Well I've had a crap day

[phaetonott]

First job of the day, a 53 plate Clio. Drive it in and one of my colleagues is on the ramp doing a "quick headlamp aim" so instead of my usual routine of open the window, do walk round, turn engine off turn sidelights on and then go and log on I did the walkround outside, and as it was a bit drizzly I left the window closed. Logged on and came back to the car and it's still sitting exactly where I left it, with the engine running, and all the doors locked! Rung the customer and he has some security thing fitted that closes the central locking after one minutes running! Thanks mate, have you got a spare key, Oh the wife's got that and she works in London! Still it only took a couple of minutes to break in.

Then an Audi that I failed last week came back for retest. Headlight pattern was awful and I advised that could have been because all the lights had a honeycomb black adhesive film over them. The lady was most upset, her husband had told her the film was perfectly OK and made no difference at all, and he should know, he's a traffic officer! Well he should know better luv, because the film isn't there now and it's passed!

Another Clio, failed on honeycomb background on the number plates. Customer ranting and raving, it's not exactly dangerous is it? plates have been on the car for years, why has it never failed before. How can I answer that? "I've printed off the page from the manual, that shows what I have failed it on, and it doesn't have to be dangerous to fail, just not comply with the rules"


Last job of the day, Wreg Polo, Boss wandered up before I'd finished the last full test, "oh just pop a ticket on that he's had all the work done" so I finished the test and picked up the retest, now about ten minutes to closing time. The retest was for wheel bearings and lambda, Whizzed the car in, left it running to warm up while I logged on and checked the wheel bearings
and then saw the 14 advisory items!Checked all those and carried out a brake test because one of the advises was brake balance, and hooked up the EGA, thinking, "it's still got an exhaust leak at the rear joint, it might struggle with lambda" Anyway, nice and hot now so hey presto, lets fail the BET test!, And the boss is standing there with the keys to the workshop doors already, just as I start a Full Cat Test! five minutes later its failed the lambda again, the figures exactly the same as the original fail. Print a fresh VT30, take it out to reception and get caught in the crossfire. He's had the lambda sensor replaced! Well I didn't fail the sensor, I failed the gases. So when the guy fitted the new sensor on saturday and tested it on an MOT 4gas analyser it passed, how come I failed it. " I don't know sir, I have an approved machine which VOSA insist I have calibrated regularly and that's all up to date, and that machine shows a fail, so you get a fail" BUT IT'S GOT A NEW LAMBDA. "I don't care if you change the whole engine, if the cat or exhaust are pushing the lambda up it still won't pass"

Tomorrow's another day, and for some reason I'm actually looking forward to it

[baz657]

We had a power cut from around 4pm till 11.30pm. Luckily just finished and logged off a couple of tests but the later ones had to be cancelled and re-booked.

One car stuck in the air on the worm driven two poster having an oil change. Mine! I'd been meaning to do it for a month. All the work and house keys resting nicely on top of the wipers (mine locks itself as well but it can do it at any time). It's still up there draining away but at least I got the keys back.

Eventually found the windy handle thingy for the electric shutters to get a couple of cars out - took ages and some arm ache to get the doors up. One of the cars got stuck in the brake rollers so that needed a bit of rocking. Couldn't print out invoices but couldn't take credit card payments anyway. Regular customers so not worried about that. More arm ache followed closing the shutters.

Walked home - ok it was only a few yards - thought about having a shower by candle light. Damn. Combi boiler wont work with no electricity even though its gas. Found some lynx instead.

Elec company called, they found the problem and should be back on by 8 (it wasn't). Decided to have a takeaway and an early night. Phone rings again at about 10, can the elec repairers come into the garage as it's the only 3 phase site affected and they need to make sure they wired it up right . Walk all the way back to work, wait in the dark for over an hour (at least the office is a bit tidier now) and finally one-by-one the phases came back to life. They check it all and all the phases work the way they're supposed to so we'll be all set for tomorrow morning.

It's now past 2am and I can't sleep!

[David]

On days like that it's best to just get back in the car and go home, or in Baz's case walk out the gate and into the house and back to bed

[baz657]

Crap day continues....

It's snowing this morning. I'd forgotten that when the yellow phase went down the heater blower started making a hell of a racket. Rushed to turn it off but it shut itself down within about 20 seconds. This morning the heater's dead. £300 minimum call out before anything else. Looks like I'll be having a claim off the electricity provider.

[baz657]

We finally got the heat back on today so the crap day turned into a very cold week. Even the condensation was freezing to the walls!

I started the sneezing fits tonight. 'Er indoors blames the work heating being off for a week - I blame her for spreading her germs argue .

[phaetonott]

Mine brightened up after the last customer appealed to VOSA, and then they found in my favour. The last thing the Vosa guys said as they left..... "it's your own fault - you stayed late and put every effort in to keep the customer happy, you 'guided' him that the exhaust leak was a factor, he chose not to accept your guidance. You can't help some people, it's a shame the ones you can't help don't have a label ot their heads"

[alex]

It's always the way,the customers you try and help out sometimes cause you problems haha