This morning started like any other first work day of the year, except that my car wouldn't start. As inconvenient as that was, if one's car breaks down the best place to do it is in one's own parking space at home. The weather being what it is, I was informed by the towing service that the wait would be an hour. I called work to let them know I'd be late, and I had barely hung up when the tow guy arrived.
He may have been an idiot savant, I'm not sure. Several times I wished I had a cell phone that worked at home (and I will be getting one this month!!) so I could record this guy. I told him I was a little freaked out because this is the first time I ever had a car with a chip in the key and I was afraid the chip had gone out. He put my key in the ignition, turned on the lights and saw they came on weakly. That told him it was the battery. Genius. I will definitely remember that trick the next time my car won't start. Then he dove under the panel inside the car, came out and told me what he did there was check the battery setting to make sure it would automatically save my settings. Wow, was I impressed.
I told him how impressed I was with his towing service so far and he started telling me the entire local history of towing. Apparently his shop has won awards and beat out all the local competition, and he started listing off all the local towing yards that had once existed and no longer do. In my head I was going "oh my god, I've run into my doppleganger in the towing industry." He started telling me he has been up since 5 am and he's really tired and this job was really better than the last job. I asked him what his last job was like and he just repeated, "this job is better." I kind of got the image of him working on a semi in a monsoon. I was reminded of my own complaining about the last document I just worked on.
I could relate to this guy's struggle through the underbelly of the towing world to the heights of the towing elite. He has towed everybody. He's impounded the stars. He towed 4 presidents. He could easily do this in his sleep, and pretty much did, mentioning several times how tired he was. I have been known to wake myself up swaying at the keyboard, myself. While he's telling me these tall tales he was also explaining why his batteries are better than anyone else's. I tried to tell him he lost me at nickel and cadmium, but I'm sure he's right, it really makes a difference.
He recommended if I ever needed to use battery cables to turn on the lights first. This will prevent, for example a charge from a big towing truck, overloading the circuit and burning out any small components of the computer. Yeah, I'll remember that. Then he brought out some wires and started attaching them to the battery and I asked him if he was going to turn on the lights first? No, because he was only taking measurements from the engine. He said the funniest things, but he was funny the way Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man was funny - he didn't get the point of humor. But when he recommended something I told him I always follow the recommendations of competent people, and he did appreciate that.
Then he showed me the printout of the tests of my car's engine and pointed to each graph and chart and said, "this tells me your *blah blah* is like new," and enumerated various engine parts and how and why they were still "like new." Yay, my 5 year old car is like brand new and as I said before, my credit union rocks!!
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