So, shout out to my sister and a thank you!
I should not have assumed that there weren’t good reasons for people to be out on smoke breaks. Some states around the country actually have laws that mandate a certain break every certain number of hours. Arkansas doesn’t happen to be one of them, but companies also choose to give breaks because I guess research shows that it makes for more efficient employees.
So there you go! Little me will do his best to educate himself before popping his mouth off. 🙃
In other news, I miss being a teacher. 😕
I love teaching. Love it. Love it. Love it.
I love the opportunities that I have to teach my customers how their cars work, how to figure out what’s wrong with them themselves, etc…
I miss teaching high school Spanish. Aside from not knowing how to deal with behavior problems with ninth graders, it was one of the funnest teaching experiences I ever enjoyed.
I just love to teach. I love to be able to inspire and encourage and challenge and see the light go on in people’s eyes and see their interests piqued.
(sigh)
I’m grateful that as a mobile mechanic, I have a much easier path to teaching my customers than I would where I fixing cars in a shop.
So that’s something.
Been really grateful for a friend who’s been helping me with some of my struggles. We’ve been able to mutually support each other in our personal challenges. That’s been nice.
Oh, hey! Guess what! Didn’t even think about it until now. I ended early!!! I did four cars and was done by 3:00, and I called it good!
Proud of me? 🙃
First job was a 2005 Dodge caravan owned by a teacher who was at the junior high teaching while I went over to visit her van. It’s always a little awkward being some random guy in a work van in a school parking lot. 🙃
I always ask the person who’s car I’m fixing to notify the administration that I’m going to be there so there aren’t any concerns.
She had an issue with the brakes, but just on one side in the front. They wanted to go as cheaply as possible, so instead of having me do both sides, they had me just do one side, the side that was having issues.
From there, I went to a 2001 Jeep Grand Cherokee that had the death wobble. They’ve been customers of mine for a decent little while now, though they live in Bentonville now instead of Fayetteville.
I showed them how to do the repair themselves since the part was in another city, and it wasn’t challenging job to do.
Job number three was a 1999 Ford explorer that needed a starter. I was supposed to have done it yesterday, but he didn’t answer his phone because he accidentally left it at a job site or something like that. So I did it today, and it went pretty smoothly, so that was nice.
The last job of the day was a 2010 Chevy Malibu. It was that little petite lady that I mentioned the other day.
I gave her a quote for what it would cost to have me come back and fix the issue that she had. She tried to do it herself but ended up calling me to come back.
When I got there, I fixed the issue, and instead of charging her the full price that I was going to charge her, I knocked off like 70%.
But she still wasn’t happy with that. 🙃
Not wanting a bad review, I told them just to pay me what they felt like was fair, and they gave me $26, which covered driving to the junkyard, pulling off the part they needed, driving all the way to them, and installing it. Sure, it was super easy to do, but $26? Really?
Oh well.
It surprises me sometimes how people who are my age seem to be shocked by what it costs to repair a car. I suppose it’s possible they’ve never had to pay someone else to repair their cars before.
But heck, driving to the junkyard, pulling the part, driving all the way to them, even just the gas costs… I’m on pace to spend something like $10,000 this year just in gas.
😶
Wish there were a better write off than what they give us. I think taxes should only be allowed to be calculated on our actual profit from business but hey, what do I know. 🙃
So I came home early! 🥳
I took a shower, ate some food, started to work on taxes a little bit, went out and did a little de-vining of the woods as i waited for my friend and his partner came over, so we could talk business (how to utilize my heavy equipment instead of having it just sit there and rot like it has been).
Dinner, a little bit of tax work, and… sleep!
Love and hugs. 😊
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 