AT THE CAR WASH!
One of my first jobs was at the ‘STP Car Wash’ in 1990…..
I and others could write a FREAKIN’ book about the stuff that we saw and did there! Forgive me if I remember this stuff like it happened yesterday BUT there were things that occurred that I WILL never forget…..These are GREAT examples of how NOT to run a business… I knew when Mike Carbonara and I applied when they were still building it, that we were in for quite a ride! A guy by the name of Jerry Beaver (I’m pretty sure he liked to drink A LOT!!!! KRIPES! He always REEKED of it) said to us, “I’m going to take a chance and hire you two.” Looking back, we were probably the most ‘normal’ and ‘straight-laced’ kids there!!
-One of the first days, we were getting the place ready to open and Jerry Beaver brought out a phone and began to scream in it like a madman!!!! Carb and I looked at each other and questioned it but this was just one of the few signs of things to come.
-There was a ‘healthy’ looking coworker of ours and one day we were all picking on him, REMEMBER, this was when ‘bullying’ someone was OKIE DOKIE and one of the guys told him that he would give him $5 bucks if the kid could do a push-up. THE POOR KID COULDN’T EVEN DO ONE!!!!!!!
-We were just a bunch of teenagers ‘looking up’ to “management”. Were most of them shady?? Is the Pope Catholic? This also applied to the guys in the
LUBE area who showed us that there was a room downstairs full of all the filters and supplies needed to change oil and they and us kids had no problem ‘borrowing stuff’ KRIPES!!!! I think I had enough oil filters for every oil change I had to do on my, older brother and parent's cars for the next 5 years! THANK GOD for the
statute of limitations. A person who will remain
anonymous was rebuilding an engine and needed some
STP Oil Treatment. Lo and behold, he had enough to use on 15 engine rebuilds the next day at school!! Oh don’t even get me started on the car cleaning stuff I had!!! Let’s just say that I ALWAYS had the best stuff to clean up your car!!!! This was the time that I honed my detailing skills…. Speaking of honing, I learn how to drive a
manual-speed car... I TORE UP other people's cars while learning the 'finer' points of releasing the clutch...
-Meetings were a FREE FOR ALL!!! HECK! Boike and his then-girlfriend would come to a few…. They didn’t work there BUT they showed up anyway and NO ONE cared!!! At one he was at, we had a stripper. I think it was Tony’s (manager) birthday and I’m not sure who got the stripper but we had our meetings in the main lobby and she started to strip let’s remember that the majority of us were teenage boys so we were all dead silent and staring at the woman taking her clothes off. I remember her saying “Y’all are too quiet, I need some noise to strip.” So one of us turned on the radio and then she proceeded to get NAKED!!!! HA!!!!! She made Tony get on all fours put a leash on him and bark like a dog. I will NEVER forget him saying in his deep southern accent “BOWWWWWWWWW-WWWWWWOWWWWWW!” Boike and I were reminiscing about it the other day and he said "It was the best meeting EVVVVVVVVER!" I agree with his assessment.
-It was my first experience having to DEAL with people from 'corporate', I think
First Brands was headquartered in CT, (they owned STP), they thought they knew it ALL but were just IDIOTS in suits. Mr. Dalton (a big V.P) was a crusty old man who was 99% of the time just 'bitter' but once in a while he would lighten up and tell us stories about how ummmmmmmmmmmm a woman’s parts taste like CHICKEN!!
I also learned the motto “work SMART NOT hard” from a guy that I think was a high up and used to work at Ford.
-LOOK!!!! At one time STP did tune ups and inspections, when they stopped I asked if I could have the cabinets that held all the stuff and they said sure! I STILL have them TODAY and I even gave my friend two of them……….
-STP sponsored the 43 car of Richard Petty and when the show car came to our store we would spend HOURS trying to jump start it and drive it around the parking lot. FYI, we never could. They locked up the battery so we couldn’t get to it…JERKS!
-There was an older guy there (probably in his 40s) that we ALL HATED (more than likely, it was because he made more money in tips then all of us) and one day he showed up to work all BANGED UP! He said he was in a car wreck BUT the real story was that he got SUPER DUPER drunk and tried to ride home on his 10 speed bicycle and fell off. It must have been a doozy of a wreck because he got really banged up!
-Tony (manager) also liked to DRINK and drive, he showed up at work one day in really bad shape, neck brace and all, he wrecked his car driving home from a bar!!! THERE'S A SHOCKER! He liked to ask us if we were thirsty and then saying he was too, then he proceeded to pull out a beer from a cooler that we had on the ‘front line’ to stay cool on HOT @$$ summer days…… One day he asked Jon Brown, we called him Jelly Bean, if he really drank like 42 beers and Jelly Bean responded "Buy me the beer and I will show ya" I think Tony did!!!!! HA!!
