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?

On Interviews

Hello, audience. I'm going to talk, yet again, about being an adult. I seem to do this every couple of months, but that's okay. Few enough people read this blog that I feel entitled to talk about whatever I please. If you want to read other things, read other blogs. It's really that simple.

Actually, that pretty much describes my philosophy toward most things about myself--I'm abrasive. Get over it, embrace it, or move along. No one is making you interact with me.

Anyway, the subtext here is that there is no greater farce than adult life. It's so much BS that even I have to cringe a little inside, and that is speaking as a confirmed bullshitter. Adult life is based almost entirely on lying all of the time to almost everyone. Intimate relationships are set apart in adult life, because those are the people you either lie less to, or lie about different things.

At least when we were teenagers, everyone knew everyone was lying about who they were and how they were doing and whatnot, and it was not encouraged. As a child, there's this ringing chorus of "be yourself! Trust people! Be honest about who you are and what you believe!" and then you get out of school.

Suddenly it's all dating people because you're supposed to be in a relationship, and trying to get a job.

To be honest here, theoretical readers, I haven't had that many job interviews. I've had enough, though, to know that they're all about both interviewer and interviewed pretending they want to be there.

You walk in, and (after making you wait long enough that you know you're at their mercy) the interviewer shakes your hand and introduces themselves, a name which you promptly forget, because you were busy wondering if your handshake was firm enough, or if you smiled when you said it was nice to meet them, or if they notice that your pants are still kind of wrinkly, or wishing you had brushed your teeth before you left.

After they sit you down and start "trying to get to know you" the real pretense starts. You have to convince them that you're worth hiring, which they have probably already decided based on your initial application, and they spend the entire time pretending to be interested in hiring you.

It's like a date, where you both try and convince someone that you're exactly what they're looking for, even though you're lying through your teeth, and so are they. "Quick! Pretend you're way smarter, funnier, more competent, more attractive, more outgoing, and more dedicated and hardworking than you have ever actually been."

Because for some reason, we think that is a good basis for any kind of relationship. Especially when the chances are that they decided whether or not they wanted you in all of three minutes.

And the answer is usually no.

This basically defines adult life. There's this demand that you seem totally together all the time, regardless of whether or not you are; it doesn't matter if you're a broke alcoholic and all of your relationships are crumbling as long as you can seem like you're a successful human being.

Maybe this is one of those "fake it 'til you make it" things (a favorite saying of my mother's), but mostly it just seems like total crap. Does this ever help anyone? I mean really. Did I just miss the day where they handed out grown-up starter kits full of instruction booklets about how all of this makes sense?

Faceless (A disjointed ramble on being a food-service drone)

Before my actual post, let me briefly offer some vague, half-sincere apology about not writing in so long. I keep thinking I should post something, but then I lose motivation, or don't have time, or don't have anything to say worth posting, dubious though that distinction clearly is with me.

But on to this blog!

So today at this meeting I had for work, we got informed that there are some changes to the uniform; we now have to wear aprons, tuck our shirts in, wear a plain, solid colored belt, and if we wear black jeans, they have to be solid colored, with no fading or wearing anywhere. Our area rep commented to my manager during his last inspection that we were looking a little "sloppy" right after commending us on almost everything else. This was because we are allowed to wear black jeans and colorful, exciting belts if we so desire, and that day I wore capris and boots. When I got hired on, I was told I could no longer wear my nose ring (I can get away with the stud, but the ring is too extreme or something), my watch, my bracelets/wristband, any visible necklaces, and anything but studs in my ears. I also have to have a natural hair color, solid, dark shoes, constantly wear my work shirt and hat, and not paint my nails.

Yes, my fingernails cannot be painted pretty colors.

I realize that that isn't that bad as far as uniform requirements. It's actually not that much worse than my dresscode in high school, but the thing about the dresscode in school was that I was free to wear anything I wanted within the parameters. It's a genuine struggle for me to conform to the boring uniforms, and I have to try very hard not to look as individual as I typically do.

Let me give you guys some point of reference...

