bach's Goldberg Variations, which starts with a basic theme in the aria, followed by 30 variations consisting of 9 canons with 2 variations following each, a genre and arabesque form, then a quodlibet and two variations. It is one of the greatest musical masterpieces of all time, the way the variations on the aria theme are fleshed out in a pleasing and unique manner with no repetition- so unlike Phil, a score of whose verbal compositions could adequately be recorded in the language of Woodstock from the comic strip Peanuts.
I snap out of this thought experiment as Phil finally voices a specific time. "How about if I come in Friday afternoon?" " Friday afternoon is my least flexible time of the week, but we can work on it if you can drop it off in the morning, we'll finish it before the end of the day." My words were like a conductor holding his arms above his head, stick poised, then dropped with a flair to begin a new symphony. "Well Friday I have things planned in the morning, let's see..."
Phil has been doing this for over a YEAR, occasionally waiting for things like an oil or bulb change, turning each simple visit into a one-man maelstrom over the shop's human resources, complaining of intermittent rough running and stalling when stopped but never, ever, EVER making the time to get it formally looked at, and posessed with an uncanny ability to only arrive during slamming busy weeks, never during those slow times when we probably could "just start looking at it."
Finally this week, Phil made a commitment to leave the car for one day to resolve this issue, which hasn't worsened but this is the time he's decided he will be leaving it. Now there is a new time pressure: "My wife is dying in the hospital, how long is this going to take?" Drop it off before 8:30 and I'll try to get it finished by lunch time. Great Zeus, I think: you sure know how to schedule things, don't you?
Sooooo the appointed day comes and he comes before... wait for it... 10:30! "You said you could have it done before lunch!" Explain that it is too late, but eyeing the 10:45 parts company cutoff I suggest I might finish by 1:30 still if we hurry. Well by the time we get all the questions answered for the 100th time each and get him in the passenger seat of his ride's car, and the timid driver gets turned around and out of the way, I get Phil's car into the diagnostic bay and determine he needs a 1-minute-to-change fuel pressure sensor but we've totally missed the order deadline are now looking at the 12:45 warehouse departure which arrives 1:30-3 depending; and meanwhile other customers who dropped off before Phil are approving $1000+ tickets that we need to also finish today.
Phil approves the repair and is told to come after 3:30. At 2:30 the part has just been installed and I have just pulled it over to the computer to clear the error codes left over from the bad part when Phil arrives prematurely, though barely so because the part arrived early and I had the tech stop something else to change it; we're down to 1 minute and a short test drive to finish IF I'm left alone. I call out that the car is almost ready and I'll meet him in the office. Instead of going to the office, he slowly shuffles 3X the distance the other direction to the shop bay. "She told me it would be ready by 2:30!" "No we said 3:30! But I am almost finished, I'll be right with you in the office." My hand fumbles to mate the diagnostic connector with its under-dash socket like a virgin teen couple as I speak excorcist-like 180 degrees over my shoulder to him. It's not enough to leave me working to finish his car; he must belabor the point. "But she told me 2:30!" It's almost finished. "But your gal told me 2:30!" "She said 3:30 but I'm almost finished here..." and half paying attention, I click start from the beginning instead of continue, adding an unnecessary 2+ minute delay. Now I'm pissed, and Phil still hasn't finished bitc#ing. "I only came 'cause I was given false information! I could have stayed at the hospital!" Now I snap: Let me finish here! It will only take longer if I stand here talking all day!"
His Filipino caregiver's eyes got real big from his vantage point 25 feet out of the way, and a chastened Phil starts shuffling away, stage muttering that I don't need to talk to him that way etc etc. I think, Good, he's finally going to the office like I asked him to from the beginning. But no, he diverts a different way, and as I navigate the various screens on the diagnostic computer I repeatedly glance over at his progress, which derails my train of thought each time. Great, he's not going to the office. Oh good, he's going to look at the potted plants by the office. Great, he's going past those to no-customer's-land. WTF, he's scraping his way along the hood of someone's car that is nosed up to the chain link fence. Oh good, he's going to look at the potted plants in the vacant lot next door. WTF, now he's picking my #$%^&$^&% tomatoes God-knows-why! Swell, there he goes back across the customer's hood, leaning his entire upper body weight into it; the sun must have chased him into the office. CRAP HE'S NOT GOING INTO THE OFFICE HE'S COMING BACK HERE AGAIN! Luckily I've just finished resetting the systems and unplugged for the final test drive. I call out, "All finished, one more test drive then I'll meet you in the office." The caregiver points Phil toward the office as I back the car out and away in a deft escape.
