The One Time I Did, She Came Home Whistling the Harlem Globetrotters Theme

Early last week, I heard a familiar sounds coming from my car, a sound that indicates that my front brake pads were not long for this world, and they were thinking about taking my rotors with them. Now I've replaced these things myself, assisted by my in-laws (and by "assisted by" I mean I stood there and watched and pretended to be helpful), but my time is currently at such a premium that I prefer to just pay someone to make my problems go away. Fortunately, I have found a mechanic in town who I almost trust, particularly when compared to the place I went to before I moved.

The first time I took the car in, there were a couple of issues, including the check engine light being on. When they called to say what needed to be repaired, they told me that the catalytic converter caused the light to come on. I braced myself for the incoming request for money and asked what it was going to cost. The girl on the phone said, "Oh you don't need to replace it. It's just not running as efficiently as it could be, so it's going to turn the light on again later, but it'll still work for a long time". I actually asked her to repeat it, as I had never had a mechanic suggest that I could actively ignore a problem where money could have been involved. My previous mechanic had treated each issue as if a decision to ignore it was akin to signing a death warrant for my family and myself.

As if this was not enough, they avoid my second pet peeve about the mechanic - the random suggestion. I take my car in for brake pads and rotors, and the new place calls me and tells me what it will cost to replace the brake pads and rotors. The last place would too, it's just that then they would tell me that while they were looking, they also discovered about several hundred dollars in completely unrelated work that "you're going to want to get taken care of soon". How they could tell my serpentine belt was going to fail by taking my brakes apart I could never figure out, but then I'm not a professional mechanic.

Finally, the silliest and yet most annoying thing the old place did and the new one doesn't do was to %#$@ with my seats. Every time I went to pick up my car, there was a piece of paper on the floor and the driver's seat was pushed as far back as it would go. Maybe there is some correlation between the skills required for fixing cars and being an NBA star that I'm unaware of, but I find it hard to believe that every single time they finished working on my car, Wilt Chamberlain was the one who parked it in the ready-for-pickup lot.



Just to be safe, though, I never did sent my lovely wife to pick up the car.