Mechanics see a lot of interesting things at their jobs. From neglected cars, to surprising things found in customer vehicles, there's a wide range of things the average mechanic is exposed to in their career. But like people in other professions, mechanics have their own pet peeves; things they frequently see that drive them crazy. Here are ten:
1) A missing wheel-lock key - The purpose of wheel-locks is to prevent thieves from stealing your rims and tires while you're asleep inside your house, and leave your car sitting on bricks like a scene out of one of those 80's movies. But many people who drop off their car to get worked on forget to tell the mechanic where the key to the wheel-locks is, or forget the key at home. This prevents a mechanic from being able to work on anything that requires the removal of the wheel, and might cause them to have to sift through your compartments looking for where you might have hidden this magical prize.
2) People who neglect their cars - Mechanics don't expect everyone to be an expert on automobiles, but they do expect at least some minimum level of maintenance. There are people who don't change their oil for thousands and thousands of miles, ignore all strange noises and vibrations and just generally seem not to care. This makes the mechanic's job more difficult, and costs the clueless customer even more money.
3) Rage at moving the seat - Customers who are upset about the mechanic moving the position of their seats in the car are a common mechanic pet peeve, mostly because it's an unreasonable thing to be angry about. Mechanics aren't professional contortionists, even though sometimes they try to be. But moving a seat in order to safely drive a car into a shop is not something that should upset anyone.
4) Condescending comments - Mechanics have heard it all, from "I was a mechanic, until I got a real job," to "Why not get a real education." Just because they work on cars and may be tough on the outside doesn't mean they aren't people like everyone else, who deserve to be respected and feel pride in what they do without being insulted. Keep things professional, and treat people the way you expect to be treated in your profession, it will come back around to you.
5) Messy Cars - You couldn't imagine some of the things mechanics see in people's cars. Tissues with bodily fluids, animal (hopefully) excrement, and drug paraphernalia. Before you go to the dentist, you perform one of those extreme tooth-brushing sessions, where you try to make your mouth as clean as possible for the people working on your choppers, right? All you need to do is just remove the clutter and the bio-hazard items before bringing the car to the mechanic, you don't need a full interior detail. Just pretend YOU have to work on it, and act accordingly.
6) Unrealistic expectations - If it's 4:59 p.m. on a Friday night and you need your transmission replaced and you tell the employee at the repair facility that you need the car back within a few hours, you have unrealistic expectations. This can also apply to the results of repairs as well; if you're driving a 1998 Geo Prizm with 250k miles on it, and you expect it to be good to go for another 100k miles after your mechanic replaces the alternator, you have unrealistic expectations. Mechanics are bound by the laws of physics, and space and time. It's important to keep things in perspective, even with car repair.
7) Having to work on cars with no gas in them - If your car is having an intermittent issue when driving, and you need your mechanic to diagnose it, it's probably a bad idea to drop off a car that's running on fumes. A mechanic may need to move the car, take it for a test drive, or let it idle for any number of reasons when doing repairs, so always assume that they will need at least a quarter tank of gas when dropping your car off. It's very unlikely they will use even close to that much gas, but it's a good rule of thumb. There are very few instances where an empty tank is a good thing, which brings us to #8.
8) Changing a fuel pump with a tank full of gas - If you need a fuel pump changed or serviced, ignore #7. I repeat, if you need your fuel pump worked on or replaced, ignore rule #7. Your mechanic will curse you, your car, and ExxonMobil all afternoon as he is desperately fumbling around, covered in gasoline.
9) People taking their car off-roading and then not cleaning it before bringing it in for service - Yes, everyone loves dunking their 4x4 in 2 feet of mud, except the mechanic who needs to change your oil the next afternoon. Out of common courtesy, after you're done doing wheelies in the swamp, go through a car-wash with an undercarriage spray. Or, since your truck is probably at least 3 feet off the ground anyways, spray it off with a hose.
10) Shady mechanics - As we've mentioned before, no one dislikes shady mechanics more than professional, competent ones. Because of the select few who lie to customers, perform shoddy work, and generally mistreat people, the great mechanics have to fight even harder to prove themselves to the average consumer. It's very likely that if most mechanics had their way, there would be a black-list, where the dishonest scammers could be eliminated from the industry altogether, and most customers would agree.
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