The Lube Job
The life and times of a pit beast
1
Once upon a time, a stupid pair of pants lived in north Seattle. Specifically, the Shoreline neighborhood off Greenwood Ave and 105th Street. And even more specifically, in the year 2001 Anno Domini, which means the Year of the Lord but not Allah, apparently. Islam reckons the years since Mohammed, not god, because Allah hates attention.
But this sad, Seattle sack of slacks who is our subject was nineteen years old, give or take a hazy year. He lived poorly with his girlfriend plus another man roommate. They all shared a two bedroom apartment with a monthly rent of maybe $500. They struggled to make ends meet because his girlfriend sucked.
At more times, they struggled to ignore the vigorous love-making the upstairs neighbors got upto. Love-making is a euphemism for, “Howler monkeys banging in a rusty spring factory.” Our absolute pants of a protagonist can still hear the eeh-eh-eeh-eh of any given Sunday. Like horny, horny clockwork.
He wishes he could say the constant humping of his neighbors interrupted his school work. He would like to claim their constant jacking made it impossible to host book clubs for disadvantaged children at his home. But he had no education and no will to change it. Nor any desire to improve the lot of anyone at all.
As such, he labored at the Jiffy Lube down the street as a pit monkey. The pit referred to the long ditches a car was driven over and he spent eight hours a day down there covered in used motor oil. He pulled a respectable $7 an hour in return for this service, his health, and his youth.
When he wasn't screwing an oil filter on or off, he was draining used oil from filthy vehicular undersides. Burnt oil often sprayed into his stupid, slack-jawed mouth which hung open whenever the idiot made any kind of effort. His work days were made entirely of wrenches, oil, and the occasional shouts of his co-workers from the bright, open spaces above the pit where the humans lived.
His was a world of old oil while theirs was of the new. They put it in clean, he took it out dirty. Theirs was a world of pressure selling unneeded air filters. His was giggling as they wondered where the smell of cigarette smoke came from and was that lunatic smoking in the pit again? Did he want to kill them all?
He did, in fact. But it was hardly relevant.
All of them but his senior pit partner Ernesto. He had been around the quick lube spot long enough to earn some air under the hoods up top when he wasn't covering down below. He stuttered his way through sales in a charming, butchered English. He also hopped the fence into a residential yard next door to smoke pot on his breaks.
Ernesto, whenever he was under the hood, had a habit of sliding the dipstick in and out, in and out, making an eeh-eh-eeh-eeh sound. He always grinned like a virgin idiot when he did this and it always got a laugh from the pit beast below. Ernesto was all right people.
They were all expected to wear uniforms to give ignorant customers the impression the place was staffed with professionals instead of criminals slinging air filters. These uniforms had their names emblazoned on them alongside a patch asserting they were a part of the J-Team. Ernesto's said Nesto.
Ernesto didn't appreciate being called Nesto. So, Rob, the clinically diagnosed retard whose uniform referred to him as Rob, talked Ernesto into swapping uniforms. He wore it for two months before his boss noticed but said nothing out of fear. He knew how to handle a manager. Always berate and belittle the boss.
One day, all the intimidation and threats paid off for Rob, the troubled trundle of trousers.
One busier than usual Sunday, cars were backing up out the garage and nearly into the street. Extraordinary times call for extraordinary mistakes. The manager expressed a belief church must have just let out. But Rob heard the tell-tale eeh-eh-eeh-eh and knew the truth. Ernesto was banging an oil pan.
“Lamb! When you're done draining the Ford get up here and work the hood on the Civic!”
“Let me finish this cigarette.”
“Stop smoking down there!"
“No need to repeat yourself.”
He finished smoking and stubbed it on steel before scrambling out of the pit like a beast shambling toward Bethlehem to be born. He waddled over to the computer terminal they used to enter cars into the queue and create a record of the last time an air filter was unnecessarily upsold to a sucker.
The real money at a quick lube spot was air filters upfront and Percocet out back. As long as you know the codeword. It's nagahyde. They might pretend to not know what you're saying at your local shop, but if you repeat it thrice, they'll hook you up. Just keep at it, junky. They're trained to look confused, but don't let them fool you.
“Get up here, Lamb!”
“Right behind you, asshole.”
“Jesus!”
“Jesus didn't check this Honda in.”
“Whatever. Get below and drain it.”
“You got it, boss,” he replied as he lit another cigarette and crawled underneath the car. His smoke clenched between his teeth he did what he'd done two dozen times that day already. Drain, unscrew, screw new filter on, crush old filter, despair, repeat. He did this for thirty more minutes. Car after truck after car.
“Get up here, Lamb!”
“Let me finish this cigarette.”
“Some lady's car caught fire on I-5!”
“Doesn't seem like my problem.”
“You're fired!”
“Then I'm definitely finishing my cigarette.”
The pit beast hadn't set that car on fire. But it had been checked into the system under his name with the hood worked by the manager. The whiny bitch had left his rag on the engine block and closed it up in a fit, which caught fire at 70 miles per hour thirty minutes later.
The driver, despite her brand new air filter, was quite upset about the whole thing. The manager, despite having set the fire, fired and fingered the pit beast for the crime. The pit critter, fired for a crime he didn't commit for once, left the Jiffy Lube forever. He never did take his own car to one. He never will, either.
Not unless he needed an air filter or his oil pan penetrated with an eeh-eh-eeh-eeh.
He walked the two blocks home, took his shower, and scraped off what used motor oil he could. He stripped to his boxers, wasting no time with trifles like pants, and set to seeking a new job at his desktop computer. It didn't look great out there. The only legal job he'd had lately fired him. The other had been under the table barista work on the corner.
He sighed easy as a Sunday morning and opened his e-mail. At the top, a single mail rested where it had the last week, apparently. It said, “Play games! Get paid!” Why not? Because it's a scam, said a tiny voice he promptly ignored as the lying coward it was. Cowardice didn't fill a belly.
The benefit of hindsight showed his manager incinerating a woman's Honda was one of the best things that ever happened to him. If he hadn't been fired, he wouldn't have responded to that e-mail. And if he hadn't responded, he never would have spent twenty years making video games.
Instead of hearing eeh-eh-eeh-eh every day. And twice on Sundays.
Sic vivitur.
nice... delicious morsels of your twisted mind always enhance my day (dreary or not). keep em coming ...
👏