The Ethics of Spitting Sunflower Seeds

I got the oil changed in my 1992 Geo Storm at Midas about a month ago. I had never gone to Midas before, but they were having a buy-one-get-one-free deal on oil changes, so I decided to go there. The oil change I got turned out to be just about as expensive as a regular oil change deal at any other place, but that doesn’t bother me. They didn’t list the price for oil changes on their menu of services posted above the cash register. So, being the timid, non-confrontational guy that I am, I didn’t insist on knowing the price before they changed the oil in my car. I just trusted that if it was a buy-one-get-one-free deal, it couldn’t be too much of a rip-off. (When I eat at restaurants, I don’t send back food if they get my order wrong. I humbly eat and drink what’s put before me, and I usually enjoy it. My non-confrontational, easy-going personality has served me well for most of the situations I encounter, and so I see no reason to change my relaxed way of interacting with people.)

I’d like to say that I didn’t ask the guy what the price was because I’m easy-going and carefree, but maybe a truer explanation for why I didn’t ask the guy the price of the oil change was because I thought maybe asking would have been rude. Of course that’s not bad manners. Maybe I thought I would look dumb if I asked for the price. I thought maybe I was just supposed to know how much the oil change was going to cost.

Or maybe I thought all those guys who work at car shops laugh at their customers, as soon as their customers aren’t around. I am a 26-year-old man who doesn’t know how to change the oil in my car. Of course they laughed at me, when I wasn’t around. Why wouldn’t they? The truth is, I’m intimidated by men who know how to work on cars. I didn’t give them more reason to laugh at me by confessing that I didn’t know how much the oil change was going to be.

I let them change the oil, and it ended up being forty dollars. After I paid, I got a certificate that said “good for one oil change at Midas.”

I mentioned that I had never gone to Midas before. That’s an interesting fact. That fact may not interest you at first, but let me explain why it’s interesting to me.

I’ve lived in Flagstaff for four years, and I’ve gotten the oil changed in my Storm quite a few times, so you might think I, like most people, would find an auto fix-it place that I like, and stick with it. But when it comes to getting my car serviced in easy ways (oil changes, tire rotations, etc.) I’m adulterous. I go for whatever place offers the cheapest services. I go for whatever place publishes sparkly coupons. I’ve got my oil changed at BrakeMasters, Econo Lube-N-Tune, Ace Automotive, and a bunch of mom and pop stores.

I never like going back to the same place twice. I don’t want any of them to recognize me. I don’t want them to know my name. I don’t trust any of them. They don’t trust me, either. I can just feel that.

I get the feeling when I walk into one of those places, those car fix-it places, that we’re not humans politely exchanging money for services, we’re apes fighting over a water hole, and if the rule of law weren’t in place, if there weren’t cops outside the door with their hands on their guns, the grease monkeys and I would be wrestling on the floor screaming obscenities at each other. We’d be pounding each other with wrenches and tire irons. We’d be burying each other in a pile of tires, until one of us emerged from the rubble victorious, until one of us emerged with both the desired products and the means of production.

That’s why I try to stay on the move when I get simple work done to my car. If I stay in Flagstaff much longer, I might run out of car fix-it options, and I’ll have to go back to the same place twice, and they’ll recognize me, and I can’t have that.

I only bring up my trip to Midas to say that the guy behind the counter (who had curly blonde hair, pierced ears, and greasy hands) told me that my transmission was leaky, and I better get it checked out somewhere. I told him thanks and tried to look like I already knew about the leak, even though I didn’t. I didn’t even know if my car really did have a leak, or if he was making it up so I would ask them to fix it, and they would get more money out of me.

As I was driving out of the Midas parking lot, it dawned on me that the coupon they gave me meant that I had to go back to Midas sometime. But since they were a big chain, I could get my oil changed at a Midas in Phoenix, where that curly-haired guy wouldn’t be.

After a few weeks of being nervous whenever I drove the car, (I was especially nervous when it started jerking and making weird noises. It could have been about to explode, I thought.) I decided to finally take the car to R and R Automotive and fork out whatever money I needed to once again have a reliable car.

Accordingly, yesterday I dropped off my car at R and R Automotive on North Highway 89 a little past the Flagstaff mall. R and R sits right at the base of Mount Elden. It’s a beautiful area, and I like to watch all the cars going by there. The cars that go by there are different than the cars that go by on Milton, or on the Interstate. There’s something different about the people in those cars on Highway 89.

There’s a trustworthy guy named Ron who works there at R and R. I think he started the place decades ago. And the whole business is run like Heaven. It’s filled with honest, peace making people. In fact, R and R Automotive is so good that an amateur auto mechanic friend of mine who has lived in Flagstaff his whole life once told me, “Take your car to Ron at R and R, and whatever he tells you to do, do it, and your car will be fine, and the price will be right.”

Just like the cars and people are different north of the Mall on Highway 89, the cars and people that are found at R and R are different, too. Nobody snooty works there. You never feel like an idiot at R and R, and you never feel expendable. You feel like a decent person with a soul. Why just the other day there was a guy there who wore a cowboy hat. I only saw him for a moment, but I could tell he was the type of guy who would let me in if I happened to knock on his farmhouse door late at night, looking for a place to stay. The people you’ll find at R and R are the type of people who live in Doney Park, not the type of people who live near the University, or in Downtown Flagstaff. Not that R and R is exclusive. It can and does attract people from all over town, but for some reason the atmosphere it puts off tends to attract people who grew up with lots of space around them.

I got a glimpse of one of the men who worked in the back. He was adorable, and I immediately loved him. He was elderly and wrinkled. He was straightforward, but soft-spoken. He liked his liquor now and then, and he liked to dance to the radio when his favorite song came on, when no one was looking. He looked like the type of guy who learned how to fix cars in an old-fashioned master-apprentice setting, not from a trade school. He looked like the type of guy who was quiet at night, and who spent a great amount of time outside, and who dropped out of high school to work on a farm, or in a factory maybe, so he could support his widowed mother. I saw him for only a moment, yet I knew that this was a man who was kind to his mother. I knew this because there was a light that shone from him, a light that made me want to embrace him, and be warmed by his energy. And if social mores weren’t in place to prevent me from doing so, I would have embraced him, and even now while I think of him, I regret that I did not disregard custom and embrace him.

Maybe you think my loyalty to R and R Automotive is a contradiction of what I said earlier about my mistrust of auto mechanics and their businesses, but I’ll let that contradiction stand to move on to the thing I really wanted to talk about, which is the moment I was laying underneath a tree on Mount Elden, looking over part of the town, and almost drifting off into sleep.

That was a nice break. A few hours later I found myself waiting for the bus and eating sunflower seeds.