2021-08-13 — Friday the 13th Hell

Today has been hell from start to finish. Maybe I shouldn’t have chosen to work on Friday the 13th. 🙃

I’m at the gas station filling up before heading home, and Cory is at my house waiting for me.

Ugh. Really really really really really rough day.

I had this massive day lined up, with so many jobs to do, and it looked like it could be a really really good day, but the first thing that happened was my credit card company shut off my credit card when I made like six purchases in a row at autozone, and I had to spend who knows how long trying to get my credit card reinstated. I had to send them pictures of my driver’s license. I had to take a video of myself and send them a video of myself proving who I was. It was insane.

Then my first job went a lot longer than expected. It was just supposed to be a belt on a 2008 Chevy malibu. What you didn’t say was that the belt had shredded off a few months before that, and the engine was completely covered in oil, so the belt couldn’t stay on for as long as it should because oil was getting all over the South and screwing that up. So I got there, and spent I don’t know how long dealing with that mess, including accidentally snipping her CV axle boot trying to cut away all the shredded belt that was wrapped all around the CV axle boot.

Then the second job gave me since putting sway bar links on a 2016 Land Rover. It should have been a super super easy job, but it turned out to be a good bit more of an issue than I thought, mostly because they were greasable sway bar links and I was concerned I might have done damage to them putting too much grease into them and popping the seals, so I stressed over that for a while, and I’m still a little concerned about it, but I did find out that the brand that makes those particular sway bar links designs a way for them to flush out the excess grease, so I’m guessing, hoping, that everything is okay on those. Just because grease was coming out, didn’t mean the seals were busted.

The next job was a customer that I’ve done work for multiple times, but I guess she didn’t realize what the basic service call was because she was super surprised at the price when I was finished, so I gave her a discount on that job, hopefully she’s not too unhappy.

The fourth job turned into a big nightmare as well. It was just supposed to be an alternator change, but their battery was corroded all to crap, and their alternator bolt was on there so tight I thought I was going to shear the alternator bolt off before it finally broke free. I spent probably 20 or 30 minutes just cleaning off the battery connections and whatnot trying to get everything nice and shiny and good connections. Then when I put everything back together and started the car, the new alternator got super super hot really quickly, and it wasn’t putting out the voltage that I would expect it to put out. It was a lot lower than it should have been.

Not only that, but after I finish the job, including putting on a new belt that wasn’t part of the original quote because they wanted me to put on a belt as well, they were unhappy with the price, referring back to the original quote and not recognizing the cost of the belt and all the extra work I had to do. So I gave them a discount as well, hoping for them to be happy to some degree. They weren’t happy, but they weren’t mad, I hope.

Fifth car was a relative breeze in comparison. 2006 Toyota Sequoia that needed the AC condenser fan replaced. There were a couple minor hiccups, but nothing that was a problem. The sixth car was the same customer as the fifth car, just a different car. 2007 Hyundai Santa Fe fuel pump job. I put the fuel pump in, and it was a bit of a pain in the butt, but it wasn’t awful, but when I finished up, or thought I had finished up, the vehicle started, but the fuel gauge didn’t work. I spent the next probably three and a half or 4 hours trying to figure out what was wrong with the car, and eventually came to the conclusion that the auxiliary fuel pump might be bad as well. This particular car has two fuel pumps because the exhaust pipe runs right down the middle of the fuel tank, so there’s one pump to pump Fuel from one side of the tank to the other, and one pump to pump the gas up to the front of the car. So I figured the other pump was probably out, and I couldn’t get gas to seem to transfer from one pump to the other, so I figured it must be out. So I spent probably 3 hours working on that or maybe 4 hours or whatever it was, and finally had to just give up in the end and let them know that I think the other pump is also bad and probably the level sensor on that pump is bad and screwing up both sensors.

But wait, there’s more! Seats, when I went to put them back in, I realized that several of the bolts had been stripped out by whoever replaced the fuel pump the last time, and so when I went to Titan one of them down it just completely stripped out and wouldn’t tighten down really at all. Fortunately seven out of the eight bolts Titan down, three out of the four on one and four out of four on the other, but at least three or four of the bolts were semi stripped and one of them completely stripped.

But wait, there’s more!!!

After they drove away with the semi repaired vehicle, they called to tell me that the speedometer wasn’t working anymore either, and either was the odometer.

😶

Can I just say that it’s been a really really really crappy day?

If there’s any bright spot to that last one, it’s that the gas gauge all of a sudden decided to start working after he filled up with gas. So… 😶 He only topped off the tank, so I don’t know what to think. It was already mostly full.

One job canceled because I didn’t get back to them in time, so crazy that I didn’t realize I forgot to reply to them. One job canceled because of the rain, and one job said it was too late for me to come, which is a good thing I guess because I had hoped to be there for Corey when he got into town and now he’s in town and has been at my house for probably a couple hours by now and I’m still not home.

Rough rough rough day.

The bright spot? Cory is here!!!

And I’m excited about that. 😊

I’m about 8 minutes away from home now voice to texting my journal, so that I will be able to spend more time with him without having to write in my journal after I get home before bed.

Really looking forward to dinner. Really looking forward to seeing Cory. Glad the worst of this day is over.

I hope. 🙃

Lift the World.

~ stephen