There comes a time in every man’s life that he must decide whether he is a victim or not. So goes the old saying.
For women, per usual, navigating to the answer of that question has a unique set of complications. One can seemingly be being walked on while really playing the long game in which she is crowned victor, not victim. Women can get away with a few more negotiating tactics than men, but I also think it’s a disposition we’re more inclined to — whether by nature or by nurture — not to be confrontational.
At first, anyway.
For example, one time I got my car washed and paid an extra $20 to have the mats steam cleaned. I never ponied up for little indulgences like this, so it was a big deal.
That’s why I was so let down that when my car made it to the end of the line, sudsy and steaming, and the gentlemen cleaners were whispering anxiously to one another, taking turns looking awkwardly inside.
“Miss,” they informed me. “We messed up.”
Instead of putting my newly crisp-as-that-$20-bill-I-paid-for-them mats in my Honda Civic, they’d put them in the Jetta that just jetted off. So sorry.
I’d typically decline to call these guys idiots straight out the gate, but with the way the story unfolded, I now hold no shame in giving them a walloping, judgmental, stinkiest-of-stink-eyes stink eye three years after the fact.
Instead of offering me an immediate refund, the head gentleman cleaner got my phone number and said they’d call me as soon as the guy in the Jetta brought back my mats. Because he would. There’s no way he wouldn’t notice those mats weren’t his.
Which, in hindsight, should have been the line of thinking that raised the first red flag. If it was that easy to tell they didn’t belong in the Jetta, how could his team have placed them in there in the first place?
What happened next was a five-month battle with this car wash company. After two weeks of not hearing anything from them, I called and inquired about my mats. No one knew what I was talking about. They took down my number and said they’d call me back.
They didn’t. I tried two more times to be polite with my followup. By the fourth or fifth call, though, I was mad. I felt taken advantage of. They didn’t take me seriously because I was being nice about it.
Clearly they were blowing me off, hoping I’d forget about the mats or just buy my own so as not to deal with them.
Clearly they didn’t know the desperate stubbornness of a 26-year-old living paycheck to paycheck.
I stopped being polite and tried a new tactic. I explained to the owner/manager that I had worked really, really hard to buy this car by myself. Getting my mats steamed was a treat for my hard work. I just wanted this thing I worked so hard for to be a complete set. This will definitely work, I thought. If anyone can empathize with the need to protect one’s small fruits of labor, it’s a small business owner.
Yeah, yeah, OK, he said. He didn’t call back.
A few weeks passed. I’m boiling by this point… this was your fuck up, not mine, and you owe me a refund and my mats… That’s the angry line of reasoning I hammered him with a few weeks later after he continued to ignore me. He yelled back at me, saying his family had been going through something or something and I should be more understanding. I might have, I said, if this hadn’t have happened five months ago and if I hadn’t have been put off this whole time like some annoying fly you needed to scrape off the radiator.
Also, wait what?! I thought I was the customer?! Why am I helping YOU feel better about this?
I killed him with kindness. That didn’t work.
I threatened him with a lawyer. That didn’t work.
I called the Better Business Bureau. There you go, girl.
Two days later after making a formal complaint, the prick “suddenly” found a supplier for my mats. Imagine that! They didn’t fit right, of course, but at least they were mine. I got my refund. My car, my symbol of independence, was shabby but whole.
My white steed defended!
Every time I drove by that car wash from then on, I stuck my middle finger out of the window, rain or shine. I also evil-eyed the inside of any black Jetta I happened upon, looking for ill–fitting floor mats.
They say cars teach you responsibility—how to take care of something. Mine taught me some people are just rotten, only looking out for themselves. But there are ways to fight them.
I just wish I had fought sooner. On a lot of things.
But mostly this car has brought me very happy memories. It made a lifestyle possible in my twenties that was full of family visits, journalism assignments, friend vacations and simple errand running that happens as I came to define my adult self. It was my physical transportation as I tried to figure out the messy internal traveling to figure out where exactly I belonged.
And it had a loud radio that was perfect for singing along to the oldies, which is probably what I did most in it.
I sold this baby, my car, this weekend and am still kind of sad about it.
I think it was too, because it gave me a funny little goodbye—a reminder to pay attention, even when singing at the top of my lungs.
I got the car detailed right before I sold it. A few days afterward I pulled the mats out of the trunk to put them back in the now-dry car.
Guess what was missing?
One of those god damn mats.
🙁
: \
🙂
Of course.
