Hiya, folks 😊
Happy almost Wednesday 😊
Was a rough one yesterday, and I didn’t really want to share with the world, but I wanted to write a bit, so I wrote and just password protected it. So… sorry about that.
Anyway…
I got to bed early enough last night that getting up at 7:30 felt like sleeping in. In fact, it felt so much like sleeping in that I woke up at something like 6:30, and I decided to sleep longer, finally getting up just a tad before 7:30.
Phone started going off fairly early today, and we already had a pretty full day on the schedule, but that full day went… sideways. 🙃 Before I even left, however, I spent a good little while creating a how-to sheet for Malaki on how to replace a brake caliper–step by step.
After finishing that, I rushed out the door to try to get to the Bentonville AutoZone to get Malaki my scan tool and some other things for his first job (clear tubing for bleed brakes, a needless syringe for pre-filling the brake caliper, etc).
While at AZ, I returned a bunch of parts, ordered a bunch more, and then headed down to Fayetteville, where I spent several hours working on a 2010 Nissan Sentra with a #3 cylinder misfire.
So… you know those Nissans I… love so much. 🙃 I was thinking this was just going to be a really quick misfire job, most likely a coil, which would take 15 minutes max from arrival to departure.
Nope.
Why “nope”? Well, because in the infinite wisdom of the Nissan Engineers, they decided to put the intake manifold over the top of the valve cover, so that even this uber simple 4-cylinder engine required you to remove the intake manifold just to get to cylinder three.
😶
So what I thought was going to be a 15-30-minute job because it was a simple 4 banger turned into like 4 hours? (of which I only billed for 2.25. I could have gotten it done quicker, but i needed to go get the intake manifold gasket and the PCV valve (which was also bad). I also chatted with Malaki a good bit on the brake caliper job he was doing, and I answered lots of phone calls, et.c
But I got it done, new spark plugs, one new coil, new PCV valve, and I cleaned the crap out of everything. I should probably charge for all the extra stuff I do. The customer didn’t know any differently. Didn’t know I spent 15-20 minutes just cleaning her throttle body–tame I didn’t bill for, nor did I want to ask her to pay more money for. I don’t know if it’s some sort of OCD in me or guilt or whatever, but when I have to remove the throttle body to do the job, and the throttle plate and adjacent metals are nasty because they’re covered in oil and the like, how do I not take care of that for them. Do I just leave it because they’re not paying for it?
I guess I could, or I could just tell them about it and teach them how to do it? Heretofore, I just go ahead and take the time and clean it… free of charge.
It was at that point that things started going a little more sideways. Malaki went to do a job in Bella Vista, another likely caliper job. What did he find? Yes, bad caliper, but the van was on such a steep hill with no way to get it to flat ground and safe working conditions that after diagnosing it, there wasn’t any way to safely do the job. The driveway and road were so steep that towing companies refused to tow the vehicle in that situation.
Unfortunately, the customer was not happy with us–at all. Apparently, he wanted us to risk our lives to fix his brakes. Sure, I understand it’s crappy to have your vehicle in that kind of a predicament, but no, we’re not going jack a car up on a steep hill. Nor are we going to try to roll a vehicle with no brakes down a hill. There’s no need to risk our and others’ lives to fix a car.
Anyway, kudos to Malaki for being willing to take a stand. Safety first. Safety always first on the job, and family always ahead of the job. So… that was good. We tried to do as much as we could to soften the customer, so we wouldn’t get a bad review. Malaki called a towing company, but they refused that location as being unsafe, I guess. I communicated with another mobile company that might be able to find a way to safely move the vehicle.
Anyway, so we called various people to try to help him out, we diagnosed the specific issue, and we didn’t charge him a penny for driving all the way up to Bella Vista, diagnosing his vehicle, and trying to help him get it figured out.
He was still mad, though. Hopefully, we don’t get a bad review from it.
(sigh)
In addition to not getting paid for the work, I lose even more money because I can’t not pay Malaki for his time. He did the service call. It was just a crappy situation with a customer I won’t do work for in the future. So I still pay Malaki because that’s just the right thing to do, and I don’t make anything on that one, even after a ton of pre-visit work I did to gather info about that car.
(sigh again)
Then Malaki went to the next job on the list, which was quite a ways away from the Bella Vista job–all the way down in Fayetteville. I was expecting him to be up north all day, and he would have been, had that caliper job not gone south). So he drove all the way to Fayetteville and waited for 45 minutes, getting stood up by the next customer who had told me she didn’t need any heads up as long as it was between 8:30 and 5:00, and Malaki gave her a small heads up, but she disappeared.
So I got to pay Malaki another service call fee without making any money at all for myself. Expensive day. 🙃 But he put in the time. It was just a couple of not-so-great customers. It rarely happens, so that’s something, at least. Hopefully the few that Malaki has had to deal with these last two days will be the last ones for a while.
I sent Malaki to the last job of the day, which was supposedly a crank, no start; but it was actually a no crank, no start, which Malaki found that there was a fuse placed in the wrong position, which, once corrected, let it all start just fine. 🥳
Go Malaki. 😊
As for me, I didn’t have any no shows, and I only got two cars done, but that’s okay. Not realistic to break records every day. After the Sentra misfire job, I went back to the 2000 Grand Voyager wiring/alternator job, where I carefully spliced in a donor alternator cable that I’d removed from a Grand Voyager at the junkyard yesterday.
Malaki and I shot the breeze for 15 minutes or so after I finished my last job, then I got gas, as always when coming home from my south route. Before pulling up to my house, though, I went over to my sister Liz’s place and put the wheel on her lawnmower for her, and then I headed over to my nephew Stevie’s place, and we chatted for a while about business ideas. It was a good, productive, motivating conversation, and that was cool.
Eek! 12:01. I’ve pumpkined.
Good night, Neverland.
Love and hugs.
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 