Hug your mechanic

When someone does a good job you usually congratulate them. When someone does a great job sometimes you reward them. But what do you do when someone who is supposed to do their job but usually doesn’t, suddenly does just what you need him to do?

I liken the situation to a little child. You tell him not to run around the house but he does. After all he’s a kid who wants to have some fun and no amount of rational justification is going to get to him. But to your surprise, one day he’ll not run around the house. And you wont’ know why he doesn’t. So you give him a hug to say what a good boy he is.

My car has been having morning sickness since I had the timing belt and an engine mount replaced. On some cold mornings, the engine likes to squeak for a little bit and it annoys me a great deal. For those of you who know me, I take pride is making sure my car runs well so these little niggles are not welcome. But being a realist I took the rational stand that all moving parts are bound to imperfection so I decided to let this ride for a while before I had it looked at (my busy schedule forced me to think this way).

Soon enough, I had enough of it and took the car back to get this checked out. The timing was just about right for a routine service too so that’s two birds with one stone. There was this young chap who took a look at the problem for me. He was helpful but I had an arduous time explaining to him in the official local lingo what squeaking was like. I finally got thru when I likened it to the sounds of birds chirping in the morning. Not quite the real thing, but almost there. Don’t ask me where that came from.

At the end of Mr. young mechanics time with my car, I was quite happy to note that the birds have now gone away from my engine. I hope not to reencounter them anytime soon – or ever. That wouldn’t be pleasant. I was very happy with the young bloke who took the time and effort to get it fixed. So happy in fact that I even wanted to tip him.

But I didn’t.

Why? Well it’s because I couldn’t help but to flash back to those times the birds were there. Why where they there in the first place? Obviously the first person to work on the timing belt and mounting didn’t do something right. He was supposed to get it right but he didn’t. So now someone else in his capacity had to come correct the problem.

So does he deserve a hug? I don’t know. Why don’t you hug him and tell me what it’s like.

Ps. I know some readers will misconstrue paragraph 2. Have fun with that.