Friendly Service, Indeed....

[lydamorehouse]

 We got our car back from the shop this morning, and... I'm going to miss the loaner. 

Because when I picked up the Camery, of course, it didn't start. I had to pop the hood and wiggle the wire and turn the key again. I honestly do not know how the mechanics managed to move my car in and out of the garage, but good for them, I guess. It's also so weird to me that none of them (at Turbo Tim's) have the intellectual/mechanical curiosity to want to understand WHY this happens. 

They also never recognize me despite the fact that in any other shop, I'd imagine my car would be the source of much interest for its electrical weirdnesses. I tell them every time how close I live to them, and, every time, I attempt to have a bit of humorous banter with the guy behind the counter. But, I am universally met with a blank stare--if they look at me at all. Usually, they studiously avoid looking up from their various computer screens. I don't think they know who they're talking to half the time.

Even though, I can tell you my mechanic's name is Tony. I could, in fact pick him out of a line-up. The reverse is clearly not true.

Is this a Millenial thing? 

I mean seriously.

The barista at my coffee shop also no longer seem to 1) make eye contact at all and so 2) never learn what I look like or my name and 3) stringently rebuff any attempts I make to ask them about their lives or to engage in what my generation thinks of as "friendly chit-chat." To be clear, I don't think anyone "owes me a smile" or even the time of day, but there is a cool indifference to their attitude that does really change my relationship with places that I frequent. Like, not only do I feel no loyalty, I feel actively UNWELCOME there. Turbo Tim's claims to be LGBTQIA+ friendly. Are you kidding me? What do they think "friendly" means? Treat everyone with the same amount of vague disinterest? I mean, I guess that's a kind of equality, but it doesn't feel anything approaching "friendliness."  No one extends even the vaguest of pleasantries. Instead, it's all very, "And you are?"

I don't know. I went back to them despite having twice been charged for something they could not fix because I assumed that just being asked to do some routine maintainance would be fine. And, I guess they did the work, so I shouldn't really complain, but I did not feel well taken care of or "valued" as so many places claim to want to do with their customers. 

I probably shouldn't be so annoyed. People are just trying to get through. But, I think, in 2025 the issue is that I feel like small kindness are going to MATTER. It's weird when you can't even count on a nice bit of stupid back and forth at the places you do business.

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Okay, and now I just drove it on the highway to pick up Shawn. THE GROWLING I TOOK IT IN FOR IS STILL THERE. Yes, it's a little better? But it is still bad.

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Update to the update: I have an appiontment elsewhere. Sorry kitties at Turbo Tim's. I actually need my car serviced. 

Comments

[minnehaha]

I have had to interact with a lot of people recently and have made a very big point of getting and using their names. They seem to appreciate it. I suppose I want them to take me seriously.

K.

[lydamorehouse]

Makes sense.

[minnehaha]

I know there's a ways between you, but Peg might have a mechanic to suggest. My family all use and love Nick at the (Shell?) station on 46th and Chicago. Not close to home, and probably no loaner, but honest and smart.

K.

[sabotabby]

I imagine all the anxiety kiddies are grown up and have jobs now so...maybe? Like I am terrible at remembering people but I wonder how it's going to be out there in the workforce for my kids who need a trigger warning for eye contact.

[lydamorehouse]

Yeah this was my main thought, too.

But, what's strange about my barista at Cladaugh is that I would have SWORN they were friendlier a couple of years ago. I do have to wonder if it's the political climate. It's so hard not to wonder if the person you used to chat with wants you dead because they are a secret racist/homophobe/transphobe/etc.

[sabotabby]

Maybe, but you in particular would signal as safe to me (so presumably also to a barista). Like you're pretty gay.

[lcohen]

i wish i could loan you my mechanics. sure they may have terrible politics (or they may not--i have no idea), but they know me and they recognize me to the point where the owner saw me at a costco, so completely out of context, greeted me with a hug, and introduced his daughter to me. otoh, since i am now on the third car that i have been using them for, i may have put his daughter through college :) .

