You know the tea party movement? Listen to this:
http://youtu.be/An6CeNRCBvo
It's like the shift from top dog to equals that really bothers them. I imagine that is why there are so few minorities within the tea party movement. This must also be why that when they come on TV they are white, christian, republican, conservatives that write signs and spell poorly and chant about Obama being a Kenyan spy or some such.
Somebody asked me to consider the tea party movement for a moment, to give it a chance, to stop being so close minded.
It's like, guess what, if your position is crazy I dont have to try it on for size or give it a test run. I can look at it and say, "That looks crazy, so, no thank you." And the tea party people should accept that.
I have this crazy idea that political movements or other life practices should stand on their own principals. And by that virtue alone should they be considered good or bad.
new topic: Loo's car broke it's axle AGAIN. So I ordered axle number three because they were fresh out. The first axles went bad about a month after installation. They started to wobble under acceleration. So when you gave it gas it would shake the steering wheel like the car was coming apart. Once I found the problem I replaced the axles with set two of Autozone Chinese-slave-labor-specials. They have a lifetime warranty so I keep getting new ones for free. It would be nice if I didn't have to, like they could make a quality product, but apparently we don't have time for rational solutions.
Shortly after I installed axle set number two the transmission started leaking transmission fluid. I undid the work I had done before to get a look at the problem. The transmission seals had gone bad and did not seal anymore. Back story: her transmission died a while back and I replaced it with a certified used one from a giant auto wrecker online. The seals in that new-to-us trans were on their way out. I didn't think to replace them at the time. Anyway I called up my brother, lord of car knowledge, and asked him what I should do. He said that Autozone was worse than Pepboys, which is pretty bad, and I should get parts from Kragen/Oreilly's or the deal, which was closed that day.
I went to Autozone and saw a woman behind the counter. Now, I am usually very good about not being sexist, or prejudicial, but when women work at auto parts stores they usually, in my experience, know very little about cars, and it is difficult to be objective on account of the failure rate I have experienced. Of the ten women behind the counter I have got parts from only one of them knew her stuff, and knew more than I did. The others can, with my assistance, look up my car, show me a picture of the part and ask me if that looks right before walking off to match the numbers up. That's what this lady did.
The part she brought back looked far too large to be correct.
"Are you sure this is the right part?" I asked.
"Absolutely," she said, "Transmission axle seals."
"They look too big to me."
"Oh, that's the right part."
"Will you check the axle hub seal part number and make sure these aren't them?"
"Sure, lets see, nope, same part number, same part inner and outer. Can't go wrong."
Here she asked the manager about it to double check her work. I was causing doubt. He said she was right. I wasn't convinced, but I had no evidence.
"Hmm... Ok, well, if this doesn't work I can exchange for the right one, yeah?"
"Yep!" Came her chipper response.
"Alright, thank you," I said before buying 70 bucks worth of transmission seals.
Than I went home, removed the axles and used a wrench to pry the old seals out because they fit so tightly. When the old seals came out I compared it to the new seals. It fit inside the new part and passed through it.
"Wrong fucking part," I said to myself. I got up, put the tools away, cleaned my hands and drove over there in the Green Machine ( a 96 Pontiac grand prix with 211k miles). I brought the old bad part with me so I could show them as well as compare it to the new part they would give me in the store.
"You gave me the wrong part," I said placing the parts, old and new, as well as the receipt on the counter. Having worked in the customer service industry (tires) for almost eight years I knew all the tricks. I have been on the receiving end of customer ire and there aren't that many forms it can take, but it causes a certain kind of action to take place. 'Shit gets taken care of,' as they say. Besides I was angry for having to come back. If they had given me the right part I wouldn't be there. That meant that super-polite me and wrathful me met somewhere in the middle to be stern me.
I didn't want an apology because it would be hollow and well-faked after being rattled off so often, but I wanted them to acknowledge their mistake and take action in the future to prevent this. Anyway, this new guy picked up both parts and examined them for about a minute before proclaiming that I was in fact correct in my original assessment. Than the woman from four hours ago saw me and stood silently at the new guy's shoulder watching his screen.
"Did I give you the wrong part?" She asked.
"Yes," I said.
"I'm so sorry!" She said.
