No, I won't do oil changes on your car. And I really won't do oil changes if you bring the supplies yourself. A single friend of my girlfriend had a ford focus that needed an oil change badly. My girlfriend insisted that I do it, because I service our cars all the time.
So, I call her friend and tell her not to buy anything, I would get some cash from her and buy everything from walmart. She stops at autozone and gets ripped off, and brings me 6 bottles of oil and one oil filter. The car only takes 4 quarts I think, or 4.5.
Anyways, I get the new filter on and the oil in, and start the car. The low oil light comes on, and the oil filter blows off the housing, all over my girlfriends fathers driveway.
She got the wrong filter, even though it felt fine, the filter blew off.
I was pretty mad, so I just put her old filter back on, and sent her on her way.
Never again. If I get asked to help with an oil change, I usually direct someone to the coupon section of my entertainment book.
No, I won't fix your computer either. I am a computer technician, and a friend of my girlfriends calls up and asks me to look at her computer. It is a junk computer with onboard everything. The onboard sound is burned out, and somehow her CRT monitor is dead also. I suspect that she had a power surge. I look, and the computer is plugged in directly to her wall outlet with no surge suppressor.
I remind her that her apartment is very old, and she needs at least a 10 dollar surge suppressor, and maybe even a battery backup system to at least clean up the power fluctuations. Of course this goes in one ear and out the other.
So, I have a whole basement of computer parts. I offered to sell her a 19 inch LCD monitor for 50 dollars, and I would fix the rest of the computer for free.
So I get it buttoned up, and I also throw some more ram in the computer, again for free.
So a year later, two things. She hasn't paid me the $50. Every time she sees me she says "oh I haven't forgot about the 50".. She then brings the computer back because her daughter had infected it so bad with spyware that it will barely boot.
I bring the pc home, and plug it in, sparks start flying. I figure the power supply is dead. I put in a known good one, nope the entire board is fried. I call her to tell her that her pos computer is dead, and to buy a 300 dollar one from walmart. She takes the information in a very negative way asking if I broke it. I'm done helping people I tell her, and bring back my monitor that you haven't paid for, and slam down the phone.
Fast forward a couple weeks later, no $50 and no monitor.
No, I won't help you with your life decisions either. My girlfriends father gets ripped off by everyone under the sun, its sad to see. So, I had switched my energy supplier to a non profit, and I was saving about 300 per year on my gas/electric bill. I showed him my savings, and he signed up.
Sure enough, he was on some kind of a budget plan, and he owed back-pay to the utility, so they sent him a hefty final bill to switch over. He got all ticked off, and had them call and switch his provider back, because he liked the budget monthly billing instead of actual billing is what I do. I explained to him that budget billing will charge you the highest rate for the actual cost of utility, instead of saving you anything.. But oh well!
