And I thought only my dentist did that … lol … good post!
Personally I think the vast majority of pro mechanics or shops don’t intend to rip anybody off. They come to work every morning to offer a helpful service for a fee. If a customer thinks the fee is too high they have the right to go to a different shop. Likewise if the customer isn’t satisfied w/the quality or timeliness of the work. Cars are very complicated contraptions, and mechanics can’t guarantee their work is always perfect, in the sense that they claim to never make any mistakes, or that what they do will always solve the problem. Most will admit they sometimes make mistakes, and even when they don’t make any mistakes they’ll admit sometimes what they do doesn’t completely solve the issue. But that’s the same for lawyers and physicians. I expect most pro mechanics have worked for weeks on a problem on one of their own cars that in retrospect could have been solved in a couple of hours. Unfortunately in life there are a few of most every profession who do in fact intend to rip people off. But in my experience this is a small minority among pro mechanics.
with that attitude, multiple things will happen . . .
Your car will, in fact, be poorly maintained
You’re certainly not not making friends with anyone in the automotive industry
don’t be suprised if your attitude gets you kicked out of some repair shops in the future
Yup, you called it. I’ve seen that happen to so many customers who were cheapskates with a bad attitude and in the end they paid dearly for it and burnt lots of bridges in the process
Ditto!
When I was a kid, our Dentist used to give kids little plaster of Paris figurines that he made himself, as a hobby. It was fun to paint them. With that exception, I never received any candy or other “gifts” from a Dentist.
i worked as a maintenance person and i fix stuff in my house including toilet. yes i replaced the fill valve and flapper on the toilet. yes i change hvac filters.
the difference here is that you dont need to lift a 3000lbs or 5000lbs equipment to do fixes
i would fix my own car
the problem is that i dont have means to lift the car which i stated multiple times but you guys are mechanics you dont read properly!
its not complicated to fix cars if youre smart
im actually a really smart guy ive scored over 140 on IQ tests and spatial awareness and mechanical aptitude is where i score highest. i also scored very high on ASVAB i am above 95 percentile.
what annoys me about people working at factories for 15 an hour or mechanics or maintenance people is that they think theyre so strong and smart but they dont score that high on intelligence tests let alone in fitness tests
yes i also was in the military, army to be exact
guess what my MOS was? wheeled vehicle mechanic!!
i fixed toilets many times
the only problem i have with fixing cars is that i am not set up to lift a car here
youre really not that smart are you? i cant lift the car.
never lifted car
since never lifted car dont know what it looks like from underneath where you got the best view of the workings of a vehicle
since never having seen the underside has no experience with fixing cars obviously. im asking people with experience
i dont discredit any professional for lack of experience. but ive experienced this type of mentality working at factories with people with low intelligence and poor physical coordination and fitness that there is some kind of weird delusion that they are doing their job because theyre smart and strong when in fact all the really smart and strong people dont do those jobs.
i also maxed out my army APFT. i benchpress 225lbs for reps. i overhead press 135lbs for reps. not really strong but stronger than 90% of the people out there. i also do over 20 pull ups while weighing more or at 175lbs.
as for smart my brother makes over $200,000 a year sitting infront of a computer all day. i cant do his job. but i can do anything a mechanic does with one demonstration or instruction.
i worked at so many factories where i had to deal with people that think their work is so complicated.
put it this way.
i cant do surgery even with instruction
i cant code like my brother even with instruction
i can fix a car with instruction
nobody taught me how to fix a toilet i just learned from a youtube video and did it
nobody taught me how to fix an onity hotel door i learned from basically disassembling the whole thing and putting it back together.
there are basic level stuff then really complicated stuff
cars are not that complicated
the reason why cars cant be fixed by most people is either due to lack of equipment or lack of basic level strength and im a guy here thats pretty strong and know im strong because i actually lifted weights growing up like practically half the guys that grew up in vanity california. i can lift any part on a passenger vehicle. i also worked at caterpillar so i know there are parts that weigh hundreds and thousands of pounds ofcourse i cant lift those without crane or hoist. i worked on oilfield valves as one of my jobs and i routinely just manhandled mud valves that weigh close to 200lbs.
One universal truth- people that are actually smart don’t need to go around telling people how smart they are…and they don’t need to stoop to disparaging other people’s intelligence to make themselves look good (in their own mind). If you’re truly smart, people will know. If you go around telling people how smart you are, they’ll know something else about you. The last point I’d like to make is that there are many different “kinds of smart”. None of which are inherently better than the others but may make you more suitable for a particular line of work…
You are probably too young to remember this scrubbed launch.
Filter not changed, mission delayed.
“ Technicians changed the dirty oil in the contaminated auxiliary power units of the space shuttle Columbia”.
