I've been working with my parents for more than 35 years. That's a long time. Long enough to recognize the slightest change in behavior. A certain look speaks volumes; a glance becomes a whole conversation. You begin to know each other so well that the spoken word is almost superfluous. I'm not sure I believe in telepathy, but there are times my mother, my father and now sometimes even my brother communicate quite effectively without ever speaking a word. There are other times, when only words will do: times when someone says or does something that demands a response. This was one of them.
I looked up to find my mother standing over my shoulder pointing at the phone, "Rude. Extremely rude ... This one is yours!"
You would have to know my mother to understand just how severe an indictment that is. "Rude" is a term reserved for the worst kind of unacceptable personal behavior. This wasn't someone guilty of a curt response; this was someone disrespectful, confrontational, perhaps, even combative. I picked up the receiver, took a deep breath and before I could begin, this is what I heard:
"I want to talk to somebody in charge!"
I started to chuckle. I've been in this business my whole life, and there are times when I wonder if anyone can ever be "in charge!"
"How may I help you?"
"I was in there a couple of months ago and had my whole cooling system rebuilt, and the vehicle overheated on our vacation! What are you going to do about it?"
"I'm really sorry to hear you had a problem, especially on vacation. What happened?"
"You put hoses on my car, changed the thermostat and flushed the cooling system! I spent $300 at your place, went on vacation thinking everything was OK, and the radiator boiled over! Now, what are you going to do about it?"
The more agitated and upset he became, the more I realized the same thing was happening to me. I could feel the blood pounding on the side of my neck and my heart rate climb. The adrenaline was flowing. It was "Fight or Flight," only I wasn't interested in either. I took another deep breath ... I wasn't going to allow myself to be sucked into playing his game. When it's someone else's game, it's someone else's rules: you can't win because they can change the rules, change the game, at any time.
I asked him how the vehicle had failed. Instead of answering my questions, he started recounting what we had done all over again. Finally, I was able to squeeze the information out of him. He had driven the vehicle for a few thousand miles after the cooling system service: up the coast to San Simeon and the Hearst Castle, around town on some short day trips. Then he headed for Denver across the Rockies. The vehicle performed flawlessly from the time it left the shop until it was time to return home. Unfortunately, the vehicle began overheating as they started climbing out of Denver and continued until they started down the other side of the mountain toward L.A.
All the motorist was interested in at this point was what we were going to do about "it." I told him "nothing" until I saw the van. At first he made it sound like that was going to be impossible. I quietly and calmly explained that while we both knew what had happened, neither one of us knew why it happened and without the why there wasn't going to be any kind of resolution. I wasn't going to let him push me or prod me into a corner because options tend to evaporate in a corner. You can submit, run or fight your way out ... And, without more information, I wasn't willing to make that kind of a choice.
He finally agreed to come in just before closing. A few hours later, there he was staring at me from across the office ... "Well, I'm here. Now, what are you going to do about my van?"
I smiled, finished what I was doing and walked out to the van. I checked the mileage and raised the hood. There was no evidence of the kind of severe overheating the motorist had described: no stains, no residue of coolant anywhere.
He tried hard to provoke me, but I wouldn't respond. I had the edge. I know you don't bring a knife to a gunfight. I opened the radiator cap. The coolant was the right color. The solution was between 40 and 50 percent and the pH level was good. Both the radiator and the reservoir were full, and the system held 16 pounds of pressure. The only thing wrong was the cap, which slowly lost pressure.
The harder I tried to help him understand there was nothing wrong with what we had done, the more combative he became. And then I noticed something strange. I was calm, much more calm than I had any right to be, standing elbow to elbow with someone spoiling for a fight. I got a clean drain pan, opened the petcock and drained enough coolant to reveal the radiator header and core rows. The vehicle's owner looked like he was going to explode. "And, just what the hell do you think you are doing?"
"I'm looking for corrosion and signs of calcification. I know how my technicians are trained, and I want to make sure they did what they were supposed to do. Why? Is there a problem?"
