A Special Long-Weekend Edition
A Step By Step Account of Why I Would Rather Not Get My Car Fixed
With a not unimportant conclusion
It seems, all my research about Thailand and it’s (natural) night life, and my plans to visit Had Chao Mai see photo aboveto swim with the Dugongs have been in vain.
My prepratory collage.
First column on the left, from up to down: Java mouse deer under a Jackfruit / Yellow-headed temple turtle / Red-cheeked flying squirrel;
On the right from up to down: Spotted owlet / Fishing cat / and bottom row: Cave nectar bat / Coral-billed ground cuckoo / Dugong (sea cow)
All because of this:
I don't need sycophantic customer service. I don't even need friendly service. But a modicum of polite manners might be nice. Just to smooth along the general flow of customer-service-provider conversation. Or did I get this afternoon's dealings at the garage all wrong? Am I being too demanding? I have a tendency to be difficult, so let me go over this again with you Steemians.
The premise is simple:
In this hostile world it is hard to discover who one really is, how one’s spirit is doing today, and what feeds the soul.
For this reason it is worth my while to go over this exchange with my garage receptionist with a fine-toothcomb.
The plan
I was going to drive down to Bangkok (honestly, in my wildest dreams I was already part of the party), after having visited Budapest for my favorite Metro Station Kálvin Ter, to see how work on my murals are coming along, which I had designed for 
And on top of this disappointment I had my fourth encounter with a man who hates his job, or women, or English, or me.
But which of the triggers does it for him exactly is hard for me to tell.
See how hard it gets to assess where it all goes pear shaped in our dealings with others?
art challenge to pimp up the metro station in Budapest Hereby another big thank-you goes out to for the community building she was into by inspiring us to be creative. It made my first round here tolerable, until I discovered what really would make my time here fun. I am not hard to please
Initially, four weeks ago, I decided to be happy enough with my garage. I had brought my Golf in for a general MOT, leaving them with the same complaint I had been having over the past three years (the not-otherwise-specific warning messages on the dashboard to visit a workshop promptly, startling me while driving along normally; and an additional more recent issue of staying stuck in 4th gear for too long (it has 7-Speed DSG transmission which seems to come with some innate weaknesses to start with). The reason for my relative contentment was that this time they were able to diagnose the reason for these warnings: a problem with the transmission. Hmmm… 1+(a much later)1=still makes 1(and the same problem). Okidokee. I don’t do maths too well. Mechanics know best. The warning messages were warning me that 3 years later I'd have a detectable transmission problem.
At any rate: I was finally being taken seriously and I was on my way to a solution.
I let them order a part for my car four and a half weeks ago. A thingy for the transmission. Don’t ask me to identify a torque converter from a planetary gearset, and to me any band, sensor or valve can be happily interchanged with any other, but when I drove by today to ask courteously if the thingummyjiggy had, by any chance, maybe arrived already, I was able to recall they had called it “a bezel switch”.
Had I caught him at a bad time?
The chap behind the counter had looked up briefly when I had stepped up into the cabin where the tiny reception was, and even if he kept his eyes on the screen, he said "good-afternoon", at least, which set me at ease. He and I haven't got on in the past. Don't know why and I didn't think he was still around anymore (he wasn't there four weeks ago, thank god). But I am always ready to invite a changed man to share his change with me.
He had me stand at the counter in the tiny office, for a long pause, as if I needed to catch my breath or - what I generously allowed for - he needed to finish reading something very important off his screen. I was sorry to see an open lunchbox next to his keyboard with a bite out of one of the four ham sandwiches: he clearly had no time to take a proper break and join his buddies over at the coffee corner (1.5 metres away) where they were cheerfully cramming sarnies, freshly fetched from the supermarket down the road with plenty of amical banter. Was el jefe not welcome? Or would someone have to man the phone at all times? It can't be an easy job.
I braced myself for his usual gruff demeanour, yet hoped for the best with a demure smile.