Turning right at the signal and accelerating, I look over across the vacant lot to see Phil shuffling away from the office and toward the street, watching my progress 90 degrees and rising to his right instead of where he's walking. In the second I glanced over, he stumbled on the 1/4 inch step between 40 year old concrete slabs and almost took a spill. I looked at the road then back and watched him recover; good now he'll go to the office finally. I look back ahead and one of [the gritty industrial area of my city's] on-crack [subsidized] apartment dwellers has decided to pull away from the curb and fully into my lane at a casual 6mph. I literally had to yank the wheel left to barely avoid a collision- not time to brake or check the lane next to me which was fortunately unoccupied. The driver suddenly discovers her capacity to accelerate and speeds up to tailgate me flashing her high beams all down the block and shout magpie-like as I turn right. Can this afternoon get any stranger?
As I approach the driveway, Phil is standing on the sidewalk, far as possible from the office, body language suggesting from a block away that he thought I stole his car and it was never coming back. He looks ready to swoon in the late summer Los Angeles sun. Make a challenging turnabout with the caregiver's van in the middle of everything and techs trying to get the next car into the bay; get Phil shuffling toward the office instead of the car, go to the back office and type up the invoice and print it just in time to meet Phil as he reaches the counter and slaps his estimate copy on the counter and loudly reads, "Estimated cost of repairs $XX plus sales tax!" then stares at me. I set the invoice before him and continued, "Then we called you and got your approval to replace the part for $XXX.XX parts and labor, so your total with tax is $XXX.xx!
Phil managed almost two full minutes of passive-aggressive bitching, questioning, and huffing, with pauses for unneeded emphasis, to accompany the getting-your-credit-card-out-of-the-wallet-and-offering-it-to-the-merchant process. Several more minutes later he has finished signing the credit card slip after several pauses; in one swift motion I retrieve it, staple it to my copy, and replace it on the counter with his copy with his credit slip already crisply stapled to the corner. Most humans in a hurry, or just the normal course of things, look at it and fold it up, or just fold it up at this point, but Phil lays his hand on the invoice to lean in and tell me something he's already said 25 times in 2 days. "My wife's dying in the hospital right now." It's not just that his car has had this exact same problem for over a year of bowling trips and golf games that I'm not withering as expected here. My own dad was given 3 to 5 years to live for the last 25 years of his life so I have a tremendous unseen capacity for empathy for such matters, but playing this card has zero sympathy purchasing power with me, particularly when played in a passive-aggressive or otherwise unreasonable manner. Return at once to your dying wife, you can NOT win at out-hospice-ing me, guaran-damn-tee you. But Phil wants to take the game into extra innings. "But I wouldn't expect you to know or care anything about that."
In response to this admixture of rottenest-remark-ever finalist
and best-possible-excuse cardholder
, I hold the door open and with a sincere smile say, "Well now you are back on the road, wouldn't want to miss a minute!" His sage but silent caregiver escorted him out with a benevolent smile.
And that is the story of how one man could spend the least yet use the most time and cause the most aggravation that day at the auto repair shop.
Once again, Phil has dropped in late on a busy morning and has gone 12 rounds on the question of "You can't just fix it right now in a hurry while I wait?" and gotten the same answer 12 ways along the continuum from NICE to UNABASHEDLY ANNOYED. Now he has a whole new game plan to roll out.
"When do you want me to bring it in for repairs, then?" It seems like a straightforward question, right? One that can be resolved with a one sentence answer, and perhaps a counterquestion and answer of one sentence each? No, Mr. Phil My Day With Words is REALLY asking is, "Let's play a game of Guess What Day I Don't Have Anything Else Planned And Might Be Able To Bring The Car. You get UNLIMITED GUESSES and there is NO PRIZE if you manage to win!"
