Old Man at the Auto Shop

I took my car in for it's first routine oil change this morning. I sat in the waiting room eating my breakfast, skimming magazine articles of car enthusiasts getting boners over this year's crop of shitty American muscle cars, and half watching Boyz II Men perform on Good Morning America. (And if I ever meet Diane Sawyer in person, I will punch her in the mouth.) As I sat there, keeping to myself, an old man, probably in his seventies, shuffles in the door. With no more than a step or two into the waiting room, he politely, yet somewhat forcefully, asks me where he can find someone he can talk to about his car (i.e. an employee). Even though he did nothing offensive, this brief interaction quietly pissed me off for a few different reasons. First, I hate when people expect me to act like an informed employee of said business when I'm clearly a customer. I'm sitting in a waiting room chair (not behind the desk), reading a magazine, and not dressed in a mechanic's uniform. Second, I hate when people don't take the time to figure out what they need to do before asking for help. Without another step, this guy could have seen the one and only set of directions he needed in this small room: "Ring the bell for service." Basically, this guy gave up trying before he even walked through the door. I admit I'm lazy, but not that lazy. I'll walk the same 3 aisles at Kroger for 10 minutes looking for one little thing before asking a worker (not another customer, damnit) for help.

Luckily the shop owner walked out just in time for me to point at him and tell the old guy to ask him for help. The old guy proceeded to tell the shop owner that his Camry needed it's 30k mile maintenance (typically several hundred dollars worth of work). As the old guy talked, I noticed that he was well spoken, or at least better spoken than most other seniors who shared his fashion style of hiked up shorts and straw golfing hat. "I woefully admit that I've neglected maintenance..." Again, this is just a normal guy using the vocabulary of some proper New Englander, but without the accent. It sounded kind of funny, but I had to admit that it was nice to hear someone speaking so well in normal conversation.

Ok, so the 30k mile maintenance is the first major thing you have done to a car. Other than that, you have routine oil changes between 0 and 30k miles. Nothing else. If he's not getting his oil changed then he's a fucking idiot. He then went on to mention that he just had the oil changed in April. Ok, maybe he's not an idiot after all. So what's his deal, then?

I soon figured out how weird this guy was as he continued talking to the shop owner about the planned tune up. In typical old person fashion, he was prone to repeating himself. And one of the things he kept repeating was something along the lines of "I want you to have this car running and safe enough that you would put your own family in it." He actually said this. More than once. I find this odd because people don't say things like that in normal conversation. I only hear that shit on tv commercials. Is this guy addicted to television advertisements? Does he read auto mechanic training manuals for pleasure? I can't remember his other lines, but they all sounded strange and programmed. Having listened to him speak really made me wonder who persuaded him to drink the cool-aid.