Brain Dungeon

Well, we heard from the dealership what was wrong with our truck.

Apparently the brake rotor rusted and locked. Bad mojo. To make matters worse, the front to rotors were rusted as well and were in danger of having the same happen. They needed to be resurfaced.

Ok – we agreed to have it done.

I was thinking about what on earth could have caused that to happen. We’ve only had the truck for about 3 months and out of nowhere the brakes rust up on us? What gives?

The Gulf of Mexico – that’s what!

Hurricane Ike missed us by a long shot, but we still saw a storm surge in the Gulf which resulted in some flooding on the northern edges of town. In fact, we went driving around to see what the beaches looked like and ended up driving through some of the flooding that occurred. I was so proud of our 4WD truck that wasn’t gonna get stuck in the water! (no cars were stuck in the water…)

Well anyway, after that we went home, parked the truck and left it there for about a week. (I drive a company vehicle for work and Crystal was working hard at home on her jewelry that week). As it turns out…salt water and metal don’t mix too good! I’m pretty sure that the fact that we drove through the salt water and didn’t rinse the truck off before parkin’ it was the cause of the problems.

So 3 rotors needed to be resurfaced. Oh – and we needed to have the little sensor for our airbags or something replaced because the airbag light had been coming on and staying on for about the last 2 weeks. Worst of all, none of this is covered by the warranty we purchased with our truck. All in all – it was gonna cost around $500.

Now let’s recap what we learned so far – “unlucky” license plates: bad. Salty brakes: bad. Local dealership: loses trucks and doesn’t call back: BAD!

I fear I’m going to sound like Paul Harvey…

And now for the rest of the story…

It was Monday when we found out about the actual cause of the wheel being so stubborn. They said that the truck would be ready to go Tuesday afternoon. Not so bad I guess considering all that’s happened so far.

We got on with our busy lives and realized on Thursday that they still hadn’t called. WHAT FREAKIN’ GIVES?

Thursday they tell us it’ll for sure be ready on Friday by 2:00. I have my doubts, but plan to actually show up at 2 and have a little one-on-one with the service manager about the severe lack of “service” we’d seen thus far.

Friday at 1:00 I get a call. “Mr. Braindungeon Dude, [not really what he said, in case you didn't pick up on that all by yourself], I have good news. You’re truck is almost ready.”

This doesn’t sound like good news…otherwise, why the call? I chime in, “But…?”

“Well the thing is…” and he goes on to explain that the front left router was so badly corroded that they had to “cut too deep” to be able to resurface it. It’s now too thin and must be replaced. I kinda saw this coming a mile away…I have had it happen before on another car.

He goes on to say that they can replace just the one router, but they recommend if replacing one front router, go ahead and replace both. He reassures me that they won’t be charging me any extra for labor but tells me that to replace one router will be an extra $100 and to replace both will (amazingly) be $200. A question suddenly comes to mind. I remember talking to this guy when this all began about the fact that we need an extra key. This magical key costs $50 just to purchase, but $100 to program. (Why even bother telling the price without programming…I mean seriously…???)

I want to know if that was included in the original work order, because now the dollar signs are just flashing past me like crazy and with the lack of customer service they’ve provided, I can’t stomach the thought of paying over $850 bucks for all this. Not only did he forget to work the number into the original work order, but now there’s yet another due date for our truck…MONDAY.

I calmly…coolly…but sternly say “before we talk any more about money…let’s talk about facts.” and I start pointing out every single instance where their customer service has been less than worthy of the moniker.

The conversation went on for a while and I ended up setting an appointment to actually meet with the service manager. Before I am able to get out there, I’m sharing this story with someone I work with who happens to know the General Sales Manager there. He calls him up and let’s him know what’s going on. This guy calls me back and does his best to assuage me and offer to rectify the situation by paying for a rental car for the weekend. I decline and tell him I don’t need it. I bring up the key issue and he offers to throw in the key. He asks if that would make the situation right.

I begin to think about this and say to him, “I would love to get that key and not have to pay for it, but I’m not sure that I can justifiably say that would make me a happy customer. I’m not trying to put you out of money, I’m trying to resolve a customer service situation. At this point, I’m not sure I will ever return to your service shop.”

We decide that I’m going to think it over and call him back. Ultimately, I decide that since I had a need with my truck that they did not fulfill, then fulfilling this other need I have with my truck at their expense is a fair trade. I mean, come on…$150 bucks for a key??? lol

I still wasn’t sure that I was comfortable with that. I was, after all, still not sure I was going to go back there and I didn’t want to come across like the key was “the key” to solving the situation. I decide to go and discuss it with him face-to-face before giving a final answer.

When I show up, he greets me pretty warmly. He’s not a “typical” sales guy. He’s friendly, Has an honest look to him and genuinely, and sincerely is apologetic for all that’s happened. He tells me that he’s gonna throw in the key anyway at his cost (before I get to tell him I’m going to accept it) and says that he is personally going to follow this task to completion. It can’t happen until Monday because the parts that need to be replaced need to be ordered.

We have a friendly conversation about customer service and he asks me to consider giving them another chance in the future. I tell him that I most certainly will consider it, because I feel he has done everything he can to rectify a situation that he only came into at the last minute.

So there you have it. Hopefully you’ll hear from me on Monday that we have our truck back. I haven’t sworn off the dealership (at least not yet!). And I learned a valuable lesson in chemical reactions between salt and metal.

