I work with a lot of people, including The Man, who have different things they like to stockpile. One of these is Hope. In my line of work, hope is not the same as it is for, say, a starving child or a desperate artist. (there may be some exceptions for the desperate artist) The hope i see in my line of work is usually along the lines of “I hope it lasts until i can afford to get it fixed” or “I hope they have that part in stock”.

We had a car come in yesterday with the instructions: “Please turn off all of the red lights on the dashboard.”  The estimate included repairing various systems. They declined the repair. Seems we misunderstood. They didn’t actually want anything fixed, they just wanted the lights out. I don’t know why they came to me, a roll of black tape costs a buck.

There is an old saying: “hope in one hand and crap in the other, and see what your left with.” A few miles to the west of us is Chino, where cow manure is a big business. It is clear to me after years of being a mechanic that Hope is not a good investment. Crap, however, is lucrative.

Today, whenever a mechanic hears the word “hope”, keep in mind he may be seeing this:

Posted on November 2nd, 2008 by admin
Filed under: Uncategorized