Thoughts From A Day On The Job

As a part time job, one day a week I drive vehicles for a car dealership's service department.  On any given day during this job, I might find myself in about a 50 mile (or slightly more) radius in just about any direction from the dealership.  On my most recent day working there, I was struck particularly by two unrelated thoughts.

The first one (chronologically speaking) had to do with my having the opportunity to a drive into a town through which I often drove until about a decade or so ago, but through which I have very rarely driven since that time.  I was surprised to see how little the town had changed.  Many of the homes and most of the businesses looked much the same--although some new businesses occupied the old buildings of former businesses.  What struck me most, however, was that here I was driving through a pretty much blue-collar community, and the newest and most impressive buildings (even though some of them are likely at least 20 years old) were all government buildings--from local town government, to the public library, to the public schools.  My main thought was that it seems odd that the various government entities were able to get its citizenry to fund government buildings that were far newer and more extravagantly built than nearly every other home or business in the town.

My second thought falls under the category of "Things That Make You Shake Your Head." It was a rainy day.  A customer asked us to pick up their vehicle from over 20 miles away, have the needed maintenance done, and have the car detailed--inside and out.  Understand that picking up a vehicle from 20 miles away means that we have to deliver it back that same 20 miles later.  On a rainy day.  After the vehicle had been detailed.  When I dropped the car off, the customer complained that I had parked the vehicle in the same spot where it had been parked when I had picked it up earlier in the day.  Why?  Because the vehicle had been detailed and there was a puddle where the car had been parked--because it had been raining much of the day.  Never mind that the vehicle had just been driven more than 20 miles on roads where it had been raining most of the day--roads that had puddles on them and where water was being splashed by other vehicles.  Never mind that the vehicle was parked outside when I picked it up from the customer earlier in the day, and that there didn't appear to be any place to park the car except outside in the gravel driveway that had a puddle in it because it had been raining much of the day.  Oh, and never mind that the weather forecast was calling for rain for the rest of the day, overnight, and much of the next day.    I guess that the car detailing was a waste of money for the customer because there was a puddle where I parked it--the same place it had been parked when I picked it up when it was raining earlier in the day.

So I guess that this one-day-per-week part-time job of driving cars throughout the area gives my mind time to think and consider things--even things that make me shake my head.