Funniest lines from the parts counter

what is a noid light?

 

A noid with less calories but still tastes great. It is a light to test solenoids, fuel injectors, etc. it lights up when an electrical connection is made.

 

Kind of a parts counter.. My Grandpa and Uncle had a wrecking yard back when they sold parts (not just crushed everything ). Hispanic fella comes in asking for a "starter for his car". After figuring out what kind of car, model, engine and retrieving a tested good used starter for it- "no no no- a Starter!" Took a bit but finally was followed out to the car and he pointed at the battery. Well, I guess it won't start without one so--

 

Not parts counter but service counter I worked at years ago.

Asian guy walks in.." I need chain saw oil my car"
I say...."You cant put chain saw oil in a car it won't work!"
Him..." No , you chain saw oil my car!"
Me..." Listen , chain saw oil isn't made for cars you need motor oil"
Him...." NO! Chain Saw Oil in my fucking car!!!"..He's pretty mad by now
Me ... If you want to buy chain saw oil you need to go to XXXXX they have it there.
Him...NO, I WANT YOU TO CHAIN SAW OIL IN MY CAR!!!
Me.... "Oh, do you want me to change the oil in your car?"
Him....(really mad now)..."Yes are you fucking deaf!"
Me ...OK ,one oil change ...."what kind of car?"
Him ...Chlysrere Rebalon....

 

Just the opposite around here (San Diego), Cosmo. The big box stores don't pay enough to hire anyone with talent. $10.00 an hour won't get it done here. A one bedroom apartment averages $1000.00 a month, so the only people that can afford to work there are kids living at home. It's a shame, but it's reality. I only know of two old school parts houses that have survived, not sure what they pay their guys.

Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!

 

Seems like a damn good way to drive your bread-and-butter customers away. Apparently, you all have seen "Jackass, The Movie", far too often.

and none of the above two posts is "good relationship" in the retail or wholesale business.

I could see how those pranks could seem like a way to loose business, but like I said these were guys we were cool with, like friends.
Guys that would come by the store after work and have a beer or Barbeque with us friday nights. We even got the store to sponsor a winery tour once with a whole bus load of wholesale customers and their wives. I guess it's not the normal store/customer relationships.

 

What is the difference?? For a Yugo, 6 months WAS a lifetime...

 

We don't pay enough either, TO START. Once a body realises that the world does NOT owe you a living, you get the idea that you need to START. And, soon, you will be moving up. It's what I did, and I struggled, still am, but getting better. And I love this job, idiots and all. And today is idiot day out here in the cornfields.
Today (two hours ago), guy calls, and has set aside the cheap alt. for an Expedition. Wife comes in, pays and leaves. 45 minutes later, I get a call for a starter, same car. I recognise the voice, then. Says he put a battery in, it still didn't turn over, so it must now be the starter.(!) Diagnostic ability of a turnip.

Then there was the old fart who forgot his coupon yesterday ($5 on a $35 dollar part). GM told him to bring it in, and we'd accomodate. Only way to do this, I return and resell (we got rules, and I like my job). I credit and recharge (minus $5). He gets huffy, starts blathering about calling his credit card company, double charging and all loads of B.S. I finally got the impression that he thought I was just going to hand him a $5 bill.
How do people get to be the age they are, and still have nary a clue in the world??
Mind, he spent more in fuel just getting the coupon redeemed...not a clue...

And still we laugh...

Cosmo

 

Problem is, the old guy's from a time when you would just hand him a $5. Not his fault that your company has put in all that crap to insure that employees wouldn't be cheating them blind. Old fool probably thinks a handshake ought be be binding too. Sad.

 

When I was a kid in a suburb of Cleveland, my father worked as a mechanic in a Ford dealership. They had a parts counter man who drove the mechanics up the wall. They called him "make-it-fit-Angie". He almost always refused to look the part number up in the books. He thought he knew them all by heart. Of course, quite often the parts were not correct, so they had to go back to the counter and say:

"MAKE IT FIT, ANGIE!"

 

For a thread titled funniest lines from the parts counter, a lot of the posts are just mean spirited.

 

Maybe this one wasn't that funny but it made me laugh.

Had a customer I had never seen before come in on a Sunday when there was only 2 of us working. He says the owner said it was ok for him to take a flex plate and a starter and he would come back later with the one he didn't need and pay for the other.
I knew nothing about this and told him he would have to pay for both.
He got pissed and started getting all loud in the store. "You calling me a liar? You calling me a liar?"
My co-worker comes behind me and whispers " I may be a thief but I'm no liar". Customer didn't hear him but saw me laughing and just left.

