My Day, or Five Reasons to Become a Mechanic

Hello, audience. Believe it, or not, I've actually started several posts that kind of miscarried and never made it to finished and posted. Maybe someday they'll see the light of day, but today, I decided to share some thoughts stemming from my day.

In addition to getting up and working eight hours before noon, I got to take my car to the mechanic for some routine maintenance before I take a road trip next week. Isn't that just the best? Is there anything better than taking your car to a dubious stranger so that they can demand obscene amounts of money? It's probably my favorite thing.

I came to the conclusion today that I should become a mechanic. Screw my artistic aspirations and the apprenticeship I'm pursuing. Tattoos are clearly the wrong business, and here are five reasons why.

1. Appearing competent
When you work in a field like auto-repair, you have the comforting knowledge that 90% of your customers are completely ignorant. You tell them that a mischievous gnome has ripped holes in their car's mass air intake, and they'll probably nod sagely (so as to avoid looking incompetent or uneducated) and thank you for your attention to detail. And this is without even having to do any actual work to prove your ability. You could probably accomplish the exact same appearance of expertise simply by putting an oil-stained rag in your pocket and speaking authoritatively while standing in the office of a garage.

You can tell he's experienced by the way he's trying to use a wrench 

on a  tire attached to nothing. And he has coveralls!

2. Charging for your presence
The accepted term for this is "labor," but as far as I know these fees require no actual labor. Glancing over a car long enough to say, "Your front tires exploded and the hood is folded in half," counts as an inspection and therefore ground for labor costs. You can spend an hour in the same room as a car and it qualifies as billable time.

3. Innumerable reasons for fees
Cars, as you may or may not ("Meyer may not") know, are a complex, interdependent system, so that one problem may stem from many underlying issues, or the other way around (one underlying issue causing many problems, for those who couldn't quite keep up.), so there are a thousand different things that could be wrong, and each one of them is a reason to charge more. Because time is money. So the more theoretical time you might spend on a thing, or the more complex it is, the more you charge. See how that works? Potential time for a repair + actual amount of time spent on a repair + between two and four times the costs of parts + number of things that could potentially have been wrong = total bill.
So, if, for example, you could have spent eight hours on a repair, and you actually spent three, the part costs fifteen dollars, the problem was loosely connected to the exhaust system, and the moon is waning, you would charge the soul of their firstborn and two months wages. Simple, right?

4. No necessity to do actual work
Especially when you run your own place of business (this isn't limited to mechanics), there are often underlings of a lower pay grade whose sole existence is to perform grunge work, so when one is a mechanic and hired to fix an automobile, one's primary job is to stand in the office and explain to bewildered (soon to be penniless) customers what exactly is wrong with their car, and how that gnome seems to have expanded his activities to the throttle body and the transmission, at which point the appropriate thing to do is show them a neatly outlines list of the things that need/might need/might actually be done in order to correct this problem. Of course, including the expected costs of parts and labor -_-

5. Ensuring future employment
If you recall, as I hope all of you without crippling short term memory loss would, I mentioned in #3 that cars are delicate, interconnected systems that all build on one another to create a two ton metal box for you to give rides to drunken friends, and many, many different things can go wrong within that complex machinery. A common practice that has recently gotten a lot of attention is slightly tweaking a few things in that mess of systems so that cars run less than optimally.

Yes. There are mechanics that break cars so that you have to come back and pay them some more to look at your car and say knowledgeable things.

If you think about it, it's a brilliant way to make money (assuming you don't have any qualms about stealing or ruining people's lives, but, really, who does these days?). What more effective job guarantee could there be? It's like a homicide detective going out and murdering people on the slow weeks.

I feel like there's a show about that...

Anyway, the only conclusion I can come to here is that I should become a mechanic and make money hand over fist. I've done work on my car, and it's pretty easy stuff if you know what to look for.

And that tiny fact-- "as long as you know what to look for"-- is the basis of the entire trade. As long as you know something someone else doesn't, you can make them pay through the nose for that ignorance, right?