Today is Monday. I say, "How about drop it off tomorrow morning?"
I can't do it tomorrow, I have something planned. (stares expectantly.) Yeah, I have to go bowling. I bowl. (stares) No, I can't DO it TOMORROW. I bowl, you see.
Okay, how about Wednesday?
Wednesday I go to the DOCTOR! (Stares at me angrily as if I was supposed to have known this and not suggested it.) I go to the DOCTOR on Wednesday, can't bring it Wednesday. Wednesday won't work.
I don't dare utter the word Thursday once Phil finally winds down. We stare at each other a moment. Phil takes a deep breath and begins explaining away Thursday at length; his wife is very sick and that is the day he has to do... I don't know, a bunch of stuff; the words run together and my mind starts to drift to Bach's Goldberg Variations, which starts with a basic theme in the aria, followed by 30 variations consisting of 9 canons with 2 variations following each, a genre and arabesque form, then a quodlibet and two variations. It is one of the greatest musical masterpieces of all time, the way the variations on the aria theme are fleshed out in a pleasing and unique manner with no repetition- so unlike Phil, a score of whose verbal compositions could adequately be recorded in the language of Woodstock from the comic strip Peanuts.
I snap out of this thought experiment as Phil finally voices a specific time. "How about if I come in Friday afternoon?" " Friday afternoon is my least flexible time of the week, but we can work on it if you can drop it off in the morning, we'll finish it before the end of the day." My words were like a conductor holding his arms above his head, stick poised, then dropped with a flair to begin a new symphony. "Well Friday I have things planned in the morning, let's see..."
Phil has been doing this for over a YEAR, occasionally waiting for things like an oil or bulb change, turning each simple visit into a one-man maelstrom over the shop's human resources, complaining of intermittent rough running and stalling when stopped but never, ever, EVER making the time to get it formally looked at, and posessed with an uncanny ability to only arrive during slamming busy weeks, never during those slow times when we probably could "just start looking at it."
Finally this week, Phil made a commitment to leave the car for one day to resolve this issue, which hasn't worsened but this is the time he's decided he will be leaving it. Now there is a new time pressure: "My wife is dying in the hospital, how long is this going to take?" Drop it off before 8:30 and I'll try to get it finished by lunch time. Great Zeus, I think: you sure know how to schedule things, don't you?
Sooooo the appointed day comes and he comes before... wait for it... 10:30! "You said you could have it done before lunch!" Explain that it is too late, but eyeing the 10:45 parts company cutoff I suggest I might finish by 1:30 still if we hurry. Well by the time we get all the questions answered for the 100th time each and get him in the passenger seat of his ride's car, and the timid driver gets turned around and out of the way, I get Phil's car into the diagnostic bay and determine he needs a 1-minute-to-change fuel pressure sensor but we've totally missed the order deadline are now looking at the 12:45 warehouse departure which arrives 1:30-3 depending; and meanwhile other customers who dropped off before Phil are approving $1000+ tickets that we need to also finish today.
Phil approves the repair and is told to come after 3:30. At 2:30 the part has just been installed and I have just pulled it over to the computer to clear the error codes left over from the bad part when Phil arrives prematurely, though barely so because the part arrived early and I had the tech stop something else to change it; we're down to 1 minute and a short test drive to finish IF I'm left alone. I call out that the car is almost ready and I'll meet him in the office. Instead of going to the office, he slowly shuffles 3X the distance the other direction to the shop bay. "She told me it would be ready by 2:30!" "No we said 3:30! But I am almost finished, I'll be right with you in the office." My hand fumbles to mate the diagnostic connector with its under-dash socket like a virgin teen couple as I speak excorcist-like 180 degrees over my shoulder to him. It's not enough to leave me working to finish his car; he must belabor the point. "But she told me 2:30!" It's almost finished. "But your gal told me 2:30!" "She said 3:30 but I'm almost finished here..." and half paying attention, I click start from the beginning instead of continue, adding an unnecessary 2+ minute delay. Now I'm pissed, and Phil still hasn't finished bitc#ing. "I only came 'cause I was given false information! I could have stayed at the hospital!" Now I snap: Let me finish here! It will only take longer if I stand here talking all day!"