[lydamorehouse]

Your mechanics are what I am looking for!

I am always the driver of a used car, so I'm sure I will put a lot of mechanic's kids through college. I have at least, gone back to my (possibly) horrible Republican mechanics out in the suburbs. They were awesome on the phone, even. Asking me questions about the sounds my car made, etc.

[lcohen]

i hope they fix everything, whatever their politics. my first car, bought post-divorce #1 was bought new and i drove it for 15 years.

i have since bought two used cars with mixed success--that is, neither has made me truly happy the way that first car did. i will probably buy a used car again anyway, though.

[bibliofile]

Is that Omar? I liked him because I lived within walking distance, but at one point all kinds of people I knew all went to him. He was great.

[coffeetime]

Good gravy, could someone just fix the darned car already?

Next time you're passing through Madison, stop and get coffee...there are a couple of shops near me where the staff are super friendly and kind! Mercies has the best staff; Java Cat is good too and in the summer you can sit out in the backyard.

[lydamorehouse]

If my car would make it that far, I would go!!

And, yes! Please could someone just fix the car already!

[spiffikins]

My neighbour down the way had a Toyota Highlander for 10 years that had one taillight that would NOT stay lit. An electrical problem - she had taken it into the dealership a dozen times and they had tried to fix it a dozen times - and it never did get solved.

Hilariously, I noticed a couple of years ago, she replaced it, with a brand new Toyota Highlander :D

In the last few years - possibly since COVID? I have noticed the opposite of what you are experiencing - I don't know if it's me that has changed or them, but I am finding that I am doing a lot more "chit chat" with the person behind the counter, and getting chit chat back. Nothing in depth - we're not bosom buddies - but a little bit of connection to say - I see you are also a human being :D

I do think it started during COVID - when we were all a bit desperate to interact with other humans, and we all had a Big Thing that was affecting us - so everyone had THAT in common - that it was impacting us in some way. And maybe it has rubbed off on me that I got into the habit of being more likely to try to make a small connection?

I hope your new mechanic figures out the problem with the car!

[lydamorehouse]

Yeah as I ended up saying below (I was initially working through the comments backwards) I would have also sworn that my barista at least (the Tim's people have always been like this, I think?) were more friendly in the times immeidately following lockdown/isolation. Something in the last year or so changed them. It's possible it really is as simple as the fact that it's tough in America right now not to wonder if the person next to you is some kind of red-pilled PizzaGate believer....

I do think the folks at the place I'm going have the requiste love of cars/intellectual curiosity to get the job done. I was writing to another friend that I feel like I need to find my people and my people's equivalent is a "motorhead." That's what we used to call car nerds back in the day. The guys at Troy's (the new place) absolutely read Motor Trend Magazine as kids the way I read Asimpv's and Dragon Magazine, you know what I mean?

[spiffikins]

Totally! You need someone who groks cars and wants to solve the puzzle!

My dad was a mechanic - and I remember one summer during university, my friend Rachel's dad gave her this massive Oldsmobile sedan that was her grandfather's car, as a car to get her to and from work for the summer. The problem was, the car had been sitting for over a year in their carport, not ever even being started up - so it needed some work to get it running safely.

Rachel, unbeknownst to me, brought it to my dad - which made sense - she lived around the corner from our house, where he had his shop, and also, she didn't really know any mechanics. She told him she didn't want to put a lot of money into it - it just needed to run for the summer - so he replaced the cracked and brittle hoses - but it had some issue where it would not start all the time.

I didn't know any of this, it all happened before I came back from university for the summer. So one night we both ended up at a party, and she had driven this mint green monstrosity. As we were leaving, she got into the car and...it wouldn't start. I was like "Oh no!" - but she calmly popped the hood, got out and reached into the motor with a pen and pushed some valve open or closed - and then it started up without a problem.

