Service

The cam follower finds himself waiting on service this morning.  Naturally, I am talking about vehicle service.  Not for my own vehicle, I service it myself, but for my work van.  It is always serviced by somebody else.  The layers of irony are not lost on me as I sit here observing interactions between the technicians, service advisers, and customers.  I do this every day with the people I provide service for.  It makes me realize how lucky I am to work on industrial robots instead of cars.  It also makes me realize how more comfortable I am with machines and dogs than people.

The reasons I am fortunate to work on industrial machines rather than cars are manifold.  It goes beyond the obvious effort/compensation calculations anybody would realize.  For instance, most things I must remove are easily accessible, not buried under aesthetic covers, hot pipes, hundreds of hoses, and thousands of miles of grime and grease.  In addition, I do not have to satisfy some accountant's estimation of the time it should take to perform a task.  If a gearbox is bad, it will take me as long as it takes me to replace it.  When an automotive technician must replace a drive belt, for instance, he is given a standard time to accomplish the task.  The manufacturer has determined how long it should take and that’s all they are going to pay for, despite the frozen or rounded off bolts on this particular car. In addition, I know the people whom I work with.  I know the machines, the facilities, and the environment.  I usually know the problem before I even get to the machine, because I know the machine and its context.  Rarely am I surprised by a problem.  At an automotive service center, random cars roll in all day long.

I knew before arriving that I would have to sit here for a while.  It's fine because I am getting paid to do it.  Even so, I am prepared to wait.  Forever.  It's just how it goes.  Any task that requires the help of another person necessarily includes some waiting.  Be it vehicle service, or dental work, or a haircut, you are going to wait around for a while.  But there’s nothing wrong with that.  It is an opportunity to develop patience, watch Rachel Ray's utterly useless show on the waiting room TV, or to futz around on the internet.  It is no real hardship.  But for some reason, there is always a person for whom it is an unacceptable calamity to wait for a service to be performed.  To me, it’s an unacceptable calamity to listen to them yammer on about how the universe itself is ruining their life.  And I seem to bring them with me.  I am convinced that ten seconds before I arrived the waiting room was a Zen garden, full of singing birds, bubbling brooks, peace and harmony.  Now, however, it’s a den of caterwauling man-cherubs for whom the act of sitting around is unacceptable, despite the fact that it’s plainly obvious by the generous proportions of their sans-a-belt slacks that all they tend to do is sit around.

Evidently, to this jackleg moaning about everything, the repair of one of the most complex appliances we use on a daily basis should not require any time, effort, or compensation from him. He bought the car, why should he be required to maintain it?  I am convinced these are the same people who drive in the left lane forever at varying speeds depending on the terrain, surrounding traffic, and the whims of their fragile psyche.  The same people who leave their car parked at a gas pump while completing Christmas shopping in the convenience store.  The same people who can not decide what to get at McDonald's, even though the menu has not changed in a decade. The same people who buy 27 lottery tickets in a store with one employee. The same people for whom nothing at the coffee shop is prepared appropriately, even though a translator, herbalist, and a small team of attorneys was employed in order to express their order properly to the poor schmuck behind the counter.

Which all brings me back to the point.  I tend to like machines and dogs better than people.  Machines may seem to have a mind of their own, but they don’t.  Machines are not self-aware, they do not have agendas, they don’t envy or hate.  There is always a logical solution to any problem with a machine.  People, on the other hand, are extraordinarily complex.  And there are no manuals to help understand what is happening with them.  The only way I have found to deal with people is to always provide the benefit of the doubt, and assume that people do not intend you harm, because most of the time they don't.  For instance, I have no idea what this complaining moron’s life is like.  He could be completely justified in his grievance.  But I doubt it.