At least a dozen times I've been out on a road test with a young man, always between ages 18 and 24, who look over at me calmly titching off little marks with my yellow number 2 pencil upon the score sheet nestled comfortably upon my lap, when they ask this question. "How do I get a job like yours?"
Agreed, it may be 92 and the A/C doesn't work . . . but it's not a ten hour factory shift with no A/C either. What those bright young minds don't know is that:
(A) The powers that be in the Driver Training and Testing division for the State of Michigan don't like to work too hard either and because of Federal regulations controlling interstate commerce all examiners have to periodically be observed clandestinely. Or to put it more simply, it is in the State's interest to reduce the number of examiners. Over the past 4 years a total of 12 new people have been certified in the entire State, hardly replacing those that have retired or been decertified because of those observations. Dream on boys.
(B) In the test prior to theirs I could have had an inexperienced driver run through a red light, entered the freeway at 35 mph without looking into traffic going 70 to 75 mph, or tried to turn left at a red light. As two different Saudi men have asked me in the last week; "You mean you can't turn left when the light is red?" Not in this country.
I do get my down time. A right turn signal and brake light was not working on the car of one of my clients today. I give Chantel and her mother 20 minutes to get it fixed and send them across the street to a tire shop where some people have been lucky enough to get some quick help in time for us to still do the test.
I say some because the place did not have the correct bulb for the last two I sent their way. One of those guys, who was yelling at his wife and she back when they first pulled up, thought it somehow was my fault for his blinker not working and "being a veteran who just wants to get this thing done today" offered to settle things with fist-a-cuffs.
So I'm sitting in the shade waiting for Chantel and a truck moves allowing me to see across both the parking lot and street to where her little black Pontiac Sunfire is parked. A young guy is knelling behind the car trying to undo the red plastic light case. He is working on the left side but not on non functioning right side.
Six times he heads back to the shop to get what I'm guessing is the correct size screwdriver, then knells again behind the left side, never able to remove the cover. Finally he opens the front car door, turns on the left blinker, walks back and sees that it is working, goes back to the front, turns on the right blinker, heads back again and looks at the right rear light, which stays dark. Satisfied, he saunters into the open overhead door and a minute later the two women get into their little Sunfire and drive back over to where I am.
"Were they able to fix your turn signal and brake light?" I ask. "Yes" is their reply. "Please do your right signal. Please step on the brake." The right signal and brake light remain dark. When I tell them that nothing has changed they smile, told me the man said he put a new bulb in, then drive off unconcerned. Did they think I wasn't going to check a second time?
Just then a large extended cab pickup truck, back box filled with a lot of junk, pulls up. Driving is the dad of a kid that failed the driving portion of his test earlier in the day. His son and two other guys are also in the truck.
His boy's name is Jody with the last name of Town and when our secretary phoned me earlier to inform me of the appointment she said the person's name was Georgetown. I didn't know if Georgetown was the person's first name or last name or two names, but Chelsea said they phoned from a pickup truck and everyone in the truck was talking at the same time so it was a little hard to hear.
So this rough looking, unshaven guy, barks out; "Tell me why you failed my boy!" "He tried to turn right when the light was red without slowing down and there were cars moving through the intersection. I had to tell him to stop and also used the brake on my side of our rental car to keep us from a collision."
"He's just a young boy (18 and still a junior in high school). Young kids make mistakes. You should think about that." I just looked at him sternly because this was not a logic situation. Logic says that I'm partly responsible if he passes after doing that and one of those mistakes kill someone. The dad got to let off his steam and drove off.
Now you might think those things rate my job a little tougher but an even worse thing happened today. Just turned 16 year old Aaron and his mother came in a Saturn Vue. We are out driving the curve on Roger B. Chaffee and I remark that a car just like theirs didn't make the curve last week and drove straight into the building ahead. "That's terrible" the mother says. I respond, "Oh, not so bad. The man living there said he always wanted a room with a Vue."
Dead silence from both mother and son. Now that's tough.
No comments:
Post a Comment