The reason for my interruption
I stated my reason for intruding upon his lunch hour. Then I waited patiently after I had inquired after the possible whereabouts of the component, but it did occur to me that when he continued scanning his screen after a few sure taps, that he couldn’t possibly be looking into it for me, since I had not told him who I was, or even more to the point, which car we were talking about. Unless…! Unless, he had remembered me after the last three trying encounters? I never underestimate a grumpy man, you know!
Prepared now for our new and more intimate relationship I was not prepared for what was coming instead
He can't be looking for something
He was gone for a good two minutes (it felt like 10 because I sensed perfectly well he had no clue what he was looking for and this irritated me impatiently; but it wasn't ten: having had to provide the police with several witness statements, over the course of my life, has taught me to bear in mind a minute in suspense is a very long time, and can even feel up to 30 minutes if you don’t learn to count objectively; so it was only 120 seconds in my finest estimation).
As those seconds ticked away, I was already making the best use of this time, by considering how to help this man figure out what might have gone wrong with my order. After all, they were going to call me in a number of days, a week at most, so by week 1 of October for sure. We are now in week 4. Was I being unreasonably impatient? I wasn’t going to nag them after only a fortnight, I am still from the slow-boat from China era, and not quite with the Alibaba-all-you-can-order Express system. Only, just suppose I really would have liked to have had the car fixed in time for me to consider going to Bangkok via Hungary? Not that I really know how long I’d need to get there by car, since Google can only tell me:
Sorry, we could not calculate driving directions from "Budapest, Hungary" to "Bangkok, Thailand”
But I think it is fair to assume (reckoning with long detours, since it is unlikely that all the as-the-crow/airplane-flies borders are open...or the mountain passes that simply crossed - I recall the amazing travel log of @alice-is) a week is not going to be enough.
It is good to talk. It is safe to talk. It is incredibly hard to talk to a garage Desk Man!
The receptionist (is he anything else, he doesn’t seem to know his car parts) returns. Sits down, looks at his screen and mutters to me in his native tongue: “I have no clue what part it concerns.”
I (in English) try helpfully: “Your colleague ordered it for me four weeks ago. … (no response)… You were going to phone me about a week later when it should have come in, so around 3 or 4 October, ... this I was lead to believe … (no response) …. So maybe, it has come in by now? It’s just, I haven’t head from you yet….”
No response.
Is he struggling to find a way to figure out what went missing how?
I hope to assist and try again, more slowly this time: “Your colleague ordered it for me. You know, the other guy…. (no response) … (I choose my words gingerly) the older guy…. who’s been here for 21 years, at least, is it (I am grappling now) … Marcel?...”
He: ”I don’t know any Marcel.”
I (try not to grin away his obstinacy): “He will know me…. I can’t remember his name…” (I fumble while starting to fidget with his extreme recalcitrance. It is virtually intimidating.)
He impresses upon me, with a blank stare: “Nope. Don’t know any Marcel.”
I fail to understand the game
I suppose it's a Venus/Mars thing but then with an added bite.
I am starting to feel a little weighed down by his incomprehensible hostility; all I have to go on for now is that it may have something to do with my stubborn English. All I can do in all fairness, therefore, is to accept this loggerheads we are at. I feel I have no choice.
On the whole, if his animosity is based on an aversion to English (or any foreign language), it is a rare response to me. My environment doesn’t do polite, but it will remain interested in foreigners and their assumed pecunary blessings. However, there is a rise of nationalist/populism in this country and with only a little ill-will I can be easily classed as one who refuses to integrate for the lack of willingness to speak in their language.
All fair enough, were it not that there are not a lot of natives left who can afford to buy the type of Golf I bought. The old ones buy Daihatsu or Suzuki and the very rich buy SUVs. In fact, if we must generalise, then the majority of my fellow Golf drivers tend to speak the language in an accent I cannot easily understand myself. Learning from my experience with them, I cannot be easily swayed to try and stammer my way through a conversation about cars, in a language I struggle with on the best of days. My autopart vocabulary just isn't that great to begin with, so I would like to compensate for that with the right civil tone, I cannot possibly find in the Desk Man's native language. Plus, the man in this trade that is notoriously female-unfriendly, who is sour before I have even walked in through the door does not encourage me to even try.
