.... that makes you decide NOT to frequent a business anymore??

I had one of those today. Feel free to tell me if I'm overreacting or not.

So, there's a local Mechanics' Shop I take my junk to, but also is a customer on my delivery route. So, I'm popping in anywhere from 3-10 times a day. I've known the owner and his wife since they were a mom and pop operation 25 years ago. Well, recently the owner passed away, and the Mrs. doesn't really seem to involve herself much with the business, leaving it to sort of.... run itself.

They'd been slow this past week, so I asked if they'd do a few jobs on my Gremlin that needed to be done. They agreed and I dropped off the car last Monday.

And that's when it started.

So, one of their mechanics (whom I've never really met before) comes sauntering out to look at the car. We exchange pleasantries but soon the BS starts to come.

"Yeah, Ralph Nader wrote a book about these cars and how unsafe they are."

"Yeah, these used to blow up when they got rear-ended."

I tried to correct him, saying that "Unsafe at Any Speed" was primarily about the Corvair, and the exploding cars were Pintos.

His response: "Well, I've only been doing this for 50 years, but what do I know?"
(and I've heard that phrase so often, I refer to it as the battle cry of the ignorant)

Over the week, their welder guy did the welding job I needed done. Scotty is great, very straight-forward and things were looking fine.

Then the car goes to this other mechanic whom I'd met on Monday. His job was to replace the front bearings, seals and races; and cut the studs so that the front drums can be replaced. But now, with the new drums, the Magnum 500 wheels don't sit flush against the drum face. I got called to the shop to have things explained to me.

Long story short, when I suggested to just use a 3/16" wheel spacer like the factory did..... that's when the fight started. This mechanic started going off on how wheel spacers are illegal and how he's a red seal and doesn't want his name attached to anything where the wheels are going to fall off. He started accusing me of ordering the wrong drums and when I rolled my eyes at this I got a finger shoved in my face and was told "Don't you roll your eyes at me!" Like.... what a Diva. The whole time too he kept going back to his battle cry of "I've been doing this for 50 years...."

So, I bit my tongue, and went back into the front area with the Service Advisor dude who almost immediately apologized for this unhinged mechanic. We Googled his claim about "illegal" wheel spacers and OK, to his credit, somewhere between 2017 and 2022, the government has made them illegal. But even the Service Advisor dude was surprised to learn this.

I explained how I thought this might happen since we ran into the identical problem on my '74 Hornet (oddly enough, this exact same shop didn't flip their poop about it a few years ago) and I told the advisor I'd whip home at lunch, grab my factory steel wheels and deliver them. I had them there by 12:30pm.

But by the time I got back, my car was OFF the lift and in the parking lot on all four Tiger Paws. The service advisor met me in the parking lot away from crazy mechanic and explained how, simply to get it out of the shop, they put my old (now wallered-out) drums BACK on with the Magnum 500's and the mechanic has now tagged the car unsafe to drive and must be towed home.

The service advisor and I had a quick chat and I said "What if I get here Sunday morning, throw the good drums BACK on, toss on some wheel spacers and make tracks?" He said he has NO problem with that.


BUT, here's the real twist. I was (and I guess still am) in the process of maybe getting a job at this shop. They offer great money & good bennies. I have a phone interview with Mrs. Owner tomorrow.... and I feel I really should bring up today's incident. Now, I'm not so sure I want to work at a place with Mr. Stressed-out, fractured-at-the-hinges Mechanic who doesn't know a Corvair from a Pinto.

He might be a fine mechanic. But he's already proven himself a fool.

God.... shades of Mopar Jamie here, huh?
What do you, the experts, think?