Thought we were gonna get in a fist fight that day. But I still repeat that line once in a while.

 

Not quite. IF he was, he'd be like me, and understand the rules of life.
#1: If you forgot your coupons, it's YOUR fault, use 'em next time.
#2: If you pay with a credit card, the money has to come and go by banking rules.
#3: If you want cash, you deal with cash. I pay everything that is remotely possible in cash.
#4: If you start complaining about stuff that you know I have no control over, you really ought to understand that I am quickly getting annoyed with you, and have already decided that you are an idiot.

I bend over backward to help people, and our company also will. BUT, we kinda ask that you start without that chip on your shoulder. That chip makes it hard for us to see what a nice guy you are, really.

Cosmo

 

"Funniest line" - maybe a bit off topic, but anyway... One time, back in the early 90's, I was stranded in northern Illinois in my old bus. I needed to be in Washington state in 2 1/2 weeks.

I needed a carrier bearing. It was a corprate GM rear-end from the mid seventies. The bearing was about 4"-5" in diameter and had tapered barrel rollers - metric on one dimension and American on the other. I had cut it off with a torch thinking I could get another one real eazy. DUMB MOVE!!!

After looking high and low for a week, in a 100 mile radius I could NOT find one anywhere! All parts houses, dealers and bearing supplies had exhausted their sources. It was obsolete! I thought, "what am I gonna do?" Out of desperation, I said, "Lord show me where to get this bearing."

I knew of a junk yard and parts house called "Abie's" on the southwest side of town. It was one of those places with real parts books and telephones with cords! NO computers.

On my way back home from the last place I knew to look, I decided to stop by Abie's to see what he suggested. Abie was an old Jewish man who made his millions over the years taking care of his customers. He was a good man.

I walked in the front door, went up to the counter and layed that old bearing down and without saying a thing, he picked it up, walked around the corner and in 30 seconds came back brushing the dust off this old box with a brand new bearing in it. YES!!!

I asked him how much and he looked it up in an old book about 1963 vintage and said, "That'll be about $48". I said, "'Thank you Lord!" I paid the man, went home and put it together and made it to Washington state just in time.

A few months later I heard that Abie retired and they closed the yard and store. I'd give anything to go back to those days again!

 

I was fueling at Kroger today and I'm the only car, the ONLY car at this gas station. The attendant ask what pump are you on??? Once again I'm the only one there. No she wasn't a Blonde.

 

I know of several people who needed a job and were qualified and they were hiring and only to get passed over ..

 

Old owner at our local salvage yard in mid 1980's had already made his living years ago and had a grumpy but funny disposition for those of us who knew him well. One Saturday afternoon, I swung by after work to look for some treasures and a guy comes in his garage and asks if he has a tail light lense for some sort of 50's Packard car, he says ....yeah but go look for yourself. About 30 minutes later the guy comes back inside the garage holding 2 lenses & its colder than snot outside... midwinter in southern Missouri , yard owner gazes at dude who'd put lenses on work bench, all the while not saying a single word to the guy "he liked to make people feel stupid" Guy finally asks him how much? He says 10 bucks each. Guy responds in a tight wad way "20 bucks" You gotta be kidding.....man. Yard owner walks over pick's lenses up looks them over careful walks over to wood furnace, open its door and pitches them in the fire! Guy responds angrily .... Why'd you do that?!?! He smiles real big..... pauses...... and says ....... If they ain't worth 20 bucks they ain't worth nuthin! Hands down one of the funniest thing I'd ever seen to date. Like I said he'd already made his living. His yard was killer with mostly 30's - 50's stuff. I use to trade him machine work ocassionally for parts, good times. Moral of story if you find something that hard to find just pay up! Flux

 

^^^I read that exact same story in Special Interest Autos years ago, except the yard owner threw the lenses on the floor and stomped on them.
Have I told you about the 710 cap or the Pontiac Goolie??

 

That was dumb.

 

"I'm at pump 2 but put it on 7 because:
1. I'm practicing my aim."
2. Kate Upton is on her way here."
3. I'm here to kill those weeds by the fence."

 

She might have thought my '61 plymouth that I was driving was an ELECTRIC car!!!

 

Yep, but funny from the owners perspective, that dude shouldn't have been a tight wad & he'd left with those lenses. Everybody's normal till you get to know them. How true ..... Both those guys were not normal.

