Just a digression: Have you ever met an administrator who was indecent? 
Paging Fridgemagnet to the thread for the story about the dead Citroen XM, Laurel & Hardy the removal men, and the very tiny hoist on the tiny flat-bed tow truck.
Doggo – here’s an academic-flavored story for you: I have yet to meet another humanities lecturer/professor who knows how to unjam a photocopier (my colleagues will jam them up, then walk away – I unjam them and keep the incriminating sheets in my file of shame), or work any sort of AV without screwing stuff up.
I once took my own powerpoint projector to a conference and had more questions about how I was setting it up and connecting it to my laptop than I did about the paper I gave. And it did get to the point at my old school that I was so tired of fixing the media carts and Smartboard set ups in the classrooms, that I told the chairman I wanted extra money as a handyman subsequently. Fellow faculty would just randomly disconnect cables and plug them in to any random hole. (Feel free to run with that image as you will). There were times when I was called out of my own lectures to ‘help’ so and so with the AV – which inevitably turned out to be pressing the ‘on’ switch on their classroom computer, entering a password or feeding a DVD into a drive. * Seriously, what the fuck.
For having PhDs and stuff, they seemed otherwise to have the intellectual capacity of a mentally-challenged wombat.
*Obviously this is not 100% universal, and I do have a number of media tech-savvy colleagues, but there’s enough willful ignorance out there that astonishes me. Oddly enough, it’s younger, rather than older, faculty who are the worst.
Regarding these oil change places-none of them seem to employ people who understand that drain plugs should not be tightened with 500 ft.-lbs of torque. My Dad has had several drain plugs stripped and t ruined at these places-which is why I do my own oil changes.
Oil changes are so easy to do, that I’m surprised anyone actually pays someone to do it for them. Would that be regarded as 'clueless" behaviour?
By “anyone”, can we presume you are excluding: little old 85-year-old ladies, paraplegics, guys with a hook for a hand, folks who live in apartments or condos that don’t allow you to work on your vehicle anywhere on the premises, folks who live in a neighborhood that has CC&Rs containing prohibitions on working on vehicles within the neighborhood or on your own property, and people who don’t have time to store the oil and deliver it to a certified recycling center?
How about hot chicks who don’t want to break a nail? Blind people? Is being rich enough to just pay someone else to get THEIR hands dirty a symptom of cluelessness?
I pay for someone else to do it because, well, I know approximately dick about cars, and even though my lovely and talented husband does, he’s busy enough that it’s worth someone else doing it. Besides, I go to a local place that’s about 10% cheaper than Jiffy Lube and the guy knows me and does a good job. (He’s actually one of Airman’s grandmother’s students, so there’s a connection.)
Years ago I owned an MG Midget that needed a tune up way too often. I changed plugs every three months or so. One plug was very hard to reach, leading to skinned knuckles every time.
When I had some spare cash, I took the car for a professional tuneup, figuring I’d be lazy.
The next time I replaced the plugs, I found three Champions and one AutoLite. The “pros” had only replaced the three easier to reach plugs.
You are easily surprised as well as clueless. I can: stop at the auto parts store and buy a filter and oil, drive home and get out my ramps, put the car on the ramps, wait for it to cool down, drain the oil and replace the plug, remove the old filter, put the new one on, pour 5 quarts of oil into the car, put the ramps away, drive to the auto parts store to dispose of the used oil; or I can take the car to the dealer, the dealer gives me a ride home, my wife takes me back in the afternoon, my car has an oil change and is freshly washed, and I pay the dealer $20. It’s a no-brainer for me, but I have no difficulty understanding why others would want to do it themselves.
Nothing remotely academic about this story.
We got a waste disposal unit fitting on the boat. The dude who fitted it unwisely demonstrated that the unit was so powerful he could toss a quarter in it. “It eats quarters!”
So we had a party on board that night, got a little overzealous with the “eats quarters” demonstration, fed copious amounts of quarters to the unit and guess what? Broke it!
Dude comes back the next day - aghast that the unit had malfunctioned, discovers the shrapnel. But, but you SAID we could feed it quarters! In fact you started it. :smack:
I had the same double-gasket problem (I was a high school kid at the time) only it didn’t end so well. Oil light came on as I was going up a steep hill, by the time I got to a safe place to stop, it had lost a lot of oil. They sent a guy out to fill it back up, but a day or two later the engine seized. To their credit, they cut me a check for a couple grand to replace the engine (this was a 4-cyl Ford Ranger from the late 80s, and was about 8 years old at the time).
