Get ready, get set! New Year’s Eve is upon us once again and the parties are, well, cancelled! The resurgence of the ever-so-annoying COVID-19 virus has canned many of them around here, so we’re going to have to find something else to do, but that’s not a problem for an auto technician.
We live the New Year’s party every day in our jobs! Think about it…blow outs, we see them all the time. How much fun are they to do too? After all, who wants a quick-easy routine tire swap when you can battle shredded rubber falling out all over the place and mangled steel cords just waiting to rip your hands apart? And when you get done bandaging up and sweeping and get paid .3 for your .5, it’s really a great time!
Then there’s the horns. Every shop has that one tech…the one who catches you unsuspectedly when you ask them to do something inside the car while you are looking under the hood. Just when you’re leaned in as deep as possible, they love to lay on the horn and scare the ever-living daylights out of you. A dent in the hood and a minor concussion is worth the humor for the rest of the shop.
And the ratchets, this is probably your most common tool, and there’s nothing better than when a tooth breaks and you either ram your hand into something or punch yourself in the face, depending on whether you are pushing or pulling. We can all relate to it.
But wait, the party isn’t over yet! Not until the shop prankster gets ahold of some bubble wrap and wedges it under the tire of an unsuspecting technician when they aren’t looking. Hopefully they won’t see it, so the whole shop is watching as they jump out of the car in terror, thinking they just ran over something expensive or hit something.
If all that’s not enough for your at-work party, everyone needs a healthy dose of useless knowledge, and here’s some for the new year.
What are the common New Year’s party favors called? Blow Outs are those rolled-up tubes attached to a mouthpiece. When you blow on them, they unroll about 12 inches then make a funny noise as the air exits the end.
Horns, that’s an easy one, and those weird noisemakers that you hold and spin? Those are called ratchet noisemakers. Whoever invented all these crazy things must have been an auto technician. They knew just how fun a job it is!
So, grab one of your ratchets and spin it around, get some bubble wrap from the parts department, make sure the car horn works and fix a really messy tire. You just had a New Year’s Party at work. Happy New Year from TechShop!
