Speaking about who is trying and who is not... after 20 years working in garages and body shops I can tell you that anyone who works with their hands, even if it has nothing to do with cars, is usually a reasonable customer. They understand what things cost, how much time it can take to do a repair, and are sensible and reasonable to deal with. I will always cut these people a break if I can because I know they don't have a lot of money to throw around and they will meet me half way in making my job easier and paying their bills.

The worst customers are the stuck up ones who never get their hands dirty and wouldn't even consider getting out of bed in the morning for less than $1000 a week. These are the ones who expect you to take the bread out of your children's mouths so they can have a play toy, and moan and chisel every chance they get. You can't afford to take a chance on these people. All you can do is do a perfect job using the maximum number of new parts and charge accordingly. If they don't like it they can go someplace else.

These are the ones you can break your back for doing a perfect job, then they will go around badmouthing all mechanics for being theives and incompetent morons. Yet they couldn't even change their own oil on a $1000 bet. They don't even know what they are talking about.

I would forgive a poor hard working mechanic for giving a customer like that the business. Believe me, I have seen it more than once. There are a hundred ways you can take advantage of one of these know it alls and they will never even suspect. The main thing is to flatter them and go along with their ignorant opinions, charge accordingly, then do the actual repair their car needs which costs about 1/10th of what they diagnosed themselves.

Speaking of which, there was an independent import car mechanic I used to know whose customers thought he was next to GOD. I thought he was a good mechanic by reputation but got a surprise one day when I saw a friend explaining to him how an engine worked - he didn't know the first thing about how a car ran. So how did he get such a great reputation as a mechanic?

His technique, for example if a car came in that wouldn't start, would be to replace the starter,starter relay or solenoid, battery, battery cables, and do a complete major tuneup. It would cost the customer $2000 but the car would start without fail for the next 3 years. If the same car came to me I would diagnose the problem as a loose fan belt, adjust the belt for $5 and send them on their way. Then the car would fail to start 3 months later for some totally unrelated reason and I would be the bum who charged all kinds of money to fix the car and didn't fix the problem. While he was the god like mechanic who could cure any problem permanently. I am not joking or exaggerating in the slightest. Obviously his customers were the type who drove BMW's SAABs and Jaguars, knew nothing about cars, and had the money to pay his bills. The type who think they know everything. He catered to them and gave them what they wanted. And I am not suggesting for a minute that they didn't get their money's worth. He did all the work he charged for and did it well. But 90% of the money was spent unneccessarily to my way of thinking. The fact that his customers loved him and held me in contemp, only proves that from a business standpoint he was right and I was wrong.

This no longer bothers me now that I am out of the business. You have to take it philosophically. There are all kinds of people in the world, and some of them seem like simpletons to me because they don't understand certain things, while they may have talents that I don't have and never will have, that are just as mysterious to me as mechanics are to them.