The fight continues
I decided to battle this one out for a little longer. After all, while I know already I will not clarify anything for him any better in his language, he understands me very well in mine, which I take specific care to ennunciate in the most received pronounciation, especially for him. May you all well note: this is typically an instance of there not being a language problem but a cognitive linguistic (pragmatic) problem of him not liking the way in which I am saying something. Or maybe the Context World is even larger and he doesn’t like the colour of my dress; or, to not needlessly presume he is mysogenistic, who knows, it could just be plain bad karma between us, that came into existence in 1225 when I threw boiling hot oil over him from between the crenellations of a bastion. He Teutonic, I Transylvanian.
The dialogue (shall we call it that even?)
I (with less patience, simply repeat): “You know the older guy, who’s been here forever….”
At last he gives in and mutters: “Gabi.” (Which – to complicate matters on a language issue - he pronounces close to Xavi: so it takes me a while to put one and one together; since I only know his name in print off the last invoice).
I (trying to remain pleasant): “Yes! That’s him then. Has he not left a note in the car’s file?”
It seems there is such a thing close to a medical file on the Blue Dakini, with endless on-board computer read-outs. Surely the unfixed but clearly detected error would have been noted? What do I know how reports on cars read. But surely the order has to have been noted down somewhere, unless Gabi went down the bottom of his garden to fish out a switch from his own spare part box? How do I know how they fix cars? (In 1990, I witnessed a mechanic in Sevilla fix the 1962 Mercedes of a Swiss Artist like that.)
Without a word Desk Man gets up to leave the office again. He takes the other door leading into the workshop. He is gone another two minutes and returns to flop back taciturnly into his chair to glare at the screen again.
Then suddenly, very matter of factly he reveals: “My colleague is the one who knows all about this part. He says to bring the car in next week.”
What to make of this?
I suppose relief and gratitude are in order? Who needs an apology at a time like this. Seize the switch and run with it! Make an appointment. Hurrah!
I swallow down my questions for him (why was I not called three weeks ago?) to let us both enjoy a moment of relief and perhaps continue on the positive footing of sorting it out once and for all for me (after three years, remember).
I was not going to yell at him and release my frustration selfishly: "What does a woman have to do around here to get some decent service? Bring in a man? Fill out a skimpy top with Double D?"
I really don't know the answer.
Instead I tried to squeal delighted, with the day he offered me: but of all the possible (five) days Friday was not a really a good day for me to not have the car. Besides, suppose it would take longer than a day to fix? I'd not have it back till Monday late.
How to know what to expect?
I timidly inquired: “How long do you think the car will have to be in for?”
No reply to that question, the Desk Man merely states: “ It’s all I have got for you.”
I (repressing the urge to squeeze my eyes shut tight to see if this antagonism might go away as by magic) suggest: “Maybe you have a slot the following week?”
I don’t care waiting another week on top of the nearly five already wasted. It’s a different day I am after, does he not get that?
Instead, he closes his eyes slowly as if to take the blow of my rejection of his generous offer. Instantly apologetic for being such an inconvenience, I reiterate that Friday is not a great day for me to be without a car. Could I clarify this by pointing out I might also risk losing the use of it over the weekend? If he could assure me I’d have my car back by the end of the day, eventhough that was an inconvenient time for me to pick it up, considering I usually have a weekend guest over then, I would compromise. ”How long will the repair take?” I slip in again, adding, ”Maybe Friday would be okay, it’s just hard for me to imagine how much of my car needs to come apart to change the switch.” (I am already envisioning a complete dismantling since I imagine the switch will be somewhere difficult to reach. Murphy's law.)