I was like WTF? She is NOT a mechanically minded person - and that's when she told me she had taken the car to my dad and he had found this problem - but when it was going to cost hundreds to fix it - he told her "or, you can just do THIS every time it doesn't start?" - and she was like "WORKS FOR ME, THANKS!"

Our cars growing up were all janky like that, LOL. The car that I drove in university my last year, the backup lights didn't work when you put the car in reverse - the wire broke or something - and my dad was like "ehhh it's not worth trying to rip the car apart to find it" - so he ran a new wire and connected it to a MANUAL TOGGLE SWITCH he mounted on the dashboard under the steering wheel. The toggle switch ALSO had a SUPER bright light on it - when you turned on your backup lights, the light on the toggle switch board lit up. This was so that you....remembered to turn the backup lights OFF when you were done backing up.

The problem was - at least for me - the light was DIRECTLY behind the steering wheel - and in the daylight, I could not see it unless I leaned forward or to the side - SO MANY TIMES I was driving down the road with my backup lights on - which must have confused the people behind me SO MUCH.

That car also had an oil leak in the seals that was going to require pulling the whole motor out to fix - so instead we just put REALLY THICK OIL into it and that didn't leak out as fast. And I kept a quart of oil in the trunk to top it off if it started to make the noise that meant "I need oil"

Oh it also had a thing where if it was cold and I hadn't let it warm up properly, then if you took your foot off the gas to press the brake, it would stall out. And then you lost the power steering. The year I had that car at school, every single time I would leave the house, I would turn right and start going DOWN a big hill - and usually I would have to turn left about 3/4 of the way down the hill - so I learned to take my foot off the gas, put it on the brake, START the turn really quickly before it stalled out - and then WRESTLE the car around the corner, straighten the wheel, nudge the car into neutral (with the shifter on the steering column), start the car and put my foot on the gas to continue down the road. Thankfully it was a residential neighbourhood with no traffic, LOL

I also learned how to brake with my left foot.

And when I moved to California, I realized that I no longer had the luxury of buying a car like that, because I didn't have a mechanic in the same house as me, who could keep it running and let me know what things were crucial to fix and what I could live with. So instead, I had car payments. sigh.

[mtbc]

Glad you're taking the car somewhere else.

Curious about the unwelcoming service you're experiencing though, in the US I almost always ran into the opposite if anything, where I'd want them to back off a bit! (I'll never forget the Friendly's where we learned what the server's cervix had gone through.) It's almost always been in the UK where I've encountered staff who begrudgingly tolerate that I'd like them to do their job please.

[lydamorehouse]

I am also curious about this service, which is why I complained in public.

I agree with skiffikins who just commented above you that--previous to about... a year or so ago?... I was experiencing the opposite. People seemed hungry for chit-chat. Now there's a kind of closing off. I do have to wonder if the political situation in the US is to blame. Possibly because people don't feel like they can trust that their neighbor's poltics are good? I don't know.

I have only been a tourist in the UK and so it's always okay for me to be the loud, weird American abroad. I suspect that I could never live in the UK (or Japan.)

[profiterole_reads]

How big is the town where this garage is? Usually, people in smaller towns have more time to be friendly and less stress-induced anxiety than people in bigger towns.

[lydamorehouse]

St. Paul has 300,000 + people. But the Twin Cities metro area 3.6 MILLION people.

Not a small town at all.

[pameladean]

This won't be convenient at all, so I hope the new mechanics you chose are both curious and pleasant. But we use Quality Coaches on 38th Street between Nicollet and Blaisdell, and they are fantastic. They specialize in older cars, and it was a bit of a struggle to first take an old limping car to them because the entire street is periodically lined with vintage cool cars for some event or other of theirs. But they are great and friendly.

Maybe more Gen X than Millenial, overall. But honestly, from where I am, everybody under sixty just looks like a baby. We also had a very pleasant plumber come over Wednesday to fix the laundry sink, but I could not possibly tell you if he was thirty or fifty. Probably the latter. But really? No idea. You have a college kid, so you might be more up on what various ages look like.

P.