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Getting your oil changed

Not mine but for my primary transport device aka the family sedan. Have you done this rather mundane yet insanely mind boggling activity recently by visiting the artisans responsible for this incredulous feat?

Why so many adjectives you ask?

I repeat - have you been to one of these excruciating events off late? I just did and let me tell you its not the fact that you will shell out what the dealer tells you to shell out to get a $4 oil put in your engine's innards (he has just quoted $40) but the agonizing waiting that happens before you see your conveyance again.

It is perhaps comparable or worse to the labor related waiting in the delivery room of a hospital that a spouse of the male kind endures, not knowing when his significant other partner will discharge their creation on to the planet. The unknown is what scares most living people and this is a classic.

First you walk in at the appointed time and walk to the service advisor (which is nothing more than a paper entry clerk) to discuss what ails you this morning. Again - you in this case is your car. When you explain that you are there to get the oil changed and have an appointment and are on time (perfect trifecta) they look at you like you do not belong there.

After slowly digesting the import of the conversation the gatekeeper gives you that look - and I am to do what with that? Whereupon you expressly indicate your desire to wait while this laborious task will be performed and enjoy their luke warm coffee that was cooked few days back.

Many vague computer strokes and much squinting at you by the gatekeeper he proffers a suggestion to head to the back and relax while they take care of your car (I don't want care - I want oil my brain shrieks silently).

All this relaxing can occur in the lounge area where there are certain publications waiting to be tossed in the dumpster right after you are done handling them out of sheer boredom.

Next comes the most fun part - the indeterminate waiting. You have absolutely no idea what they are involved with or how they actually operate as you see your car whisked away by a grease monkey into a cavernous one way tunnel where you have seen other vehicles disappear.

After what seems to be an hour or more you get up irritated by the child molester turned pimp parading his skills on a national TV show with Maury Povich, that has been vying for every customer's attention while waiting for their car. You decide you need air and a change of scenery and step out - where you see new eager faces arriving to put themselves through the automotive maintenance grind.

After another unlucky hour has passed you are about to explode and walk to see the manager who immediately informs that your car has just been washed (it looked like it needed to he tells me) and walks me my paperwork - which if you look at the size of the documents would appear that it was a court documentation for genocide.

I mean 12 pages with fine print and mumbo jumbo to empty and fill 5 quarts of the ubiquitous goo in a hole needs that much paper?

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