If you need a job done right.....

You know what they say about having a job done correctly means you must do it yourself. Well, lately I have had that small bit of wisdom forced up my nose and whirred around in my brain a few times to make sure it sticks. As many of you have probably gathered, I take pride in doing almost every bit of mechanic work myself for a number of reasons involving cost, timetable, quality of work and trust. Basically, I don't trust anyone around my vehicles. I'm sure you all know, my truck was painted recently. What you may not know is that I was quite unhappy with the quality of work. I have a fair amount of experience with auto paint and had originally planned to paint the truck myself, but a 1/2 off sale caught my attention at the right time. The pain on my truck had streaks, was horribly thin and basically a piss poor job all around. Believing that the store employees, managers and owners would just give me hassle about their lack of ability, I wrote a rather angry and displeased review to their corporate office. I was surprised to receive a call back from them, and then from the owner of the Maaco that painted the truck. They were very willing to take a look at the truck and see if it was as bad as I had described it to be. It was, and they agreed to repaint the truck for free. That was a little while ago, and for a number of reasons I had to wait until a more convenient time to be without my truck for a week. Then, last weekend I dropped the truck off to be painted. Despite my very specific instructions that there are two switches which MUST be on any time the vehicle is running, one of the “Lowest Common Denominators” (my pet name for the people who lay at the heart of most of society’s problems) tried to move the truck out of the building. The engine I built for that truck has a high performance electric fuel pump with a master kill switch inside the cab incase of a fire. If that switch is not on, you have about 30 seconds of run time before the fuel runs out. Needless to say, he didn’t get where he was going and couldn’t get it started. Rather than read the work order and see the instructions, he decided that there was something wrong with the truck and locked it. I never provided them with a door key, so they were now locked out of the truck and couldn’t move it inside their gated area for storage overnight. This particular Maaco is in an industrial area in south Provo near the mall. Leaving a vehicle outside in such a dark and deserted place is not a good idea. Sometime during the night, a rock arced gently through my passenger side window and my stereo decided to seek its fortunes elsewhere (can we say freaking cliché!?). I had planned on picking up the truck in the morning, but received a call before I left informing me about the vandalism. Despite the large empty space in the dash board, the missing stereo was somehow overlooked. They paid for a replacement window and I picked up the truck on Monday, which is when I noticed the missing stereo. Rather than request that Maaco also replace the stereo, I just resolved to install an extra we have laying around since the Subaru died. I have filed a police report, but I have little faith in any law enforcement (excepting their capacity for consuming pastries) and will never see anything from it. I blame incompetence for this whole situation. Incompetence in not doing the job right the first time, incompetence for failing to follow simple instructions before and after a problem arose, incompetence from an individual assuming that my old radio is even worth anything in the first place, the incompetence of the Provo City Police Department who will never do anything about it, and incompetence on my own part for subjecting myself to the incompetence of others. I have another story about relying on other people and how it’s a short path to frustration and destruction, but I can’t tell any details due to the sensitive nature of the information. Suffice it to say that here at work I had entrusted a simple yet very important task to an individual who swore to me it would get done. The process in question takes several days to complete. Regardless of my constant checking in and asking for updates, nothing actually got done. In the end, a week went by and I had to do the thing myself, and then explain to my boss why it will be taking twice as long as it should have. I can think of several more examples of why I don’t like working with other people, but will spare you the details. I will leave you with this video link in closing and ask you for vigilance anytime you have to rely on someone you don’t know. Toodles!

http://mfile.akamai.com/12924/wmv/vod.ibsys.com/2006/0503/9152183.200k.asx