That's me in real life, more or less (my hair is actually black at the moment). I don't take issue with looking professional and making it clear where I work, especially since I'm often out of the store on deliveries and such. What I take issue with is the evil implications behind this stupid rule. Because the subtext of what my place of employment is doing is that I am not an individual. I am a food drone here to serve you.

The purpose of a uniform in food service is to make you, the customer, forget that I am a person, with my own life, my own problems and priorities, my own style, my own views, and they have nothing to do with you. It's more convenient and it's quicker is we forget that we are interacting with people and simply treat them as a function. I do the same thing. My customers are largely irrelevant to me, just as I am irrelevant to them. When I flash you a sunny smile and ask how your day is going, I couldn't actually care less, and if you don't tip me, my coworkers will hear all about what a fat trollop I thought you were. Your function, faceless customer, is to provide me with income, and my function is to provide you with food.

Actually, one time, I delivered to one of my coworker's houses right before she started working with me, and  the day I met her officially, she told me that I delivered to her before. I just stared blankly, having absolutely no memory of her until she reminded me that I got lost and her little sister walked around the corner to assist me.

I'd love to be able to give a fuzzy moral for this story, or to challenge you to remember that everyone is the hero of their own story, but that would likely just end with me telling you to tip, for the love of god, so I won't do that. Everyone is their own main character, but we are such egocentric creatures, we forget that not everyone is living our story.

Maybe someday I'll come back to this topic and write something clearer and better on it, because there's really so much more I wanted to say, but everything is coming out misshapen and cloudy, so I shall simply leave this monstrosity as it is and go about my day.

Some thoughts on jobs

I'm going to work hard on this post to stay relatively on topic, at least in large chunks. I shall do my utmost not to discuss my smoothie, the dust and ferret hair caught in my keyboard, the frequency with which I clean the kitchen, the emptiness of my Double Gulp, or the impending trip to Wisconsin, during which I will have no internet access in all likelihood.

So now, on to the topic at hand. Because I'm also trying to choose a relevant title for my blogs now.

On sunday, my little sister joyously told me that she has an interview for a position at a coffee shop on thursday. I calmly responded by telling her that if she got a job before I did, I would slap her in the face as hard as I could manage.

For those of you who are curious, I don't idly slap people full force in the face often. I've done it maybe one other time, and I feel I was fully justified. I do, however, often make threats of violence. Sometimes idle, and sometimes less so.

This is not an idle threat.

She has been job hunting for maybe a few months. Yes, that's a long time, and I sympathize with how frustrating it is, but I've been looking off and on since the fall after I finished high school. That's over a year, for those of you who can't count.

Clearly I'm doing something wrong, right? So far, the only real crime I can see is that I don't have any prior job experience. And so I learned the idiotic "catch 22" of job finding.

No one wants to hire someone with no experience. That makes sense, but the difficulty here is that in order to have job experience, YOU HAVE TO HAVE ALREADY FOUND A JOB.

Sorry, everywhere I've applied, but I can't get any kind of experience without having a job. It has to start somewhere, guys. Tragically, everyone apparently thinks it should start somewhere else.

The other thing that has apparently been to my detriment, is that I haven't written up a resumé. My main complaint here is that I have absolutely nothing to put on one. Nowhere I would apply would care about my many irrelevant accomplishments. And anywhere that I have any of the remotest skills to work wouldn't hire me, because even though I am something of a jack of all trades, I'm very much a master of none. I can change, feed, and make an infant sleep, make crepes, replace a transmission fluid pan, paint, lay concrete, and make some jewelry all in the same day, but I can't do any of it well enough to make it worth paying me to do it. 


But apparently all one actually needs to do is walk into an establishment, tell them to hire you, and schedule an interview. Thanks, Bex and Brian! Why didn't I think of that??


Oh wait. Because it works about as well as when you walk in and ask if they're hiring and they say no.


I apparently forgot to put a perk in Profession at my last level.

It's here somewhere, right? Maybe in another constellation??


....


Don't mind me. I'm going to make nerd references while I rot in penniless unemployment.