His Filipino caregiver's eyes got real big from his vantage point 25 feet out of the way, and a chastened Phil starts shuffling away, stage muttering that I don't need to talk to him that way etc etc. I think, Good, he's finally going to the office like I asked him to from the beginning. But no, he diverts a different way, and as I navigate the various screens on the diagnostic computer I repeatedly glance over at his progress, which derails my train of thought each time. Great, he's not going to the office. Oh good, he's going to look at the potted plants by the office. Great, he's going past those to no-customer's-land. WTF, he's scraping his way along the hood of someone's car that is nosed up to the chain link fence. Oh good, he's going to look at the potted plants in the vacant lot next door. WTF, now he's picking my #$%^&$^&% tomatoes God-knows-why! Swell, there he goes back across the customer's hood, leaning his entire upper body weight into it; the sun must have chased him into the office. CRAP HE'S NOT GOING INTO THE OFFICE HE'S COMING BACK HERE AGAIN! Luckily I've just finished resetting the systems and unplugged for the final test drive. I call out, "All finished, one more test drive then I'll meet you in the office." The caregiver points Phil toward the office as I back the car out and away in a deft escape.
Turning right at the signal and accelerating, I look over across the vacant lot to see Phil shuffling away from the office and toward the street, watching my progress 90 degrees and rising to his right instead of where he's walking. In the second I glanced over, he stumbled on the 1/4 inch step between 40 year old concrete slabs and almost took a spill. I looked at the road then back and watched him recover; good now he'll go to the office finally. I look back ahead and one of [the gritty industrial area of my city's] on-crack [subsidized] apartment dwellers has decided to pull away from the curb and fully into my lane at a casual 6mph. I literally had to yank the wheel left to barely avoid a collision- not time to brake or check the lane next to me which was fortunately unoccupied. The driver suddenly discovers her capacity to accelerate and speeds up to tailgate me flashing her high beams all down the block and shout magpie-like as I turn right. Can this afternoon get any stranger?
As I approach the driveway, Phil is standing on the sidewalk, far as possible from the office, body language suggesting from a block away that he thought I stole his car and it was never coming back. He looks ready to swoon in the late summer Los Angeles sun. Make a challenging turnabout with the caregiver's van in the middle of everything and techs trying to get the next car into the bay; get Phil shuffling toward the office instead of the car, go to the back office and type up the invoice and print it just in time to meet Phil as he reaches the counter and slaps his estimate copy on the counter and loudly reads, "Estimated cost of repairs $XX plus sales tax!" then stares at me. I set the invoice before him and continued, "Then we called you and got your approval to replace the part for $XXX.XX parts and labor, so your total with tax is $XXX.xx!
Phil managed almost two full minutes of passive-aggressive bitching, questioning, and huffing, with pauses for unneeded emphasis, to accompany the getting-your-credit-card-out-of-the-wallet-and-offering-it-to-the-merchant process. Several more minutes later he has finished signing the credit card slip after several pauses; in one swift motion I retrieve it, staple it to my copy, and replace it on the counter with his copy with his credit slip already crisply stapled to the corner. Most humans in a hurry, or just the normal course of things, look at it and fold it up, or just fold it up at this point, but Phil lays his hand on the invoice to lean in and tell me something he's already said 25 times in 2 days. "My wife's dying in the hospital right now." It's not just that his car has had this exact same problem for over a year of bowling trips and golf games that I'm not withering as expected here. My own dad was given 3 to 5 years to live for the last 25 years of his life so I have a tremendous unseen capacity for empathy for such matters, but playing this card has zero sympathy purchasing power with me, particularly when played in a passive-aggressive or otherwise unreasonable manner. Return at once to your dying wife, you can NOT win at out-hospice-ing me, guaran-damn-tee you. But Phil wants to take the game into extra innings. "But I wouldn't expect you to know or care anything about that."
In response to this admixture of rottenest-remark-ever finalist
and best-possible-excuse cardholder, I hold the door open and with a sincere smile say, "Well now you are back on the road, wouldn't want to miss a minute!" His sage but silent caregiver escorted him out with a benevolent smile.And that is the story of how one man could spend the least yet use the most time and cause the most aggravation that day at the auto repair shop.
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