So, like I've said before, I've worked in automotive for awhile and have come up with a few little stories I'd like to share - some good, some bad and some funny... Enjoy
So here's an acutal conversation I had to have with a customer. First I called him and told him to come to the shop and it went something like this;
Customer enters office and says, "So.. What did you do? Set my truck on fire?"
ME: Well, do you have a sense of humour?
CUSTOMER: No
ME: Well, We set your truck on fire.
Lol... The guy laughed. It was an old truck with a bad oil leak, a hood that wouldn't open and broken studs in the manifold. We took the proper safety precautions but sometimes these things can't be prevented. As it turns out, his truck was running better when he left... We fixed it.
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We had a situation one day when we replaced a fuel filter and did exhaust in the same bay later on. There was a small ball of fire, so weeks later, we hire a new tech and he repairs a gas line and hours later, pulls a car in for exhaust in the same bay. I tell him the story of what happened before - He lights a torch and says there's only one way to find out if there's still gas on the ground.... You guessed it - Big ball of fire. Even blew the office door open and burned the hair off the tech's eyebrows... lol.. Sometimes it hurts to be right.
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No technician wants to be followed around the shop and one of my techs was having a particularly bad day when young kid brought in his "Honda". You know the kind I'm talking about. To him, it was a real hot rod; to us; its a Honda.... We had replaced his rear brake drums a few weeks prior and now this guy is following the tech everywhere asking every question under the sun so when he asked the tech why one drum was starting to rust, the tech very bluntly turned around and said, "I don't know man, maybe a dog pissed on it!"
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One day my manager poked himself in the eye with the arm of his glasses. He comes in the office with his eye closed and his head tilted. I asked what happened? He opens eye and..... well ... I could tell he did something to it.
He feels so stupid that he goes to the hospital and tells them it was an exhuast hook so he wouldn't have to tell them he works in a garage and put his glasses on too fast! lol
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Has your car gone ever gone "ka-lay?"
I know a lady who's car did just that! She turned the key and the car went, "ka-lay, ka-lay, ka-lay." I had a tech standing next to me when she said this. He giggled and said, "Sounds like you have a broken ka-lay."
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If you look a muffler new or old you will see that they all have one thing in common.... drain holes!! Mufflers are designed like this so the condensation produced in the exhaust has somewhere to go. Without them, a muffler would rot from the inside out.
So, you can imagine what I thought when a customer told me she wanted her money back cause her brand new muffler has a hole in it. We explained it to her and even showed her other cars and mufflers... Didn't matter..
She choose to void her warranty and had us weld the hole shut.
You know what they say - The customer is always right!! Even if they're not!
I can't tell you how much I hate a broken "Ka-lay". Damn expensive! The only thing worse is a torqued out bindle-roter!
ReplyDeleteGreat article.
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