ARE YOU BEING SERVED?

Generally the answer is no. Good old-fashioned service is becoming a thing of the past. Oh for sure retail giants spend a fortune (of suppliers funds) advertising that they have the best interests of consumers at heart but this is just twaddle. Try buying  a half dozen bottles of wine at a supermarket (as I do) and you'll see that they stick the bottles in a plastic bag so they can roll around in the boot as you drive home. If you are a little old lady, or indeed any variant of the fairer sex and buy say a case of wine from a supermarket I'd be very surprised if any of the staff (who have the best interests of consumers at heart) offer to carry out the product and put it in the car.

Service industries also are becoming lax in this area. Out-placement of service support calls and economic-driven staff efficiencies generally mean that you can kiss goodbye to anything beyond the 'you get what you pay for' rule. I live in the North and I've just about given up on trying to get sevice-people to come and do things around our property. We have a weed problem. In the guttering of the house. The roof of our house is very high and we have a sloping driveway so I haven't got the equipment to get up there to clear the weeds. I'm not afraid of heights - I'd do it in a flash even if it is 30 plus feet up and counting. I have contacted 3 different outfits including the Kowhai Guys who spend a fortune on TV advertising asking for a quote and have had no response from any of them. Bastards.

So today we had a pleasant surprise.

The Rover has been having some  water problems. Old age I guess with leakage. I keep filling the reservoir and haven't been able to find the leak. When I drove into town to pick up the Old Girl who had caught the early bus from Auckland the car massively overheated. I did an emergency top-up and limped into town to pick her up and then stopped at a service station. Note the description service station. This is what my generation got used to calling petrol stations. I don't know what they call them nowadays - maybe superettes or something.
I waited until the engine had cooled a bit and then cautiously and slowly topped up the reservoir. I then started the engine so I could watch for a leak. Bloody hell, it wasn't hard. One of the smaller hoses had split and super-heated water fountained out. What must have been a pin-prick hole had drastically widened rendering the car undrivable. It needed fixing. I went inside the 'service' station to see if I could purchase a length of hose. I remember years ago that service stations would have a big section of the back wall covered with radiator hoses of all shapes and sizes and you could invariably find one to suit. Today, the section that has anything to do with motor vehicles is a small shelving unit measuring about 6ft long x 4ft high. The rest of the bloody 4000 square foot retail area is jam-packed with bread, milk, confectionery, magazines, grocery items and crap. I've recently experienced this when I had a late night tyre failure. See here:

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE SAFE

So, no hoses. This was past midday on a Saturday. What to do? Luckily I had a secret weapon - the Old Girl. She suggested, and proceeded to do so, ringing the AA.
The days of AA fully-equipped service trucks may also be a thing of the past. The message left by the Old Girl with the AA service support person was that we had a water leak that had incapacitated the car. When the truck arrived, not an AA service vehicle but a tow-truck contracted to AA, the driver had been told that we had a fuel leak. Oh well, Chinese whispers and all that - it was the driver who mentioned the Chinese whispers - I was thinking about that old "bring three and fourpence we're going to a dance" anecdote.

As it turned out we were really blessed. Our tow truck driver said that he wasn't equipped to do repairs but suggested that we load the car on his truck and drive to the nearest Repco store. We did that. At the Repco store he went in and discussed the problem with one of the guys he knew. Over the next hour and a half our truckie and the Repco guy pulled apart the car's plumbing, measured, cut and fitted hoses, reassembled the lot and filled the reservoir and got us going - all for the cost of a couple of hoses and clips and a container of coolant. Brilliant.

They declined my offer of buying them some beers. They said it was all part of the service although I knew that it was far beyond what their requirements really were. I feel really good about that and, in the 'pay it forward' way I will pass on their good deeds.