By nature, retail work is nearly robotic. On my end, I make sure the item you need is present and ready for you to acquire…for a fee, of course. I facilitate the purchase, I provide you with the item and proof that yes, you bought it, and you are on your merry way. Effectively, the Parts Guy could easily be replaced with a freaking kiosk and a modified Roomba if the stores decided to save a few bucks in the long run, but since it seems that the newest operating software of any parts store might be Windows XP and most are running systems that were created in the 1980s, don’t be too concerned. Your job should be safe for the time being.

In fact, it seems that the human interaction deal is a bit underrated to some companies. Take Pep Boys: in certain stores, there are policies that dictate that, among other things, that you will greet the customer with a handshake…no matter what. Customer covered in grease, oil, fuel and whatnot? Shake that hand. Customer eating a drippy ice cream cone and the hand is attracting hungry insects? You’d better shake that hand, mister. Customer digging for gold in the southern lands? That’s why Purell was invented. The policy doesn’t seem to be pushed much ever since Pep Boys was sold to Ichan Enterprises late last year, but I’ve heard it from workers that it still is in place and that at one point in time, if you didn’t shake the customer’s hand it was an immediately fireable offense.

The amount of people I’m comfortable touching can be counted on one hand, and I’m one of them. My wife is another. I’m not signing a document that will bring about world peace. I’m making sure the tires on your Grand Am won’t kill you as I drain four-year-old sludgy oil out of the engine. Coming to a place like Pep Boys does NOT require a handshake! That is the kind of stupidity that only a starry-eyed marketing major could dream of. Do we meet new people nearly every day? The potential is there, yeah. But if you want to put it into perspective, visiting a maintenance shop is like going on Tinder: you aren’t swiping right for a meaningful relationship…at least, I hope you aren’t. You are there to get right down to business: work on the car. And that’s what it should be: I (as the employee) work on the car so that you (the customer) leave with a safe, operable vehicle and the feeling that, unlike Tinder, you didn’t just get the great big F.

Luckily, most parts stores do not enforce any kind of touchy-feely crap. I did have some grateful customers give me a hug, and that’s cool…and voluntary. But if I’m required by company policy to touch each and every member of society that walks through my door with my bare hands…nope, I quit. I’m not joking, I would terminate my employment effective immediately and start hunting for the next gig.

In case the above is a bit TL;DR (too long, didn’t read) for you, here’s a visual that will nail it home, done up by one of my favorite comics, D.J. Coffman. “Yirmumah!” has been a go-to read ever since this bag-headed cretin was in high-school. What I do for counter clerks, he does in visual form for just about anything. Thank you, D.J., for letting me swipe this recent experience of yours, and no worries…Manny won’t come for you in your sleep. See those glasses? There’s no way he can see you in the dark. Moe, on the other hand…yeah, that mustache is bonafide evil.