I hear the ripping out of my interior and the incessant whirr of a hundred screws needing to be unscrewed, and a thousand bits and bobs strewn around my vehicle, although of course, in a careful and efficient order so that they can all be put back in the right place without consulting complicated manuals. It took my dad and my son 10 weekends to complete a Lego Technic project once….
Am I being difficult?
In a feeble attempt to be taken as a serious client (after 18 years of coming to this garage and spending close to 10 thousand dollars on repairs and annual services with them) I mumble that it probably won’t take more than a day, would it?
No response.
I am starting to fill out a complaint form in my head, by now. What would I call this man?
- Mysogenist would lack fact to support it.
- Hostile is too strong.
- “This man is rude,” might not even be so obvious to any other assessor, in this country.
- “He hates his job,” is surely close on the mark.
While filling out this virtual form I multi task on justifying to myself how reasonable it is that I am not so keen to miss the car over the weekend. It's a lot of wasted time for a car that hasn't exactly broken down.
Surely, missing my car over the weekend might be inconvenient to me, could he not imagine that? I could have a very important appointment on Saturday, maybe with my choir to go over the programme for the upcoming festive season? Or something like a hockey-run. Or what if I had a grandchilds’s christening I was planning to drive my feeble mother to? Did he expect me to take a train? Or a inter-regional bus? A taxi perhaps? Could he recommend one? Am I too young, too old, too incompetent a driver to make such reasons sound ludicrous?
We find a date. I think
So in final feeble attempt I ask: Do you know how long such a repair would take?
Desk Man: “How would I know? I have no idea what they are going to do to your car.”
I try not to choke.
Desk Man: “So Tuesday it is then.”
It's not even a question.
I: “Tuesday, what date would that be”?
What happened to Friday?
No response.
I suppose I have to sound like an independent business woman now with a calendar in my head. I give it a go.
Today it’s…. well, true enough, how would I know?! I have nowhere to be and nowhere to go and I finish my milk standard before the expiration date, so it isn’t the 28th yet. That is all I know. “So Tuesday the week after next? The 4th, 5th, 6th?”
He looks up at me with a flat glare.
“Yes, Tuesday,” is all I can get out of him.
“Shall I bring it in early then? On Tuesday the…?”
He heard me fishing! But he replies:
“If you like.”
I leave quietly incensed - I think
No. I don’t like. I don’t like you. I don’t like this stupid faulty transmission that practically came with the brand new car. I don’t like not having an alternative (the dealer I bought the car from is even worse). I don’t like not being able to complain (such forms don’t exist… ). I don't like actually, if I am very honest, that I don't know how to make you care; because I worry for the whole human race because of a guy like you. And I don't like it because I am soon going to step out of the worry business and who is going to drive your negativity home to you then?
My car will get fixed. Somehow, some day. I might strand by the side of the road before then: so be it. This is outside my control. I have no means to make it happen differently for me. There is no point disliking it. It is what it is.
I am used to being treated like a second rate citizen (I've gone through fence wars where I was ignored for being a woman). I am angry for him.
Maybe, I am angry too for the insane games we play as members of the human race, which lack kindness and helpfulness.
I no longer get angry about the way things break because of the inferior way they have been made. It's a waste of time. It's not even human the way we make anything anymore. We've handed it all to machines and our thinking has become mechanical for it, too.
In fact, maybe I am not even angry, because I have the courage to feel sad.
Conclusion
Back in my Blue Dakini, I feel safe. Just me and my free will to let what passed between me and Desk Man stand for what it was. An unpleasant encounter for no good reason that we will not be able to justify at the end of time. Whose fault was it? I really don't know, and does it really matter? Getting the Blue Dakini fixed and serviced will remain an on-going unpleasantness for me: let me assume that much. On a good day, Desk Man will be in bed with flu, or on his day off. That's all I can make of it for now.
I wish him well, not specifically for my sake, and even less for his undeserving own, yet for all our sakes: lightening up, relaxing into, going with the flow up a lazy river pays into preventing us from slipping into a black hole of self-concern, condemnation, and conclusion. Life goes on, you know....