Small place three miles down Massillon Road from me. Owner took store over from Pops when he passed. No computer. Only catalogs. He can find parts faster than the folks at my Advance Auto.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1604610433.jpg

I did have a lady throw an alternator at me once. She grabbed an alternator off a shelf on the way to the back desk. "I need a refund, but I left the receipt at home." I was asst mgr. The mgr was there and told her, no go, we'll hold the alternator here, and when you come back we'll give you a refund or exchange. He had to leave and left me handling it. We went back and forth from the back counter to the front door a couple of times. She said "I'm going to leave." I told her, "if you leave I'm calling the police." She "threw" the alternator at me from about 10' away, but it was more like she bowled it down the aisle at me. When she got in her car which was right in front of the door, the car and floorboards were full of stuff like "the club" and other parts store crap. I called the other stores in the area and told them that she was probably on her way to pull a scam and to not let her. I heard from a buddy that one of the other stores gave her a refund after I warned them.

I had plenty of folks yell or cuss at me over the years for various reasons.

I need brakes for a 1979 toyota corrola.
what size engine was it a 1.2 or 1.6L
Just give me some damn brakes
I need to know which size motor you have because the two different sizes take 2 different sets of pads.
It's a 4 cylinder
etc....

I'm not ideally suited to customer service if you catch me in the wrong mood, or you have an attitude.
I remember something like this.
"I need a starter for a 1979 pontiac trans am with a 400."
"OK, one minute." typety type type. Go get starter.
Thump! "Here's your starter."
"Is that a starter for a 1979 pontiac trans am with a 400?"
"No, it's a starter for a 1976 Chevy chevette with a 1.4L 4 cyl, why?"
"I asked for a starter for a 1979 pontiac trans am with a 400!"
"Yes, I know, and that's what I looked up and got for you."

Most non-automotive belts (washers, dryers, lawn mowers, etc...) are different from automotive belts. The angle of the "V" is different, so the wrong kind of belt might work ok, but it probably won't fit correctly or work as well as the correct belt.

That said, yes, I'd have told you that, but also taken you to the belt tool and said "this is the closest that we've got."

That was my strength when I was at the parts store. We had the computerized "catalogs" but we also had a full set of paper catalogs and got updates frequently. I could look things up in the paper catalogs including using specs, measurements or using the cross-references in the back. When someone came in with something old or unusual, I could usually find the part number at least, if not find where the part could be ordered from.

Best thing that ever happened to Jason.

This pic makes me want to drive to Ohio just to shop there! Awesome!

Here's a place I sometimes go nearby. I always get some gum from the bubblegum machine (chicklets actually), which hasn't been restocked since Reagan was president. After a couple of minutes, it starts to chew better, but lost it's taste somewhere around 1999. I like them because they don't fish for data or are forced to shove seafoam down your throat.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1604613919.jpg

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Now, you're talking! Hardware store. I support our local hardware store as much as possible. They have every type of bolt, self tapping screw, left or right hand drill bits, every type of socket, Wright Tools, etc etc etc. I spend a fortune there because I want them to stay around.

I kinda rage quit my carpentry job about 10 years ago. They kept pulling me off nice jobs and putting me on bullcrap jobs with employees i didnt get along with and out in the bad weather. The last one I was on a nice tile job in the winter. The pulled me off to go to 2.5 hours away to do soffit and facia on a log cabin with nothing there to even base it on and freezing water dripping off the roof down your neck the whole day. And it was just because the lead carpenter on that job was off hunting! So after 3 or 4 days of that i said no more "If I wanted to travel id join the circus!" and I walked off and didnt go back. Little did I know the two guys that i was doing the cushy tile job with were planning on quitting aswell to go off on their own. So i got a call a few months later and went on to work with them for another 5 years till I quit that one because i got sick of doing roofs in the dead of summer pretty much by myself.

A good parts man is 1 in a million.

I am trying to buy a rear wheel bearing for a 5 year old Renault in North America. I have several part numbers and when I call the parts stores, they say the p/n is no good... no inclination to help and are supposedly unable to look up for this application because those cars were never offered here. The rock place doesn’t have a listing either...

I won’t tolerate an idiot parts man. If they don’t have what I need in stock, I order what I need from an online provider. Why should I pay more to a local provider with no inventory and deal with a dummy on the other side of the counter? Not worth the blood pressure.

Yes, its hard to get a good parts guy. They generally go to better paying careers. There is a NAPA 10 miles from here that has some long time help that will get me what I need. That is 10 miles away and and the internet is in my hand so if I plan ahead its the internet that gets my business.

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Thanks for that... I legit laughed out loud.





A compliment to your writing/storytelling: I can easily imagine reading that in a piece by Peter Egan.

:)

Have to agree w Sammy here. Yes, people can be unreasonable and cantankerous in retail situations but I really can't imagine a FLAPS employee throwing an alternator through the plate glass window of the store. What did the window ever do to him? :confused:

My dad got a job when he was in high school at a local auto parts store. This would have been in the late 1940s so no computers. His two favorite stories was a first, a customer came in looking for a head gasket for a straight 8 Packard. He said he had called all over town looking for it. They had one, so the guy rushed over and bought it. Dad handed him the receipt and the customer promptly folded up the copper gasket and put it in his pocket. The good news for all was they had one more of them in the back.

His top story was a guy came in and needed crank bearings. He did not know if he needed standard or oversize. They opened a box and the guy took one of each, held them up to the window and squinted at them. He picked the oversize. Dad always said that guy was the customer with micrometer eyes.

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ROFLOL :)

Reminds me of the time we were out driving around looking at Christmas lights. I had phoned an order into Dominos. I went in and paid, grabbed the box and was on my way when I discovered that the order was wrong. I called again and they gave me 20 minutes to come in for a replacement.

Again I grabbed the box and was driving out the driveway when it was discovered they made the EXACT same mistake. I turned around, walked in and pasted the entire pizza on the glass separating the waiting area from the prep area.

They seemed pretty pissed but I said if they came out around the counter I'd make them lick the pizza off the glass while I pulled it out of their ass.

So, yeah, sometimes anger gets intense.

In my business, we call that the "eyecrometer"

Maybe you should switch to decaff. ;) :D

I got very close to losing it at work about a year and a half ago.

Another team wanted to dump their application's log data into one of my team's tables that contained my team's applications' log data. The way they wanted to do this would produce a comingling of data and make certain trending and analysis impossible going forward (we wouldn't be able to differentiate their data from ours, and they wanted it designed that way on purpose). They just wanted to do it out of convenience to speed up some of their development for what ironically was a high-profile/low impact application (something new and shiny that used a new technology but in fact didn't do anything useful). In no uncertain terms, I told them no.

Well, then it got political. Another meeting was called, I wasn't invited (in fact, my manager intentionally excluded me from the meeting), and my manager told them yes. My manager was more concerned about playing nice with the other managers and completely disregarded the problems this would cause us. I was livid and all I could do not to scream at her (and my whole team sat in a big room together) was just remain perfectly silent for days.

A few months later, my manager asked why our trending data looked so bad and why we were getting so many more phone calls in the middle of the night. I explained this was because of her decision to let this other team dump their data into our tables and now the data was meaningless and they always pointed the finger at us for their problems. We got crappy raises because what was being measured included data (and problems) that were not our team's. I posted out of that position at the first opportunity.

Wow, that's really farked up. I'd have probably been sending emails at the very least. I don't generally explode, but I'm happy to send an email and make some noise. I'll often have to write the email, then revise it a few times. Fortunately, since moving to my new team 5 years ago, I haven't felt the need to do that. In my old team, that wasn't the case.