Instead of doing it their way, I bought a '66 Ford Fairlane and an engine swap kit and put the 289 V8 in the Ranger. That thing was fun…scary at times, but fun.
That was about the time I stopped paying people to change my oil…bad news.
Sometimes the best tool for the job is a checkbook. My husband grew up in Detroit and his first job after graduation was in an auto parts store. He worked on all kinds of vehicles in his youth. Now he doesn’t want to. I was a member of a flying club, and I used to change the oil on the airplanes, and I’ve helped do it on various powered yard equipment - mowers, tillers, etc.
But the novelty wore thin pretty fast and we make enough money that we can afford to pay someone else. We’re also fortunate to have a great shop nearby with mechanics we trust. Frankly, I’m glad to do my little part to keep someone else employed.
I can afford to pay someone else…in fact, I don’t usually save a whole lot of money doing it myself. But I do know that the right oil was put in, that the filter was definitely changed, that the right amount of oil was put in, that the old filter gasket wasn’t left on the block, that the car was started and checked for leaks before being driven, etc.
It’s not about novelty or money, it’s about knowing that the job was done correctly.
Note: I’m certainly not saying that you don’t care about this stuff, and I know that you find your shop to be trustworthy, but I’m just explaining why I do it.
Oh, you’re one of those car people, aren’t you, insulted that anyone would get behind the wheel if they can’t build a working engine from random bits of scrap metal, blindfolded. There are some people to whom a car is a thing to make them be there and not here.
I am happy to let someone else change my oil, especially since I take synthetic. I mean, that’s why I make money. So someone else can take care of these things and I have more time for fun. Cause oil changes are not fun.
I get my oil changed at a local shop, it’s worth it to have a nice business relationship with a guy who is going to be my go to person in a tough spot. He treats me fairly, I make sure to throw some regular business his way.
My clueless professionals were lead abatement contractors. Their job was to remove, de-lead and re-install my windows. These are original double hung windows, with the ropes and sash weights. Every single window had one or another stupid mistake that prevented proper operation. They used mismatched ropes, attached the ropes too high on the window frame, didn’t tie the ropes securely to the weights, mixed up which sash went in which window opening. They had to send out a guy to work for a whole week just to get them properly operating. I still wound up deciding to remove, clean and re-install every stupid window to make sure they all worked the right way instead of “technically they open and close”.
Why would you let the engine cool down? The old oil flows out so much easier when hot. I always took the car for a run to make it hot before doing an oil change.
I’ve never had to put a car I owned on ramps to do an oil change.
Takes 15 minutes of my life and save the money that I can use better than some garage owner.
The old oil goes into the same container I buy the new oil in, and it can be dropped off at a convenient time when passing a disposal point.
You have a dealer? LOL. I’ve never bought a new car in my life. I prefer other people to deal with the problems first.
<as well as clueless.>
A clueless person to me is someone that pays money to someone else to do something that they could easily do themselves.
Well obviously I’m not including people that have a valid reason for not doing it themselves. I don’t think the readers are so dim that they would take me literally.
How many paraplegics do you know? The ones I met would be able to do an oil change as well as I.
Oil changes can be done one handed.
Little 85 year old people scare me when they drive. I was very relieved when my mother stopped driving, and she didn’t make it to 85.
I feel sorry for people that live somewhere they can’t work on their own car- I certainly wouldn’t. Good place to own a garage, I guess.
Used oil is stored in the same container the new oil came in, and sits in the boot till it can be disposed of.
Saying that women can’t change oil is pretty sexist.
One of those car people who’s clearly never lived in an apartment in the city. You know where people put their cars here? They park them on the street. There’s no garages, no place to store anything as large as a pair of car ramps. (And dude, when I had a car… Prizms are damn low to the ground.) And you’d have no place to change the oil except in the middle of the street, which would be frowned upon by your neighbors and the local authority figures, too.
An oil change doesn’t cost that much more than the oil and parts. Plus you don’t have to pay for and store the ramps.
Lots of people live in cities. Millions of 'em, even.
The life of a robot never is
I really enjoyed it when my male obstetrician told me that I, pregnant with my third child, couldn’t possibly be feeling the baby moving in the fourth month, as it was way too early. That I must be mistaken about that sensation. And his experience in that area was more informed than mine - how, exactly???
I think my eye-roll clued him in a bit that he had no idea what he was talking about.