I would have thought she meant it had she not worn the fake sincerity face. It's a face I know well, a face I use often at work. If you don't work in customer service and don't know this face you can recognize it by the extra long time it takes to blink the eyes. The best fake sincerity faces slowly open their eyes at the last word of what they say so they don't have to look you in the eye when they lie.
The most jaded of us can look you right in the eye and show you how much we care. It satisfies all subconscious queues, and its undetectable even to veterans of the industry except in one area: it is too clean, too perfect, exactly the right amount of words in the right order. And beneath that mask there is nothing resembling sincerity. A genuinely sincere person expresses sincerity with whatever words they can, often repeating words or using words like gosh, oh no, that's horrible, I had no idea, and many others.
Of course the customer has a role to play as well. They don't believe that we deliberately fooled them, but they insist on an apology almost every time as though we did. This causes us to apologize all the time for stuff we have no control over. We both know this, but the charade continues. This conditioning bleeds into my life and I often apologize to Loo for stuff that I'm not responsible for. And she corrects me.
Where was I?
Oh yeah she apologized.
"It happens," I said. My typical response.
"you know what happened?" she asked me. I didn't really care what happened. I wanted to fix Loos's car and get back to my day off. Did I mention I was annoyed to have to come back there? "I clicked the wrong part and compared it to the wrong part and told you it was the right one." She said with a shrug, meaning perhaps it was a simple mistake that could happen to anyone. I still wasn't interested. But she seemed desperate for forgiveness. I felt like if I forgave her she wouldn't change, and I didn't want to give her a lesson about finding parts that she would have to listen to because the customer is always right and then disregard after I left. So I said nothing, let her imagination fill in the blanks. When customers do that to me when I make a mistake (I rarely make mistakes at work) it helps me to be better. I am scarred by the sting of my incompetence.
I like that last sentence.
Anyway the mood in O'reilly's dropped down a bit and everyone worked toward solving my problem. They grabbed the correct part, of which there were two different part numbers. One for the left and one for the right side. They were slightly different sizes. Anyway I thanked them (why did I do that?) and went home. With the right parts for the job now I finished in a few hours in time for dinner. I think. I can't remember.
After fixing the seals and the leak I needed to fill the transmission back up. Loo came down to check on me at this point.
"Whatcha doin?" she asked.
"Adding trans fluid," I said.
"How do you know how much to add?"
"I don't," I said, "I got to kind of eye-ball it."
"Do you need a funnel?"
"If you have one."
"Let me look. Hey, thanks for fixing my car."
"yeah."
"I can't find a funnel. Do you need me to get you one?"
"No, I know a trick," I said. I was actually kind of excited to use the trick which I had only ever heard of but never seen or tried myself.
I pulled the trans dipstick up 90% of the way out and poured the trans fluid into the dipstick. The red fluid stuck to the dipstick and slid right down the tube.
"whoa, cool!" Loo said, "Why's it do that?"
"Capillary action," I said.
"What's that?"
"The molecules hold together so well that they pull themselves together and stick to things. It's how trees can pull water up from the ground to their leaves."
"Thats pretty fancy Beyo," she said. (hear a baby try to say the word bear)
"Yep."
"You're smarter than the average bear," she said.
After that we drove it to make sure it was fixed. For a few days it worked great without any problems at all. Than a couple days ago on my day off, a day I requested, we were pulling into traffic and there was a snap and a crash followed by a grinding as we slid backwards slowly. I quickly deduced the problem and turned the car off. We called AAA and had them tow it to her Ma's house where it would have to sit until today, my next day off. And today I pulled the axle shaft out to examine it.
You can see the end is rounded off.I think the metal clip that holds it in failed and allowed the shaft to slip out. And when I tried to get out into traffic all 200 horse power was applied to the end of the shaft rather than the whole length and it shredded those teeth right off. Luckily the transmission is made out of a stronger steel and it is OK.
OR
They gave me the wrong part, a part for another car, one that is too short. Either way there were fresh out of CV axle shafts for a '96 Nissan Maxima. It should be in tomorrow. So after (11 hours of) work I get to install a new axle. Yahoo!
Loo and I recognize how much that sucks, but she needs her car. To help the situation not suck so bad she bought me lunch with plans for two full-body massages, one tonight and one tomorrow.
Winning!
Hopefully tomorrow's new axle install fixes everything.
Huh, I just realized that about a year ago her transmission died. Weird.
Maybe July is rough on transmission?
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