My Trip To The Jiffy Lube®

I drive a Toyota Prius. It's actually a fairly advanced automobile, technologically speaking. A person doesn't need to insert a key to start the engine, just have the car's thumb-size sensor in his pocket. There's no key necessary to lock the doors either, as long as that sensor is near a car door. Today I discovered it was time to change the car's oil. A dashboard light came on and told me so. So I figured I'd go to the local Jiffy Lube.

I pulled the car up to the door of the Jiffy Lube's garage bay. I shut off the engine and then left my set of keys on the passenger's seat. Amongst the keys was the Prius's ignition sensor. A young, grease-stained, Jiffy Lube employee pushed me out of the way, jumped into the car, and grabbed the keys off the seat. He apparently was in a hurry. I noticed that his shirt said his name was Marvin. For a moment I watched as Marvin's oil marinated fingers toyed with the keys, his brain trying to figure out which of the keys was the ignition key.

"Hey pal," I finally uttered, "let's say you find the right key, where's the keyhole you put it in? Huh?"

Marvin began searching the dash for the elusive hole. Of course there wasn't one. But I let him look around for about thirty seconds. "I'll tell you what you do, swifty," I finally said, "put the keys back down on the seat and just push the big button that says POWER. If the engine doesn't start I'll give you the car's right front tire for free."

"Why didn't you just say tell me how to start the car in the first place?" Marvin grumbled at me, a bit of agitation in his voice.

"Well I would have if you hadn't pushed me out of the way as though I were your mother-in-law standing in front of a keg of Budweiser."

Finally Marvin got my car through the garage door and up on the rack. Meanwhile, I stood in the customer's waiting area acting as though I were reading a six month old Today's Bride magazine.

Jiffy Lube advertises that they take only ten minutes for an oil change. The company could make a fortune selling watches to their customers. This I say because my watch said that it took them almost 10 minutes to figure out how to open my car's hood. Either their advertising is wrong or my watch is.

Since I was going to be there longer than I expected, I decided I'd better use their bathroom facility. I asked a cigarette-puffing guy manning the desk where the toilet was. According to the name tag on his shirt, the man's name was Elden. Well, for an uncomfortable few seconds Eldon just stared at me, his slightly blood-shot eyes peering at me out of a weather-beaten, impassive face. At last he lethargically pulled the Pall Mall out from between his lips and tossed a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of a door around the corner.

"Thanks pal, your the best," I uttered in exasperation as I started for the restroom.

I stepped into the toilet facility and the first thing I noticed was the wet floor. "Hey pal," I barked out of the tiny room, "there's more water on this floor than there is behind Hoover Dam."
"Yeah?" he sang out. "Well for your information, that's not water."

"Really?" I howled as I glared fearfully at the flooded floor. "That's great. That's... just... great."

"Don't worry. It's only Marvin's coffee piss."

"Marvin's coffee piss?"

"That's right. It's piss but it's from coffee. Marvin had about five cups earlier today."

"Oh, well since I'm standing in coffee piss I don't feel so bad," I sang out sarcastically. "Can't Marvin hit the toilet?"

"I'll tell you what," Eldon called back to me, "you close the door and flip the light switch and you see if you can hit the toilet."

Well, my car was being serviced and my bladder was full. And since my shoes were already soaked, I figured I might as well do as instructed. So I threw the door closed with my right hand as I tossed the light switch with my left hand. The door clapped shut but the room's lone lightbulb refused to illuminate. Pitch darkness. After groveling around in the blackness for eight or ten seconds, I finally found the doorknob. I quickly pulled the door opened, stepped around the corner and barked to Eldon, "The light doesn't work!"

Without looking my way, he mumbled, "Wow. You're a real smart fella, aren't you?"

"Why the hell don't you put in a new light bulb!?" I huffed.

"Well usually we can use that room with the door opened," Eldon explained as he used his shoe to crush out his cigarette on the floor. "But we had a run of women customers this morning."

"Oh really? How inconvenient."

"Yeah. I'm willing to leave the door opened even with women in the place," stated Eldon, "but I'm from Alabama. Marvin is kind of bashful around women. So he closes the door."

"I think I'll just hold on until I'm home," I stated. "If you don't mind."

"Naw. The customer is always right."

Well, finally my car's oil was changed. Eldon rang up the service cost on the cash register. "That'll be $33.95," he muttered.

"Don't I get some discount because of urine damage to my shoes?" I remarked.

"Well I'll tell you, if you'd have come a half hour later, I might have been willing to give you some kind of shoe damage discount."

"Why in a half hour?"

"Well, ya see, Marvin has pretty regular bowels, and in a half hour he'd be about due to take a crap. You think your shoes are bad now, they would be a whole lot worse in a half hour, I guarantee you."