Last year and early into this year most NH were in a drought. I have well water so I wasn’t covered by the restrictions. But most towns around here who had municipal town water had the same restrictions. But the local car-washes were exempt. May be because they use a lot of recycled water.
Fast forward to July 2021…It was the wettest July EVER. And we’ve been keeping rainfall records in NH a lot longer then most of the country. Our records go back to before the US was formed.
Not sure if is covid related, booked an oil change at the dealer, 17 days out! 1st appt. available.
Well that’s interesting. I’ve been putting making an appointment off because I don’t want to waste a day and drive up there. I need the transmission, transfer case, and differential done, plus I want a new belt put on. Things are up in the air enough where it’s hard to plan that far ahead.
Because I don’t want to hang around in the dealer’s relatively-small waiting room with some possibly un-masked and/or un-vaccinated people, I made a service appointment for a day when a friend is off from work, so that he can pick me up and then drop me back at the dealership later in the day. I guess that I lucked-out because I was able to book an appointment only 7 days ahead.
My shop will take me home and pick me up if I ask for it. They do this for anyone within 15 minutes or so of the shop.
My dealer is 60 miles away so I’m on my own.
We are an independent shop, and we have been consistently booked 10 days-2 weeks out for several months. We have had a hard time finding qualified staff who are willing to work.
Back in March 2020, between the shop and office we had a full staff of 9. When the economy was closed we laid off all but 3 of us. As things opened up again we found that some staff went to other lines of work, some preferred to be on the dole, and some went to greener pastures–namely other shops that were having the same staffing issues and are poaching employees away.
I have a new guy starting tomorrow and that puts us back where we should be. We have been chipping away at the backlog and are almost back to normal.
We have also been seeing bigger tickets on cars that would have gone to the junkyard 2 years ago. New and used cars have gotten harder to find and more expensive.
Here’s another one. I tried to buy some fuel injector cleaner the other day. I wanted to buy it in a Covid safe way, so I just bought the one item. I’m thinking in and out w/no fuss. As I’m getting ready to pay, $5 or something, an alarm sounds!! The manager comes over , says this product is RESTRICTED!!! … lol … “Am I’m going to jail?” He looks up the restriction code, keys in a password, and says “no, you’re ok”. I asked him why it is restricted, what is restricted about it, if it is restricted why am I able to buy it ??? … manager: “I don’t know” … lol…
I just looked it up, and apparently fuel injector cleaner can be used to manufacture illegal drugs.
https://www.bikeforums.net/foo/707304-carded-walmart-buying-fuel-injector-cleaner.html
For crying out loud George , people sniff this stuff just like you have to be of a certain age to buy paint in spray cans . The manager knew why he just did not want to get in an involved conversation.
Just sayin’ is all. So you can go down the street and buy heroin without paying sales tax, but try and buy injector cleaner or spray paint and the bells go off. I couldn’t count the cans of spray paint I bought as a kid and never sniffed it or painted something I shouldn’t. Oh except for the one time the police car got egged, but just once.
It might take some time but if we survive people will look back on this time as us being completely nuts.
I remember walking to the store to buy a can of spray paint for my dad when I was maybe eight. No one thought to make a deal of it, so long as I had the 35 cents. Today we’d all be in police custody and it would take 35 grand to straighten out.
I think in MN a few years back buying starting fluid, got a litany of questions. Was originally told it could be sold for farm use only. Forget how it all panned out, but walked out with a can.
Methamphetamine. A dozen years ago, on occasion a garage door would land in the street somewhere in town after a meth lab explosion. It has been quiet in recent years, I think our neighbors to the south have beat out the competition in manufacturing and supply.
I remember when the ladies were congratulating themselves on getting a law passed in Minnesota where in order to buy sinus pills, they recorded your license and kept track how much you bought every year to make sure you weren’t making drugs. Of course the unintended consequences were the little folks quit making it in their barns and instead the big boys down south took over, with no easy way to control those guys. I don’t remember their names anymore after over ten years and we still have to register for sinus meds and I think they never apologized but got promoted. I suppose the politicians were to blame too.