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Comment by throwaway0a5e | Hacker News Reader

That message does nice double duty as a PC way of saying poors need not bother shopping him for a quote to replace something on their '99 Grand Caravan.

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IIUC, you're implying that that mechanic is disdainful of poor customers, and that this just provides convenient political cover.

If so, I'm not sure why you'd assume that. It seems more likely to me that the mechanic is simply choosing his work based on personal interest and perhaps profitability. I don't see why we'd ask anything more than that from him.

I'm not assuming. Everyone even remotely close to the industry knows that mechanics don't like the people who want to do the bare minimum amount of work all the time and that fairly strongly correlates to "poors". Of course given the choice a mechanic would rather do an oil change on a '15 4Runner owned by some yuppie he can upsell a cabin air filter to than do a timing set on a '03 Outback for someone who'll decline the water pump that they traditionally try and sell with it.

Eh, it also correlates to "cheapskates." I know a lot of people who make FAANG money who do the bare minimum in home/auto repairs. Just cheap SOBs.

I would have thought 4runners were disproportionately bought by people who want to fix the car themselves.

If you were even remotely close to the industry, you would know full well that the older a car is, the more of a pain in the ass is to repair. It only takes one rusty bolt snapping off to turn a 30 minute job into a 3 hour one. When that happens, the mechanic has to eat those extra hours. They don't get to crawl back to the customer and beg for triple the price. The shop owner certainly isn't going to pony up the difference. It (effectively) comes right out of their paycheck.

I feel that the instant knee-jerk accusation of discrimination against someone you never even met says quite a bit about you.

That's why "book time" is based on a newbie that has no idea what they're doing.

Fairly common for a job that gets charged out at X hours to only need X/2 hours. And then there's work that gets charged at shop mechanic rate but gets partly or completely done by an apprentice/assistant.

But being from the rust belt, I know what you mean about corrosion.

I live in the northeast and used to flip shitboxes. I understand why anyone working a flat rate environment would rather not deal with old vehicles.

Also the rusty bolt thing is over blown. You learn what you can and can't get away with and stop snapping them pretty quick.

Also the mechanic we're discussing is in CA so it's not like he has that problem.

Obviously everyone wants moneyed customers. The closer you are to the money the more you get.

I'm not saying the primary purpose of his messaging was to tell the poor to screw off, just marveling at the fact that it does nice double duty.

> mechanics don't like the people who want to do the bare minimum amount of work all the time

Does anyone?

> oil change on a '15 4Runner owned by some yuppie

Yuppies don’t drive 7 year old cars

Sadly life gets a lot easier when you exclude the poorest customers. I don't blame anybody for doing that.

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