Jackass Lube

This post is not pregnancy related unless you count in my husband's reaction. It is also not going anywhere near the gutter, as the title might suggest to some. On Saturday I took my 3 year old Subaru into J.L. for an oil change. Why is it important that the car is three years old? you may wonder. It is important because the car is still under warranty, hopefully.

When I got there I was the only one there and about 5 "mechanics" worked on my car. I had a bad feeling when I left about the quality of their work because one of the things that they did was replace a headlight and in the process of doing that they put the battery back in wrong.

I didn't really drive the car anywhere that day, but the next day I drove to my brother's house. My brother lives about 70 miles away. En route I picked up my other brother. When he got in the car I mentioned that I smelled oil burning and speculated that they did a sloppy job and spilled oil on the manifold. My brother was not convinced that what he was smelling was motor oil, but the car had not been running very long at that point.

Before we crossed the state line it was clear that something non-minor was burning. My brother thought it smelled like burning rubber. When we got to my other brother's house we popped the hood an smoke billowed out. It turns out that the morons who checked my fluid did not properly return the dipstick into my front differential, which was spewing out gear oil. Gear oil is a much heavier weight oil than motor oil and catches on fire if dumped all over your engine. Fortunately the brother who we were visiting likes to buy those piece of crap cars that you see on the side of the road and repair them, which is super annoying to his wife, who was not excited to become the owner of a 1986 CRX two years ago. He had the appropriate gear oil to send me home safely.

My brothers and father encouraged me to return to J.L. and have words with the manager. Having owned 2 previous cars that made it to 200k miles, I've had some experience dealing with mechanics. What I've learned is that when women talk about cars what men hear is "blah blah blah I am stupid blah vagina ..." In fact, once I took a car to a major car repair place and the person there tried to sell me a carburetor when the side of my car clearly stated that the car had a fuel injection system. So, I am reluctant to start an argument, especially at J.L. where most of the "mechanics" have the same skill levels of the burger "artists" at Burger King.

As a result my husband went with me, after I taught him all of the important words that I learned from my brother like front differential and 80 weight gear oil. He yelled very impressively and seemed truly convinced that their error might result in his pregnant wife catching on fire. At the end of the scene I think we both felt bad for the employees. My next oil change is free, as if...