It Hurts To Be Behind The Times

I work for a shop where you can buy the parts, and we techs then get paid to fit them into your car. Lots of the time, it’s a really easy fix that the customer really ought to be able to do themselves, but we get paid just the same, which is sweet.

A man comes in for new windscreen wipers for his 2017 car. He gets them and goes back outside to where the car’s parked and spends ages trying to fit them himself. Then, he comes back in and says he wants someone to fit them for him. He waits his turn in the queue and then it’s his turn, and it’s me who gets to fix them.

Customer: “I went to the parts finder and put my registration number in, and it told me which ones to get.”

When I come out to try and fit them, he’s got them out of the boxes and lying on the bonnet from where he’s been mucking about trying to fit them. It seems the parts don’t fit the way they are supposed to.

Me: “You’ve got the wrong ones.”

Customer: “No, that’s what the machine told me to get.”

Me: “If that’s really the case, then obviously it’s because your car is too old and the fittings have changed for his model since it was manufactured. They obviously don’t make them for cars this old. You’re probably going to have to get a new car.”

He sighed, swept all the parts off the bonnet, got in, and drove off.

The sweet part is that he didn’t ask for a refund — which he wouldn’t have gotten anyway because he had bought parts that were obviously wrong — so I didn’t have the delight of arguing with him over it.

But seriously, who expects to be able to go into a parts store and get parts for a car that’s six years old?