Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Lady-parts Surcharge

So I finally have teh Intarwebz in my house now! Hooray! I don't have to spend hours on end at the library. Not that the library is so bad, but you can't do No-Pants Tuesday Blogging there. They get really uptight about not wearing pants in the library.

But that's not what this is about. This is about my thoughts on auto mechanics. My brother-in-law is young and not always very bright, and in a move of stunning brilliance, he put diesel in my emphatically non-diesel-drinking gas tank. My reaction to that was almost reality-show worthy, lemme tell ya. I love my car, like really. love. my car. I panic whenever anything happens to it.
So I finally gave up on draining the tank at home and decided to take it to a mechanic. I picked some local numbers and started dialing. 3 mechanics told me 3 to 4 hundred dollars, which gee, just didn't sound right. One of them tried to tell me I "needed" a new fuel pump. Yeah, I didn't. Finally I got one guy to give me an estimate that wasn't off the charts, and the day ended happily.

But when I talked to my Ferret, I found myself wondering out loud if maybe these auto shops tack on a "vagina charge" of a couple hundred dollars when they talk to a woman on the phone. Cause, obviously, if a lady calls and doesn't have a man to do the work or at least make the call for her, she must be desperate. And have no way of knowing what auto work is supposed to cost! Or know anything about cars! Hey guys, we can charge this chick A THOUSAND DOLLARS AND THERE'S NOTHING SHE *slap*

Sorry. Uh. Yeah. So my point is, do they do that? Or do mechanic prices really vary that much? Shouldn't there be some kind of guide for people who don't know what work should cost, like the Kelly Blue Book for car repair? Tell you what- first person to create that website, gimme 10 percent of the net and we'll call it good. We could make a fortune!
...No, you can't talk to my husband about it.