I have had many eyebrow-raising experiences over the years from customers...
...in fact my teeth are constantly suffering from all the grinding. Still, I seem to have mastered the art of subtly transforming a grimace into a grin so the damage has not been totally in vain!

Unfortunately for me I have a rather large love of cars, being a girl this tends to bring up some manly testosterone along the way… not from me you understand but from rugged (read: fat), knowledgeable (read: think they know it all), dicks (read: dicks). I’ve had some interesting comments thrown my way over the years including… ‘erm, *looks at his shoes* I want to buy some sparkplugs… erm… *looks at my boobs* er… do you work in the parts department or can I see a man?’ My internal thought process is along the lines of ‘Well you can but then you won’t be able to lean on the glass counter whilst vacantly staring at my breasts, is that okay with you pal?’ but sadly what comes out is ‘certainly sir, one second and I’ll go find someone who can help you’.

Oh and please don’t get me wrong I do realise that all men aren’t like this, I understand that many blokes will happily sit for hours and talk to me about their head gaskets and do the same dribbling at the side of the mouth thing I do when I see a Bugatti Veyron, so gents please don’t think I’m getting at you all… its just that some of the male population are… well… chavvy plonkas who think that telling me they own a 2007 Fiesta ST in Frozen White is going to make me mess my pants… I’ve driven one… it handles like a shopping trolley so… erm… they’ll be no pant messing here today!

Anyhoo… rant over… story begin…

My first proper job was working as a Parts Assistant for a tiny company which basically sold parts for Triumph cars and transformed tatty TR’s into shiny works of chrome and leathery joy. We had a small showroom in a barn and larger barn, which burst at the seams with parts. There was also a third area, brilliantly named ‘The Stripper Grotto’ (sorry its not half as exciting as it sounds) which was festooned with car parts which had been stripped off older TR models, the idea being that you’d buy the parts at a discount and have them refurnished then fitted to your car. We mainly kept panel work and heftier items but every now and then something random would sneak its way into the Grotto and be plucked up by an enthusiast.

Now we had a few nightmare customers who would frequent our showroom, most of them were harmless but one was particularly irritating and went by the name of Mr Michaels. Mr Michaels was a crotchety old git who loved nothing more than to come to the garage and rant for hours about the lack of parts available nowadays and also bang on about his Triumph Spitfire which he had been ‘fixing up’ all on his own for the past 30 something years. The man drove everyone to the point of despair and most parts guys would actually run and hide when they saw his clapped out Honda chugging up the gravel drive. This pretty much explains how I ended up getting lumbered with him one sunny Friday afternoon.

I was merrily wandering around the parts department when Mr M appeared at the counter with a massive scowl on his face and a few dusty looking brake pads in his arms. ‘How much for these girly?’ he mumbled as he dropped the parts on the desk. I peeked over and asked where he had gotten the parts from, he huffed and puffed and said that he got them from the Grotto. Now call me crazy but I didn’t much like the idea of selling someone second hand brake pads… just in case they… well hit a tree and then tried to sue the prats that sold him the used parts. I very calmly explained this to Mr Michaels and he hit the friggin’ roof, ‘don’t you know who I am, I’ve been coming here since before you were born’ etc etc. Rather than getting shirty (after all I was attempting to have his best interests at part) I decided to get my boss involved and wandered off to find him. After bribing him out from under his desk with a Toffee Crisp he came to the front and had a stab at trying to explain the situation to Mr Michaels. It was a cockup on our part that the pads were in the Grotto in the first place and my boss did explain that he could sell Mr M some new pads which would end up being £2 more expensive than the dead ones, but evidently that wasn’t the point, he wanted these ones as they were originals… didn’t seem to matter about the level of potential… well… DOOM involved.

In the end my boss gave up and said he would give Mr M the new pads for free just so he didn’t do anything stupid, apparently that still wasn’t good enough so he ended up saying he would leave the parts around the back of the shop, if they were missing when we closed up he wouldn’t say anything and we would leave it at that. I found that to be completely nuts but then I didn’t own the company so kept quiet… worrying thing is I never did see Mr M again… Even though he was a dick I do hope he wasn’t peeled off the pavement somewhere because of the pads… although judging by the time it was taking him to fix up his car, it probably would never touch tarmac.

Apologies for the length I do have a tendency to ramble plus I may have had a drinkie or two, it is Friday after all!
(Flim-Flam the Magnificent "You is talking loco and I like it!", Fri 5 Sep 2008, 17:27, Reply)