 

Not exactly a funny story but it's a story about my favorite parts guy, ever. Henry was his name and he owned a parts store in Vista, CA. He had apparently been there forever but I didn't get to know him until the late 1970s. I think most people would describe Henry as an old curmudgeon. He never smiled, he was kind of rude and he scared away a lot of customers.

When I'd walk in the door, a typical exchange with Henry would go like this:
Henry: [scowl on his face...silence, as if to say "what the hell do YOU want?"]
Me: "Hey Henry, you got one of these?" [Holding up a part for a '34 Chevy]
Henry: [looking annoyed as hell] "You ain't gonna find that anywhere." [Let's out an exasperated sigh, turns his back on me and shuffles off into the back, grumbling and grousing]
Me: [Now, I'm not sure if I'm supposed to wait, or if Henry went to go take a piss...so I wait, sometimes 5-10 minutes]
Henry: [returns and throws the part on the counter] "$15 bucks."

I think he liked the fact that I was always working on old stuff, although we never had a conversation about it (Henry was not a conversationalist.) I never saw him look anything up in a book and he never asked me what a part was for. He already knew.

There were a lot of folks that wouldn't go into his store because they thought he was a mean old man. But I discovered that Henry would always find what you needed if you didn't run off like a scared little girl. I think that was the key, actually. Dealing with Henry was a "test of fire." If you could keep from getting pissed off or scared off, he would do his best to help you out. There were a few times when Henry didn't have the part I needed and then he would shuffle over to the phone (still grumbling) and call every parts house in the area until he found my part.

I tried to stump old Henry a couple of times but he was unflappable. "Hey Henry, I need a full gasket set for a '48 Diamond T". He didn't blink an eye, acting as if I had just asked for an oil filter for a '74 Pinto. A few days later he would have what I needed.

You'd never get a smile out of Henry but every once in a while I'd catch a twinkle in his eye. Henry loved this game.

I nominate Henry for the parts man hall of fame.

 

Saxman, seriously, if I picked up a book in a store and read that, I'd buy that book. Really good.

 

Good story. There were lots if guys like Henry. Must have been a requirement to work parts back in the day. I found most of those guys were ok if you just gave it back to them or deal with them as if you didn't notice they were being salty.

Once our mom/pop shop got bought out by a corporate store we had to keep an eye out for co-workers like that to keep them from getting fired. Lol

Had one of the old guys tell a walk in customer once "just cause you got on a monkey suit doesn't mean you're a mechanic"

Same guy would always reply in a heartbeat when asked how he was doing, "busier than a one legged man in a butt kickng contest"

Which was funny until an actual one-leggeded man asked him how he was doing. He replied right on cue.
UsHands to face)

 

I'd say just because you heard it elsewhere- doesn't mean it's a fairy tail. I saw the same move as Flux did at a swap meet. The seller was a friend of mine and the "customer" had been badgering him all day over a Model T coil box. Big bucks too. Friend wanted $5 for the coil box. Guy wanted to pay $2. My friend - Bert- stomped the shit out of that box as he snatched the $2 out of the guys hand, and said "that's what a $2 coil box looks like!" The guy picked it up and carried it off.


I could go for a handjob- Carl would you give it a tug?

 

^^^OK

 

Same older guy from my last story. Older white guy originally from Texas.

People would walk in "hablas espanol?"
He would say "no but you speak a lil English"

We would tell him "if you don't speak Spanish, how did you marry your wife?"
She was from Mexico and barely spoke English.

He says "I just told her, me and you matrimonio" haha

 

Back in the mid ‘70s I was building “hippy vans” as a sideline. Bought parts mostly from 2 distributors. I needed a part for a customer and called first one for price. Then proceeded to call second one and received a much higher quote. I asked why his price was so much higher than the other quote. The counterman asked the price quoted by the other warehouse and why didn’t I buy it from them. I told him the price and that I didn’t buy because they were out of stock. His reply (that I have never forgotten due to life lesson learned) ……….”Hell, if I didn’t have any, I could sell them that cheap too!”

 

Not a parts store, but a hardware store I worked at as a young kid back in the 60's. You remember, back in the days when a little modesty was the norm. One afternoon this middle aged well dressed lady came in with a list of plumbing stuff she needed. After she read off the short list, she asked my manager "why exactly do they call these things male and female". The look on his face as he shuffled his feet trying to come up with an answer for her was priceless. He finally replied "because on fits inside the other." The look on her face as she was figuring out what he just told her was equally priceless.
By the way, I'm totally amazed that's one the political correctness people never latched onto.