A look under the hood

In my heart, I knew an excursion to the dealership for my Altima's 7500 mile check would yield something memorable to write about. I'd been putting it off for months. I had received the "friendly" reminder back in September, though with the reduced amount I've been driving (now that I don't run to the office most days), I hadn't even reached 7000 miles. Today's trip was also prompted by the fact that a few days ago I had collapsed the right front portion of the bumper by trying to occupy a space already spoken for by a big block of ice-'nuff said.. I needed an estimate for body work. When I checked in, I was told that my model had been recalled for reprogramming of the computer-Sounds serious! I was informed by the smarm friendly service manager that it would take "several hours extra". Hmmm...Reprogramming. Somehow I suspected that they hadn't tasked that gig out to a battalion of nerds. The same genius who changes your oil attaches an electrode or two somewhere or other and pushes a button on a black box which updates the software. Several hours extra. For God's sake- when we reprogram a pacemaker in the office, it only takes about 5 minutes.

Anyway, I was called back in the afternoon to come and get my vehicle, though they still hadn't performed the estimation for the body work. I did manage to convince them to take the car to their body shop (about 100 yards from the service area) before I got there so some of my time could be saved. I arrived about a half hour later and did the full 100 yards from service to collision without the "guide" they suggested accompany me. They still hadn't done the estimate. I was having a coffee at the courtesy bar and had shaved off another 15 minutes of my lifetime when a guy who looked suspiciously like Delbert McClintock (John Goodman in Arachnophobia) sauntered out. We walked over to the car and he gave it the old professional once over (with clipboard in hand and pencil behind the ear, naturally). I fully expected to hear:

Molly Jennings: Why is all the wood rotting?
Delbert McClintock: I'll tell you why. Bad wood.
Molly Jennings: So... what do we do?
Delbert McClintock: Tear out bad wood. Put in good wood.

Gentle reader, I kid you not. Here is what he actually said to me as he regarded my poor little disfigured Nissan:

Ouch..That musta hurt!

Halt! We really have to put everything aside for a moment and think. This fellow looked like he was in his fifties, though morbidly obese people tend to look older than their chronological age. Let's assume he's 45, so we can figure that he's been doing this for some 20 years. How many times do you think he's repeated that line and thought he was being:
1)empathetic
2)cute
3)fatherly
..and felt good about it?
Hey, I worked with the public for many years and frequently cringed when I found myself contemplating using a hackneyed phrase or invoking what I hoped was a spontaneous witticism, knowing full well (at some level) that little I had to say was either original or witty. I can tell you that I approached these moments with trepidation and humility. So was I then supposed to respond? It was suddenly very clear. Not only was he taking an estimate of the damage to the car, he was going to estimate my parry to his verbal thrust. Somehow this would give him enough info to make a true estimation of the entire situation and charge me accordingly. But he had caught me off guard. I was only able to muster a meager "Yeah, it sure did." Embarrassing. I will never let that happen again!

He scribbled a few things onto the clipboard and we walked back to the office. He then spent some time crunching numbers in an ancient adding machine complete with a handle on its side. It was so old that at first I thought it was one of those ENIGMA devices and he was doing some code breaking for the allies. It finally spit out a length of tape showing all of the calculations and the grand total. He handed it to me, gave me a moment to digest it, then whipsawed me with the disclaimer that the kids in legal had scripted for him:

Ya know, this only applies to what I can see.

The estimate for the bumper was about two hundred dollars higher than others I had received. I certainly wasn't going to let these guys do the work. As I drove home, I noticed that the windshield washer fluid light was on. I had seen this appear earlier in the week. It was a little annoying that they hadn't topped that off while I was being serviced. Once I got home I decided to fill it myself. I was amazed at the volume of fluid required. As I continued pouring, I noticed that my foot felt wet. Glancing down, I saw a stream of blue fluid nourishing the asphalt of Bonnie Road. Utilizing my powers of reasoning, it dawned on me that my interaction with the parked ice block earlier this week had resulted in a crumpled bumper and a ruptured washer fluid reservoir. One would think that might have been picked up by the "computer programmers", the damage estimator or others on the crack team at the dealership service department. I guess not.

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