-Bruce (manager) was the funniest guy but was a full blown ‘coke head’. To this day, I STILL use the line he would use when someone would come up to him and say "Bruce I have a question for ya." He would say "OH it's about this big" and use his hands to describe his 'MANHOOD'.
-Mike was an ex-police officer and he would show us how to ‘subdue’ and pull a suspect out of a car by their head! I was the ‘assistant’ in him showing us how and he freakin’ grabbed me under my cheeks and above my throat and proceeded to pull me out of a car window….. It was a JOY let me tell ya! Oh and he was like in his 40’s and ‘doing’ A 20ish year old, Amy. I think it was customary to be an older guy and have ‘relations’ with a younger girl…….. Speaking of that, Tony (manager) was ‘doing’ LYNN and I asked Tony’s little boy “if he likes FAT CHICKS like his dad does”! Ask Joe Walker, He STILL brings that up when we see each other. Not sure if the job made us EVIL or we were already but, we wrote L-Y-N-N on Tony's windshield in Rain X so it only appeared when it rained! HA!!!!! ALSO, there was a 'HOLY ROLLER' that we worked with and we really were not fans, mostly because he was such a prude and according to him GOD DID EVERYTHING!!
Example:
One of us- "Mike, that car's got a flat tire."
Mike E.- "OH IT MUST BE BECAUSE GOD WANTED IT TO BE FLAT."
One of us- "OK JERRY FARWELL I guess that effin' nail had nothing to do with it..."
So we would do stuff to 'mess' with him like parking our cars around his so he couldn't move it!!! HA!! He would get soooooooo fired up and scream at us to "MOVE YOUR CARS MAAAAAAAAN"!
-One time after work we all went to the Redskins vs. Jets preseason game down in Columbia, SC and I fell off Scott Fasse’s
jeep, which was black, in traffic. Oh, and I MIGHT have been a little intoxicated KRIPES! I think everyone was!!! I remember all of us 'trying' to get some from Leann, an old GROUPIE who worked there..... Let's say, that I think she lived a VERY hard life!!! She would tell us about
Van Halen, She HATED
Michael Anthony’s wife and how CRAZY
David Lee Roth was, and how she had NEVER heard that crazy amount of noises coming from a hotel room EVER!!!!! $10 bucks says SHE was the cause of a lot of those ‘noises’.
-We used the SUPER STRONG vacuums to suck almost all of the change in someone’s ashtray (we left just enough so people didn’t think we took any) and then we would clean out the vacuum in the evening and collect the change so we had enough to buy some beer and have ANYONE, managers/the guys in the oil change area, over the age of 21 go and buy us some beer! If I recall, Bruce bought ALL of our beer for when we went to Myrtle Beach for our senior spring break in 92!!! HA!!!!!
-We had to shut off the HUGE blow dryer at the end of the car wash for all convertibles and old cars that had a
vinyl roof we forgot to turn it off and it blew a top to SHREDS and the lady didn't even notice!!!! She drove off like nothing ever happened!
- One time, we ran out of car wash soap and we saw a big barrel full of, what we thought was more, but it was freakin’ wheel cleaner!! HA!!!!! I think STP (First Brands, the corporation) had to pay to have a few cars be repainted because we jacked them up!
-FYI! I am laughing at the same time I type this stuff. There are more stories BUT I can’t think of all of them now. Oh and DON’T JUDGE because we ALL did ‘stuff’ at our ‘teenage jobs’….
AND LET THIS BE A
P.S.A FOR ALL OF YOU!!!! DO NOT take your car to a car wash! No matter how busy you think you are, do it yourself! TRUST ME ON THIS!!!! These ‘events’ molded me into the person I am today. When I witness something that’s out of whack today, I just think back to those days and say to myself, “that’s nothing out of the ordinary, One time at STP we (INSERT STORY HERE)………..”
The only other thing that happened and I deemed 'BLOG WORTHY' was that the house that my
Nana and step grandpa
Russ lived in had a
fire. Not gonna lie to ya, I wish it burned to the ground because WHITE TRASH have lived in it for the last 20 years and the place looks like CRAP!!! MY GOD MAN!!!! Did you see how many EFFING dogs they had to rescue!?!?!?! My cousin Chris summed it up quite well by saying " Russ probably crawled out of his grave and set the fire!!!!!" DUDE!!! He built that house and my dad helped him.... So many good memories of my youth there! EFFin' WHITE TRASH!!!!! Yeah I said it!!!!!!!!
That's all got for ya this month.... Happy birthday BABY JESUS!
And remember, I have friends in high places so pretty please with a cherry on top of it, BE FRAKIN' GOOD!!!
Just a friendly reminder; I and OTHERS notice when you don't know what you are doing but act and say you do....
