It only took two years for me to find a haven outside of my own house where I can sit, talk shop, jaw-jack about cars and not have some half-stoned cretin come up and ask me to take a look at his decrepit 1999 Pontiac Grand Prix and see if I can determine what the whining noise is that’s coming from underhood. (By the way, unless the serpentine belt is smoking like a diesel, the answer is always “blower whine”.) Where is this miracle shop? Oh, no…I ain’t telling. This is my nirvana, filled with old-school types that actually know what in the hell they are talking about. You think I’m going to screw that up? No, sir. When I can easily kill a couple of hours learning things and sharing stories, I’m a happy (former) parts guy.

It was during one of these bullshit sessions when the youngest guy in the building, a guy in his early or mid twenties, announced that he was going to be leaving his job at AutoZone in the next couple of days…to go across the street and north one block to work for O’Reilly’s. I hit my head on the counter out of frustration so hard I might have lost all memory of my eleventh-grade year of high-school…which, honestly, isn’t that big of a loss. I couldn’t help but look at this kid, who seemed taken aback that anyone in the building would actually give a shit about this job transfer, and see the words “DANGER WILL ROBINSON!” flash repeatedly. Apparently I wasn’t the only one…the two guys behind the counter both let out sighs that indicated frustration over this decision. I asked him for his reason for jumping ship, and still oblivious to his lack of foresight, he said, “Because everybody at AutoZone just sits on their ass and lets me do all of the work.”

I know we have some jaded ones who know the job well, so I ask you to chime in on the same question I asked this kid: “Do you really think things will be different at O’Reilly’s? Do you actually think that people will pull their fair share if you’re busting your ass and getting it done?” I’m a lost cause…personally, I think that once everybody in a shop figures out who Johnny Go-Getter is, the rest of them, even the good folk, slack a little (or a lot) to let the new busybody take up some work. If he’s lucky, he will incorporate into a place where there will be a quick adjustment period of who takes on what percentage of the workload, everything balances out within a month or two, and all is well. But that’s like saying if I’m lucky, I’ll end up with the winning Powerball ticket. Guess who has ten useless slips of paper with a ton of numbers on them at his house? This guy. Guess whose idea of fine dining still consists of a DiGiorno pizza with parmesan cheese powder sprinkled on top? This guy. Get my point?

The likelihood that this young buck will find himself standing at a counter doing the same thing he’s doing now is, in my humble opinion anyways, too high to ignore. If the chances are good that the only change you’ll make in your life is what Christmas color you wear to work on a daily basis, why the hell would you make the move? It’s doubtful that you’d get a pay raise worth the trouble, and you’ve now become the guy hopping from store to store, trying to work the systems to your benefit. Store managers, even those from competing stores, talk, and if they don’t, customers from the area…especially the commercial customers, who tend to pay attention to what’s going on…do. You might be jumping the fence into a field of lush, green grass, but something tells me that you’re going to land in a knee-deep pile of Homer The Bull’s freshest lawn fertilizer.