Wow. What a day. 😅
Somewhere, apparently I forgot my new five billable hours standard. I ended up overbooking myself and logging just over 11 billable hours on eight cars.
😶
I can’t remember if I’ve ever done 11 before. I think maybe, but it was certainly a crazy busy day.
Actually, the first seven cars went very smoothly and simply, and I logged almost 8 and 1/2 billable hours in like 9 hours of chronological time, so I was doing really well, much better than the average.
And then came car number 8.
😅
But we’ll get there.
The first car was a 2019 Dodge ram pickup truck with an oil leak. Chock this one up to another auto service provider not doing their job properly. His oil filter wasn’t tightened down, so we had oil leaking out all over his garage floor.
Easy peasy for me, but crappy for him to have to pay a mechanic to come out to make sure his truck is okay when another shop was the cause of the problem.
Car number two was a 2010 Honda Accord with a misfire code. I couldn’t get it to repeat the issue, but the spark plug looked good, and the customer, who’s used me multiple times, said she just wanted to replace the coil anyway even though I couldn’t prove that the coil was the problem. I was about 80% sure that it was the problem, but I couldn’t prove it, but I went ahead and slapped the new one in for her anyway.
Car number three was a 2004 Honda Odyssey that she thought needed an alternator. It had been parked for over a month, but it turned out that the only thing that it needed was a battery and some gas. She was completely on empty, so it would start if I primed it several times, but then it would die right away. So I went out and got her five gallons of gas and a battery, poured on the gas, and dropped in a battery, And she was good to go.
Car number four was a 2009 Toyota RAV4 that was making a whining noise. The whining noise sounded to me through my stethoscope that it was coming from the alternator, and when I checked the alternator, it wasn’t putting out any voltage at all, so AutoZone delivered me an alternator, I slapped it in, and they were good to go.
Car number 5 was a 2010 Honda Odyssey, and I went over and diagnosed it as having a bad battery and a blown head gasket. They thought they needed a starter, but it had a bad battery and a blown head gasket.
But there’s… more with that one later. 😅
Car number six was a 2013 Toyota Camry, a warranty repair with a bad blower motor that I had just barely replaced and had gone out already.
Crossing my fingers at the new one I put in will last them 🤞.
Car number 7 was a 2007 Chevrolet Suburban that needed an alternator. So I went over and slapped that one in, chatting with the ladies as I repaired it for them. One of them was down for Minnesota visiting her sister on her birthday.
That Minnesota accent is a fun one. 🙃
I had one car that was on the schedule that canceled, originally having 10 cars on the schedule for today, but 9:00 after that one canceled. My next job was the biggest one of the day, but I would have no idea how big until I got there started taking things apart.
Holy. Freaking. Crap.
It was a 2015 Jeep Cherokee that needed a radiator. I had gone to the car and diagnosed it prior, and I was coming back to fix it. But a holy freaking crap!
I had done one of those in the past, but it had been so long that I had completely forgotten how much of a pain they were.
Jeeps, in general, can have nightmarish radiator removals, and this one is I think the worst I’ve ever had to do in my life.
Being a mechanic who works on all makes, models, and generations of modern cars, there’s a certain loss of memory when you don’t work on The same job on the same kind of car regularly.
Ugh, This one was a beast. I got there at 6:00 something and didn’t leave until midnight.
It was absolutely awful.
And what made it 10 times worse was that I had probably the worst best customers in the world.
They were really nice people, but they literally would stand over me and/or watch everything I did for a nearly the entire almost 6 hours I was there.
They didn’t seem to have any concept of personal space. They both smoked, and didn’t seem to have any sense that their smoking next to me might bother me. They didn’t seem to have any concept of giving someone space when it’s clear that they are frustrated. They just stood there, sat there, and literally stared at me for nearly 6 hours.
What was already in nightmarish job was made exponentially worse by their presence.
It was just… awful.
And I had to tear so many things apart that I was afraid that this was finally going to be my first job where I had a bolt left over after I was done.
I have bolts and parts scattered all behind me. I had tried to set them out in the relative position they were removed in, but I kept having to take more and more and more things off, and after a while, it just all blurred together.
Gratefully, I had taken one picture that helped get things organized toward the end, but oh my golly. What a nightmare.
Miraculously, by the time I finished, there were no bolts left over. I had a few bolts mixed and matched shorter bolts going in one place and longer bolts going in where shorter bolts had previously gone, but everything went back together tightened properly and secured properly, so it didn’t matter if some of the bolts were a little longer in some of the holes in some were a little shorter. They were all sufficient to do their job.
What a crazy freaking nightmare.
Oh, and the neighbors were blasting off fireworks much of the time 😅, And they weren’t just cheap things either. Some of them were very expensive, very loud fireworks. With my nerves already strained to the max with the challenge of the job and the hawks watching and staring nearly constantly, the added random booming explosions were… not what I needed. 😅
But I got her done and put together, the leak fixed, and the car running properly, and they were kind and grateful and good to go, giving me a little tip.
Like I said, really nice people, just not much sense of socially appropriate behavior? Don’t know if that’s the right phrase, but I think you catch my drift.
Then on the drive home, after midnight, I had a text conversation with one of the people from earlier in the day. The 2010 Honda Odyssey that had a bad battery and blown head gasket.
In a definite first in my car mechanic career, apparently I went to the wrong car and diagnosed the wrong car.
😶
They had even given me the key to the car I was working on, but they work confused just like I was, apparently, and so I ended up diagnosing the wrong car.
My Google maps had said, “you have arrived” But as they often do, they said it one house too early. I didn’t think anything of it because the car in the driveway was a Honda Odyssey. So I went to the door, knocked on the door, and texted the customer. They were away, but they brought me the key about 15 minutes later, pulling up, handing it to me, and then leaving.
So I got to work diagnosing the vehicle.
It wasn’t until after midnight during the text conversation with the customer that I realized that that customer owned two houses next to each other, had a Honda Odyssey at each house, and had issues with both Honda odysseys.
😶😅😶😅😶
So I had inadvertently gone to the wrong house, but it was a house they also owned with another Odyssey they also owned. But the person who brought me the key didn’t know that I was supposed to be fixing the other one, so he gave me the key to the one that I ended up diagnosing that I thought was the right vehicle in the first place.
Confused yet?
After midnight, I received messages from the owner letting me know that I had gone to the wrong house and diagnosed the wrong car.
Talk about a comedy of errors. 😅
So I made an appointment to go back on Wednesday and get them taken care of.
What a day!!! 😅
After that, it was home, food, vegging out a little bit, and crashing.
Good golly. 🙃
Love and hugs. 😊
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 