Quick, Anecdotal Social thoughts: Gender roles

I realized when I wanted to write this post how much the purpose of this blog has changed some in the last few months. Because, if you recall, I originally started this as kind of a snarky joke, to share my wellspring of BS with an easily amused audience, but it was in practically no time that this turned into whatever Rachel feels like today, which is sometimes me thinking I'm clever and funny, and sometimes it's not.

Anyways! The reason I thought about this was because something that happened this morning started turning into reflection and the desire to throw my personal views out into the void.

As I've mentioned several times, during the school year, I babysit on Tuesday mornings, and this year, we have a much wider age range and a larger group of kids. The oldest ones are around six years old, and the youngest aren't quite a year old. This morning, the older girls (there are three of them) were all hanging out in the corner of the room monopolizing most of the plastic food and baby dolls, presumably playing at that most horrifying childhood game "house."

I may need to take a moment here to interrupt myself and rail against the horror that inspires in me...There's part of a stand-up routine I watched that the guy is talking about the heinous unfairness to little boys and girls, because when a boy is small, what do we get him? Trucks and guns and Legos and such, but what do you get for a little girl? Another kid, of course! He says something like, "Hey, little baby, here's your baby!" and then adopts this horrified and disappointed face and responds, "But I just got here..." Maybe this a the benefit of hindsight, but why on earth would children want to play at the mundane? There is sadly few thrilling things about keeping a house, being poor, having children, or cooking dinner. I know I played some aspects of that as a wee child, but I'm pretty sure I was usually also building shelter on a desert island, or fleeing Bad Guys, or embarking on a quest...

And now that I've thoroughly derailed both of us, dear audience, I shall continue me story!

One of my unashamed favorite children in the nursery, a little boy named Daniel, a little two-year-old, chubby, ginger kid,  comes over and picks up a little plastic "milk" bottle and this hideous, plastic, Cabbage Patch-esque monstrosity, and promptly pretends to feed it, cuddle it a bit, and place it clumsily in the toy crib with a blanket. And these little girls look at him like he's utterly mad--but, of course, he's only a baby, so he can't be expected to understand that these are girls' toys. They keep giving me side-long glances, as if waiting for me to do my grown-up duty and gently pull Daniel away, informing him sternly that these are for girls, and little boys don't play with baby dolls.

I find that both amusing and infuriating. I came across the same thing in a family I used to babysit for. The youngest girl was ridiculing her little brother, because he wanted the three of us to play the Angelina Ballerina game, and she claimed that was a girl game, because it contained pastel colors, primarily pink, and was about ballet. I gently explained to her that ballet was also for boys, and they're hardcore, and that if she, a girl, could like "boy" things, like green and Legos and guns, it was ok for boys to like "girl" things too.

This might simply be because I know many happily metrosexual men, but I don't understand this double standard in rigid gender roles. You would think that in a country that has experienced not one, but three major feminist movements, we would understand that gender equality is not just about one sex. If women demand to be freed from centuries of social tradition, how can they refuse to extend the same right to their male counterparts? There's this absurd stereotype that men fulfilling traditionally female roles, like stay-at-home dads, or nurses, or stylists, or whatever receive ridicule and criticism for not fulfilling their "role as men." When a woman enters a field that is primarily populated by men, she is either congratulated as a pioneer, or laughed at for being crazy, but when men do the same thing, they pretty much just get their sexual preferences questioned.

...What?

How does that make any sense, boys and girls?

Anyway, I think that's about enough from me for tonight. It was just something on my mind that I thought I would share with the silent void.

Anecdotal Adventure!

So this weekend I'm running deliveries for Edible Arrangements (apparently Mothers' Day is a big deal for them), and two of them today were at this hotel in town...

I've been driving all over this stupid parking lot for ages, and I'm already irritated because it's taken me far too long to find such a painfully obvious building--I didn't see before that the order ticket has a small memo at the bottom stating that the address is in the hotel--and I can't find a parking place remotely near the entrance. As I have two large, fruit bouquets with foot-wide, cardboard bases, I don't relish the idea of carrying the things across a huge expanse of windy parking lot. I've circled it too many times already, and I'm ready to be finished.

Seriously hard to miss. I was annoyed.