I am not a pro mechanic. I have never had a lift in my garage but I have been lifting my cars for 50 years. Replacing clutches, transmissions, rear axles and suspensions. I have worked on every system used in automobiles. I have rebuilt every one of those systems except AC and automatic transmissions.
If you are smart as you say, how did I do that without a lift?
I have a friend who is stuck on the graveyard shift at work no matter what he does. He remarked that he was the smartest guy in the room and he still wasn’t getting promoted. I answered that the smartest guy in the room never thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room.
That, my friend, is an out and out lie. Many many people lack the basic technical inclination to do the most basic auto services. In 32 years in the field I’ve seen the results of work done by people who couldn’t fix a sandwich, much less a car.
First of all, anyone referring to that discipline as “coding” is probably a rookie or lacks formal training. Software design and development is an engineering discipline like any of the others. Anyone can be a hack at any job and get some things accomplished.
You start out referring to the learning the basics of auto mechanics. Then go on to say the same is not possible for “coding”. I’m here to tell you that it is not only possible to learn the basics of software development in a month or two, I have personally witnessed it numerous times over my career. I had a guy I’ll never forget that learned and implemented an advanced DSP to do real time programming in a demanding application. He was up and running in a month. Never wrote a single line of software before that. So to say it is impossible is close minded. In fact, my 13 year old son learned how to program a robot we built in only a few weeks. The visual based language he had down in a couple days so we moved to a more traditional software language so he could understand the true “basics” of how microcontrollers work. A sufficiently intelligent and motivated individual is capable of more than you may realize.
You keep disparaging line workers. Many of those tasks take a lot of time and skill to master. Most of the people doing them are in transition- they are learning those skills as they continue to expand their capabilities. As they learn and grow, they will move on to more demanding work at higher pay. Someone younger and new will fill in behind them. If you want to understand how to make something better, faster, cheaper- start by talking to those people. They are closest to the work and usually have great ideas. It’s when people demean them and show no respect for what they do that you waste those opportunities. I’ve known too many people that had those perspectives. They forgot that they are still standing on the shoulders of others.
You say cars are not complicated. Everything is relative. It’s true it’s not the space shuttle but they are far from simple machines anymore. In fact, they have enough complicated systems in them now, most repair technicians will need to specialize in an area to be sufficiently proficient in their repair. And that doesn’t even factor in the time constraints. Doing it in your driveway is one thing, try being under the gun to resolve some complicated problem within the allocated time or it’s a losing proposition for your employer or business. Every day.
im looking at the schematics and no its not complicated. how am i going about saying mechanics are not smart? well ive been to pepboys none of those people seem smart at all they cant even communicate properly.
ive been to a firestone where the guy seemed somewhat decent intelligence based on communicating but he was asking for more money than the local vietnamese mechanic and that guy did it for half the price.
and to reiterate no that doesnt look complicated its how dumb people claim something is complicated.
i worked with oilfield valves. theyre not as “complicated” but there are schematics. the idiot working there for years gave me schematics told me to figure it out. i figured it out and finished the whole batch.
they thought i couldnt lift those things after full assembly cause theyre like 185lbs each. i didnt have any problems even without hoist. even one of the parts not assembled was like 80lbs the guy thought i was gonna struggle lifting that. nope. funny thing theyre smaller than me and thinking that so think about how stupid they are. and when i worked at a restaurant as server the owners sister in law kept asking me if i workout saying i look muscular? so figure out why these dumb people cant tell i used to lift weights?
they tried to make me quit not helping and just throwing the schematics at me. guy i scored 97th percentile on ASVAB do you even know what that means? i figured it out with nobody helping me. this 5’5 short fellow with a beer belly weighing 160lbs was so delusional he thought he wasnt overweight with that gigantic beer belly. i got terminated after i told the supervisor that if he keeps talking eventually im gonna put him in his place.
For someone that clams to be so smart and a know it all, you sure do ask a lot of questions about vehicles that you do not understand the answers to…
Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery is a multiple-aptitude battery that measures developed abilities, bla bla bla… Did I pass your little test???
Since we are all idiots on here, and we can not help you out, you probably would netter off going elsewhere for help where they have smart people unlike any of us…
see this is where a dumb person focuses on things that arent really the focus here. i scored 97th percentile on that. that score means nothing right. just like the us government does all kinds of pointless things for no reason. you could score at 50th percentile or 60th percentile prob doesnt mean anything. you couldnt even do 6 chin ups and that still doesnt mean nothing and youre prob stronger than a guy that weighs more than you that does over 20? ok alright. and the fact that you couldnt run 2 miles in even slow 15 minutes dont mean nothing youre still an adonnis and a physical specimen and you would still whoop some professional fighter if it came down to it. cause all that matters is that you look weathered and beat up by life and that makes you a lot tougher than someone who looks presentable and fit?
its like those times you see geraldo beat up a bunch of fat out of shape white supremacists. they prob thought the guy couldnt fight cause he actually takes care of himself.
