2023-04-06 — Lighten Up 😜

Fair warning, potentially offensive content coming… (especially in this day and age when people choose to be angry and take offense at seemingly just about everything.)

So… without further ado!

I know this subject is as old as, well, the cigarette, but can I get free paid breaks from work, too? 🙃

I’ve never really understood…

How is it that non-smokers are expected to work constantly and never stop but smokers are allowed to go outside and take their 10 minutes every hour or two without any concern?

Why can’t the rest of us just decide to stop working for 10 minutes every hour or two? 😅

If I ever get a job working for someone else again, remind me to take up smoking. 🙃

From what I can see of the people i know who smoke (no offense intended, just observation), they work probably 30-60 minutes less per 8-hour shift because of smoke breaks.

I sure wouldn’t mind a free hour of pay every day. 😆

Even if you say it’s only 30 minutes per day, if you’re full-time, that still adds up to nearly 2 1/2 weeks of paid vacation!!! 😶

Anyway, please forgive me if any of y’all are smokers. It’s just kind of a funny thing for me to witness, and my justice bone twinges. 🙃

This next thought is likely more dangerous…

There’s a story that I want to share but that I’m sure will brand me as a racist in the eyes of who knows how many people because, of course, we’re so blasted quick to take offense these days and can’t just lighten up, and because somehow the definition of racist got expanded enormously to include a gazillion things that aren’t racist at all, but… whatever.

I’ll risk being branded a racist. It’s a funny experience for me.

So I answer the phone all day every day from anybody and everybody who calls me, from potential customers to scam callers to whomever. I often can tell what country or culture or race someone is by the accent they have.

People from India are super easy to recognize.

…except if you happen to run into somebody who’s from Bangladesh. In those cases, I’ll probably think they’re from India because the accent, at least to me, is pretty much indistinguishable, But I’ve met very few people from Bangladesh, and Northwest Arkansas is full of people from India because so many have come to work for Walmart.

I can tell the Latino accent quite well because, well, I spent two years communicating with people from Latin American countries daily.

I can tell when people are from the country. Often times I can pick out if someone is white and of a lower-income background.

And there’s a particular accent that I know means that my customer is black.

Enter case in point. 🙃

So this woman calls me up, and she needs help with her Chevrolet Malibu and wants me to do some work on it. From her accent I could easily tell that she was black.

So I drive out to her house, and I knock on the door and get the keys from her daughter (who’s black), And I start working on her car.

Well, after, let’s say maybe 20 minutes or so, this person pulls up and gets out of the car–a very petite white woman–and she walks towards me.

I’m wondering who she is.

And then she opens her mouth.

😶😶😶

It was… I don’t even know the right words to say. I was just so completely taken aback. 🙃

Wait, what?!?!?! 😶

I couldn’t get it to compute. I’m standing there looking at an 80lb tiny white woman who’s… black?!?!?!

What’s happening here?!?! Twilight zone. 😶

She was white as white can be but talking with an accent that I’ve only ever heard come out of a black person’s mouth.

It was nutty!!!

Stereotype busted? 🙃

I’m still completely dumbfounded. It just doesn’t compute in my brain at all.

😆

She’s even called me multiple times since to ask questions, and each time I hear her accent, and i picture her in person, it’s a complete shock to the system.

I need a programmer.

So many of the things that I want to do involve creating digital technologies, programs technologies–specifically, web apps.

Non sequitur… 😅

I’d almost be willing to go out and learn how to program myself, except for I can’t stand the thought of being stuck behind a computer writing code all day. I’d go nuts.

So I need a programmer who’s dreams align with mine, so we can work together to build all the kinds of things that I want to build. 🙃

(sigh)

I guess I’ll get on with the day.

Believe it or not, I actually, after waking up early again, managed to fall back asleep for another hour. 🥳 That was great! Except… I was groggy like I had two much sleep.

😶

Maybe the 5 hours the night that I’ve been getting really is the new normal? And getting 6 hours last night, or whatever it was, made me groggy like I’d slept too much.

Who knows?

First job was a 2003 Lexus ES330 that The guy wants me to install a battery and alternator on. I clarified for sure that that’s what he wanted, and he said yes. He didn’t really care if it was only one of them that was bad or neither of them that was bad, he just wanted me to put a battery in alternator on it, and if it turned out to not be the one of those things, then oh well, we’ll figure it out from there.

So I slapped in the battery in an alternator, and he was right. It was one of those two, at least. We’ll never know which. 🙃

From there I went to the pull-it-yourself junkyard and got parts for two cars on my list that needed junkyard parts.

Gratefully, didn’t take very long to find cars that had the parts I needed, and it didn’t take much time at all to get the parts off the cars that I needed. 🥳

From there I went to the Latino lady’s car that had electrical issues. There was some kind of Jimmy rigged wiring that was done that was keeping the car running, but someone had pulled the Jimmy rigged wiring out, and I had no idea where it was supposed to go. The car would just crank and crank and not start, and there was no power to the OBD2 port.

I figured I probably should have said no to the job to begin with, but you never know when you’re getting into stuff like this. It could be the stupidest easiest thing where it takes 30 seconds, or it could be a black hole.

Unfortunately for the lady, this one was a black hole. How do you properly guess what Jimmy rigging has been done in the past? The voltages weren’t what they needed to be, and it was going to take a good long while, more than his reasonable for a mobile mechanic who’s as busy as I am to try and figure out.

So I suggested that she go to Miguel’s shop, as she could trust that he would do him right. Interestingly, though she was a Latina herself, she said she didn’t trust Latino mechanics at all.

From there I picked up some parts from the AutoZone in Springdale, and then I went to install one of the junkyard parts that I had bought.

Gratefully, that job went really smoothly, so that was nice.

From there, I drove to the Butterfield coach AutoZone where one of the parts that I was supposed to have picked up at the South Thompson AutoZone but that they didn’t have in stock even though they thought they did, when I went to the Butterfield coach store to pick up that same part, they had transferred it back to the South Thompson store, against instructions.

😠

Ugh.

So I drove all the way back to the South Thompson store to pick up the part, and then I drove all the way back east out towards Sonora.

Oh well. 🙃

That job way out in Sonora was a 2003 Ford ranger that was shaking after starting. Turned out to have cylinder three because it appears that squirrels chewed through his spark plug wires, two of them at least.

Super nice guy. Talk to him for a while. He was in the military but got medically retired when his primary parachute didn’t open during an 800-ft jump. His secondary shoot did open, but he was going so fast that when he hit the ground it messed him up massively. Everything from punctured lung to brain damage.

Pretty rough stuff.

Anyway, I headed to the grocery store after that to buy some things that I probably shouldn’t have bought, and gratefully, I left the store without buying them! 🥳

Chatted with my oldest brother on the drive home and a little bit after I got home, and then had dinner with my mom who cooked a very tasty dinner, and here I am, in very real withdrawals from my routine of turning the TV or movie on while I do my scheduling for the next day or whatever.

But TV and movies are really bad for me personally–really bad.

I’m super tired, so I’m going to hit the hay. Good night!

Love and hugs. 😊

Lift the World

~ stephen