Perhaps it will all go uphill from here…

PS – I added a feed counter to my blog – I HAVE 11 SUBSCRIBERS VIA FEED! Check it out in the upper right hand corner. I can now officially stop using the “(s?)” when I refer to my readers!

PPS – James really can read…so he says…

…for the world around me…for the human race…for my sanity.

I encounter a fair amount of stupidity on a pretty regular basis. Normally I try to level my opinion of stupid by telling myself that ignorance does not equal stupidity. If someone truly doesn’t know something that I know, that does not, in and of itself, make them stupid. It may still seem funny, but stupid it is not.

But not always.

I did, however, get to witness some evidence that there are incredibly stupid people out there. It is for this reason that I live in fear for what our world may become. These people breed. These people pass their genes on to offspring to continue a legacy of intellectual destitution.

We had a situation develop at work this week where somehow, some way, an employee got ahold of, and cashed, another employee’s paycheck. Let’s just ignore the level of incompetence that it would take on the part of a manager that allowed this to happen (managers pass out the paychecks!). Here are the facts. The person who picked up their co-worker’s check has the same last name. The person who stole their co-worker’s check has a very similar first name. So similar, in fact, that there is a possibility that an unknowing person could have thought that the first name on the check was just misspelled. One’s name was Maria and the other was Maira.

It’s not as if these employees got each others’ checks accidentally and one cashed the check before it was caught. Not that simple. One employee ended up with BOTH checks. I dare not guess how this actually happened. She at least thought far enough ahead to cash the checks at two different places. She even thought far enough ahead to have someone else sign one of the checks (at least, judging by the handwriting, it appeared that way.)

So far we have seen crafty deceitfulness. Enter stupidity.

At the check cashing place where she cashed the incorrect check, they asked her for her driver’s license number and date of birth. I am actually trying to decide if I think she was just stupid enough to give her actual information or if she panicked and decided it was too late to try to be any more slick (what, no pre-planned fake ID?)…but she did…she gave her ACTUAL driver’s license number and date of birth.

Well, a couple of days later the girl who did not get her check asked her manager about it and they called the office wanting to know WHY this gal did not get her check. We explain that it was sent. They explain that it’s not in the distribution envelope. We look up the check number to verify that it hasn’t cleared the bank…guess what…it has. Both have. It was a matter of minutes before we were able to isolate not only that the wrong employee got the check, but that she had done so intentionally. She stole the money and tried to get away with keeping it only to be tracked down by her identification that we are required to collect in order to allow employment.

So there you have it. A perfect example of why someone may one day walk over to my cubicle and find that I have actually smashed my head into my monitor.

I subscribe to a blog that I think is absolutely hilarious called (The Customer is) Not Always Right. I think that this site is particularly hilarious because, for the most part, you can’t make this stuff up! I have been in situations where I have seen and heard the kinds of things on this site and it makes an awesome addition to my blog subscriptions.

I thought about submitting this story to their site, but it really needs the pictures to go with it. First of all, a little back story:

The company I work for was remodeling one of our restaurants. For the illusion of anonymity and for the sake of the people I work for, I have eliminated brand-specific portions of the images below using black rectangles. Other than that, the images are untouched.

Notice in this first picture how there are no registers on the counter, there is a bathroom sink laying sideways on the counter, and behind the counter this is a disassembled shake/ice-cream machine.

You can also see, off to the left, some building materials laying on the counter. If there were any different angle, you’d see missing ceiling tile and wires dangling from the ceiling.

In this next image you can kind of make out the fact that there are unconnected soda syrup hoses on a soda fountain that has no front image, some building materials laying on the counter, and the cabinet underneath is open and shows hoses that are not connected…

It would have been a little more amusing if I’d gotten this picture when one of our maintenance guys was sitting INSIDE this cabinet working on the hose connections.

This next picture shows in just how much disarray our dining room was. There are boxes everywhere, the glass on the front door had gotten broken during the remodel (fortunately, there was already a plan to replace those doors) and you can see construction equipment outside (a sky lift or something like that).

There are obviously boxes everywhere and the place needs a diligent cleaning from all the sawdust and whatnot on the floor.

And lastly, in this final picture, you can see another part of the dining room that shows evidence of a remodel going on. Notice the shop-vacuum, the numerous boxes, cleaning supplies, a construction dumpster outside…the works.

Outside there is also a marquee/reader-board sign below our main sign that says “Closed For Remodel”.

At this point, I think it is pretty well established that this restaurant was closed…for a remodel. I was sitting in the dining room working on my computer (I’m a tech and I was following up on some support emails). A guy parks in our lot (on the side with the sky lift and construction dumpster. Walks in and stands at the front counter for about 30 seconds looking around and then turns around and asks me…

“Are they open?”

Are you kidding me??? I very seriously wanted to say, “Yeah, they are. Someone will be with you shortly,” and then see just how long he’d stand there. Or…I wanted to pick up the sink and throw it at his head because, likely, I wouldn’t do much damage to his brain AND I would feel better. Unfortunately, there are times when what I want to do, and what is professional are very different things. So I just said, “I’m sorry, sir. They are closed for remodeling.”

Oh well…I guess if it weren’t for people like that guy, people like me wouldn’t have as much to laugh at.