Applied Physics: the study of force and energy. The motorist was applying force, an inordinate amount of force, in my direction. That force can be accepted, absorbed or redirected. Redirect it.
While looking inside the top tank, I managed to find three or four long strands of clear silicone sealer lodged in the core rows. I removed them with a long pair of needle-nose pliers. When I asked if the cooling system or the engine had been worked on before, the answer was "Never!"
I told him we didn't use clear silicone and showed him that the thermostat housing had no residue of silicone anywhere around it. I explained that it wouldn't take much silicone lodged in the core rows of this little radiator to restrict the flow of coolant enough to cause an overheating problem. And, then I suggested the overheating problem he experienced on the way home just might be the result of a pre-existing problem. That's when the Caravan's owner came at me again.
I turned to him and smiled. "Why are you behaving this way? Are you always this confrontational? Have I done anything to offend you? Have I given you any reason to believe your concerns wouldn't be taken seriously? When you told me there was a problem, I asked you to come in immediately and when you came in I stopped what I was doing to address those concerns. Have I given you any reason to believe we wouldn't take care of our responsibilities?
"Don't you think you ought to at least allow us the opportunity to fail before you condemn us for failing?
"You're attacking me because you had a problem on your trip, and yet, the hoses are tight and holding pressure, the thermostat is the correct application, it's installed properly and the coolant is the proper solution. We checked your vehicle to insure nothing was mechanically wrong when you were in last, and you drove the vehicle for more than 4,000 miles. The vehicle overheated once while climbing the Rockies and hasn't overheated since.
"You keep telling me the vehicle has never done anything like this before and that may be true, but it's never been this old before either and there is always the possibility that something else went wrong."
"Impossible."
"Why? Have you ever driven to Denver in this vehicle before? If you haven't, how do you know you wouldn't have had the same problem pulling that grade with this little van and its postage-stamp sized radiator before you did the cooling system service? Aside from that, you have got to realize that you may never have the same overheating problem if you don't place as severe a demand on the cooling system again."
He tried one last time ... He told me that he had worked with his father in an auto repair shop "just like mine" almost 40 years ago and knew that you shouldn't have these problems if the vehicle was properly back-flushed. I looked at him and smiled. I told him that I started in this business almost 40 years ago with my father and the shop I worked in then, the industry I worked in, couldn't be any farther from the industry that exists today if they evolved on different planets.
You can't really flush cooling systems the way you did then. You can't use the same chemicals. You can't blow the residue out of the cooling with the same force and you can't let the residue run down the street. Radiators aren't brass or copper anymore, they are plastic, rubber and aluminum. And, 40 years ago, the heater cores were bigger than the radiator in this little Caravan! Everything is different and so are the service techniques.
In the end, he gave up. His weapons were limited to a confrontational attitude and a big mouth. When it became obvious I wouldn't succumb to his particular brand of verbal abuse ... when he realized that he couldn't intimidate me or goad me into a fight or get something back or something for nothing, he got back into his Caravan and left. Under the circumstances, that didn't seem like the worst possible alternative.
There are those who will tell you that the customer is always right. There are others who will tell you that even when the customer is seemingly wrong, the customer is always the customer. I won't argue with either statement. All I am suggesting is that we learn to define just what a customer is for each of us and then proceed accordingly. Sometimes the person you are dealing with is anything but a customer. Sometimes that person is just another guy with a broken car and a bad attitude, a bully searching for someone to intimidate, someone to beat up financially or emotionally.
If you run into someone like that take a deep breath and remember that it isn't always the biggest, strongest or even the loudest who wins. There are other choices. You can redirect the force of your adversary's attack. You can use their energy against them. You can take them down. You can take them out. And, you can do it without anger, frustration or rage. All it takes is the confidence that comes from knowing that you have done things right and that you have done the right things. All it takes is understanding the principles of applied physics, that and the courage and the self-confidence to apply them.