When I get inside, one arrangement tucked against either hip, I search for the front desk, which is not, as one would expect, at the front. In fact, it rests inconspicuously behind a large pillar (really more like a section of wall, not unlike the ones they often have in Starbucks) in the far corner of the central hub. I stroll over, trying valiantly to maintain the illusion that I am remotely cheerful and personable, and spend a moment making small talk about how amazing pineapples are with a middle-aged woman also waiting at the desk. When the guy actually working comes to see if he can assist me--warning me in comedic tones that he hasn't had lunch yet, and it may not be safe to leave those with him--I discover that I must actually bring these monstrosities to the rooms they're meant to be sent to, and so lose all hope of just dropping them off and leaving.

I have to go the eleventh floor of the A wing and the fourth floor of the C wing. Deciding that it'll be simpler to start with the higher floor, I set out in search of the elevators, which are not placed anywhere painfully obvious to my sleep-deprived eyes. After struggling through a set of double doors with my burdens and stumbling on an area of mysterious shops and offices in the A wing, I realize that I must have passed the elevators already. I've barely made my way back down the hall toward the lobby when--Aha, elevator!


The button with the UP arrow is abnormally high on the wall, and I'm forced to perform an impressive and absurd balancing act rather than simply craning my hand around to hit it; I stand on one foot, bracing my left knee against the wall and setting one box-stabilized bouquet atop my thigh, then hurriedly punch the button to call the elevator. It arrives with a slightly jittery bounce that doesn't inspire much confidence. I stare at it for a moment, weighing my desire to finish the last two deliveries and leave without taking the stairs up eleven flights against the possibility that I am inevitably going to die in this elevator. The walls are covered in some material that looks as though it's meant to cover up repairs or remodeling or something, and if I've learned anything from movies, it's that scary elevators never lead anywhere good. Unless you happen to be a vengeful spirit, blood-thirsty psycho, or a peckish zombie.

Holy crap. I'm going to die.

I step dubiously inside and do my button-pushing trick again, peering anxiously about the empty elevator and listening to the workings take me up, floor by floor. The line of numbers above the sliding doors light up as I pass each floor with a slight click, and it's like the tic-toking of a very slow clock.

2...3...4...5...

I keep wondering what happens if it stops suddenly and I'm stuck in here.

6...7...

It's hard to ignore the knowledge that every second I'm in here, there's another few feet of empty elevator shaft underneath me.

8...9...

Would I even survive that fall?

10...

When 11 lights finally lights up and the doors open (with a slightly terrifying bounce), I breathe a sigh of relief and step out.

I'm in a small triangular area created by the intersecting halls. It's completely dark. All I can see outside of the small half-circle of light spilling out of the elevator behind me is a few dark corners and the shadowy walls, and my hands are full.

Wouldn't Star-Gauges Guy have told me at the front desk if they were remodeling or something? Why isn't this area off limits, or marked or anything? I'm distinctly unsettled, and I clutch the heavy fruit arrangements, hoping that the elevator doors aren't going to close behind me and leave me trapped alone in the dark. I'm uncomfortably aware of how defenseless I would be if something were to happen.

I've seen the movies. I know how this goes. I have two choices.
One: walk cautiously down that dark hallway in hopes of finding A1101, meet some blood-hungry terror, and die horribly in a deserted hotel room strewn with dusty tools and chunks of drywall.
Two: get my paranoid ass back down to the lobby and find a different way to the room.

That's not even a choice. I turn abruptly and search for the correct button, pushing it a little harder and faster than I might normally have done. I watch the darkness through the closing elevator doors, not quite convinced something isn't going to flash through at the last second and either leave me trapped in a creepy elevator with a murderous something, or stop the doors from closing and leave me face to face with whatever was just out of sight when I stepped out the first time.

The ride down is slower than the ascent somehow, and I spend it half-waiting for the theatrical lurch and creak one  always sees in films. Stepping out, back into what suddenly seems like an alternate world on the ground floor, is slightly frightening, because the elevator jerks again as it comes to a stop.

I'm slightly jumpy when I finally make it to the designated rooms, and I wonder to myself when I developed this irrational fear of riding in in elevators.