Well, today was another crap day...

The crap started with 'dude' being his normal lazy self. On the daily cleaning/todo list, his initials were on 2 of the 30 items. Mine were on the rest.

I talked with the boss at the first part of the morning, and she told me that things weren't good with 'dude', and that there would be changes coming really soon-like. I know 'dude' knew that, which is probably why he was being such a lazy bum.

Aside from that, the day was going pretty well up until 2:30ish. A girl brought her car in, which was rattling really bad, and said the rattling had just started after she came in for an oil change last Friday. I went down in the pit to listen to it while the car was running, and to me it sounded like a rod bearing had spun/gone out. I pulled the dipstick to see what the oil level/color looked like, and it was all fine.

So after I made my inspection, I attempted to call the boss to see what his ideas were about it, what he wanted the customer to do, and what I was supposed to do about the car. I called the other shop, where he was, and one of the kids working there said "just a minute" and laid the phone down. I waited and waited and waited and waited for about 10 minutes for someone to at least pick up the phone and say, "He'll call you back in a bit," or, "What's going on? Can it wait?"

Well, I ended up hanging up the phone because all I heard was laughing, talking, and the radio blaring in the background. If the radio was turned up, there were no customers in the shop; shop rule. I tried to call the boss on his cell phone from my cell phone, and I got a "This customer is busy" message. When I hung up, I had a voice mail... from him. The message was about the friggin' schedule for the later part of this week! I called him right back, and he said, "I'll have to call you back in a minute, " even though I had said "it's important."

A word of advice to whoever reads this:

The word "important" comes out of my mouth about once every millenia. If you hear me use this word, it must be really serious.

I ended up waiting ANOTHER 15 minutes for him to call back. By then, I was about ready to give up, cuss out everyone, and walk out the door. Luckily, the other guy that works at that shop came in and asked what was going on. I told him, and he took the issue as his responsibility.

'Other guy' ended up getting the boss on the phone, getting his opinion, and getting the customer on her way with a clear understanding that the problem was not caused by us. (I disagree with the boss' call, but oh well.)

Within about 5 minutes after that, a kid brought a new Cavalier in. As I was attempting to guide him over the rails and into the bay, he totally ignored my hand signals, and ended up within 2 inches of the front left wheel of his car sitting down in the pit below. When I got him to stop, I signaled him to back up, which he did, then I tried to guide him back in. AGAIN, the punk totally ignored my signals. I signaled for him to turn to my right, and he turned to my left!

Well, his car finally made it into the proper position without falling in the hole, and he started whining about "only" having $27 on him, which would have been $0.28 shy of paying the bill. 'Dude' ended up adding a $2 discount to his ticket so he would be able to afford it: less hassle for me.

The idiot finally got his car out of the shop, and I took a deep breath and tried to relax.

Later, ANOTHER idiot got the bright idea to ignore my hand signals, do the complete opposite, and pretend like they couldn't see me. They came really close to falling in the pit, too.

And not long after that, some idiot lady decided that she was going to pull her car in, directly behind the previous car, and she came within 6 inches of hitting the other car.

It totally boggles my mind: How can people totally ignore a "STOP!" sign just outside the door of the shop?! How can people claim to not see hand signals when I am standing directly in front of their car, where they are looking as they drive down the road? It makes me not want to drive anymore.

Just so everyone has an idea of what this "pit" and "rails" are, here's a picture:

The above picture was from the 1 year anniversary of the current owners running the shop. The yellow you see in the middle is "the rails", which surround "the pit". It's about a 7 foot drop from the floor to the bottom of the pit. The pit is probably about 3 feet wide.