Michael Estrin's Blog, page 24
August 7, 2022
License to strive
Back in June, I wrote about seeing Top Gun: Maverick, disturbing displays of movie fandom, and my stint working for Mann Theaters during the summer of 1996. What I neglected to mention was that The Mann wasn’t my only employer that summer. For the final two weeks of that summer, before heading back to college, I also worked for a man named Jeff, who owned an auto repair shop. Like all great gigs, this one came to me through nepotism.
After The Mann canceled employee perks like free popcorn and soda, I quit. If The Mann wanted to be petty, I could be petty too.
“What are you going to do for the rest of the summer?” my dad asked.
I didn’t have an answer. Actually, I had an answer, but somehow I knew my dad wouldn’t appreciate my plan to watch old movies on cable, raid the kitchen for snacks, and generally fuck off for two weeks.
“If you don’t have a job, you can work with me,” Dad said.
I had worked for my dad plenty of times. He always needed a production assistant, or an extra hand in the shop to coil cables and help load the truck with audio gear. But The World’s Best Sound Man paid even less than The Mann, so I told my dad I had it covered. Then I called my friend Norm to see if he had any ideas.
A word about Norm. Some people are just plugged in to the nooks and crannies of society. Need a repo man for an out-of-this-world assignment? Norm knows a guy. Looking for an underground dinner club that serves panko-crusted Komodo dragon? Norm’s got the hookup. Got big trouble in little China? Norm’s on his way with the Pork Chop Express, if you get my drift.
“I’m gonna give you Jeff’s number,” Norm said. “He own this auto garage that’s kinda messed up, but also kinda rad. You’ll love it. Jeff needs drivers, and he pays cash.”
I knew how to drive, and I liked cash, so this opportunity seemed like it was right up my alley. But then I remembered that lots of people like cash, and driving isn’t exactly a rare skill in Los Angeles.
“Any tips for the job interview?” I asked.
“Yeah, when Jeff asks if you’ve got a criminal record, tell him no.”
I called Jeff and told him Norm had sent me. Jeff, the proprietor of Jeff’s Auto Repair, explained that he needed drivers to shuttle cars back and forth from dozens of Enterprise Rental car locations around Los Angeles.
“We service the rental cars,” Jeff said. “Mostly LOFRs.”
“LOFRs?”
“Lube, oil, filter, rotate the tires.”
“Oh. LOFR is an acronym. I thought you were talking about shoes. You know, loafers.”
The line went quiet. I worried I had blown my chance right out of the gate. But I guess Jeff was distracted by something happening at the garage because he yelled something about the need to “stop playing grab-ass” and “go out on a run.”
“Morons,” Jeff explained. “I’m surrounded by morons. You’re not a moron, are you?”
I answered in the negative.
“That’s good. I have too many morons. Do you have a criminal record?”
Thankfully, Norm had prepared me for that one. I told Jeff my record was clean. Jeff accepted my claim at face value, then told me to report to work tomorrow morning.
Right away, I saw what Jeff meant about the morons. The other drivers weren’t exactly firing on all cylinders.
There was Tiny, who was humungous. And there was Tiny’s friend, Marlon, who was even bigger. On my first day, Tiny and Marlon saved me from a parking ticket by threatening to “fuck up” the meter maid. I told them there was no need to threaten violence on my behalf, but they insisted that it was “no problem.”
There was Ernie The Pothead, who said he had zero fucks to give. Ernie The Pothead wasn’t kidding. On my second day, while stopped at red light, Ernie told me not to inhale, before lighting a joint. But when Ernie The Pothead went to roll down the passenger window, I noticed an LAPD cruiser next to us. “Don’t exhale,” I said. Thankfully, the light turned green before Ernie The Pothead turned blue.
Then there was The Gigolo. I never caught his real name. The Gigolo told me the “smart move” was to “screw your girlfriend’s mom at least once or twice.” I told The Gigolo his ethics were suspect, but he insisted that his logic was flawless. “It’s like a sneak preview of how your girl is going to be in the future,” The Gigolo said. On the next run, The Gigolo scored a Jaguar and disappeared for the reminder of my time at Jeff’s.
Next to lazy drivers, disappearing drivers were Jeff’s biggest problem.
“If one of these morons gets a luxury car,” Jeff told me, “they’re gone for weeks, playing grab-ass. But you’re different, kid. Someone hands you the keys to a BMW, and you bring it back. You’ve got a future in this business.”
The only other reliable driver was a part-timer known as The Old Man. He inhaled cigarettes like air and smelled of stale coffee. On our lunch breaks, the other drivers speculated that The Old Man was a contract killer.
“They call him The Butcher,” Tiny said.
“He’s killed more people than cancer,” Marlon agreed.
On a long run from Downtown to Venice, The Old Man set the record straight. He told me he used to be a butcher before retiring a few years ago.
“Never retire,” The Old Man advised me. “It’s boring. I drive for Jeff just to keep my shit tuned.”
Darren’s job was to dispatch the drivers. If we were slammed, he’d drove too. But usually Darren moved with the urgency of the DMV. He’d send three or four drivers out on a run, then use the quiet time in the garage to read Hustler and Screw. At the end of my first week, Darren gave me permission to borrow his magazines because a “college boy” like me knew how to put the smut back in alphabetical order. Darren was a surprisingly organized pervert, but he had to be. The garage’s porn library boasted more than one thousand periodicals.
On my last day, Jeff pulled me aside and made me an offer.
“Have you thought about making a career out of this?” Jeff asked.
“This?”
“Yeah, this.”
Jeff spread his arms wide, as if he meant to give the entire garage a bear hug. This wasn’t just a dirty auto garage on a derelict corner, in a bad part of town. This was an opportunity, according to Jeff.
“One go-getter like you, plus a couple good mechanics, and I can fire these morons,” Jeff said. “No more LOFRs for Enterprise. Just regular customers. Maybe restore some classic cars and sell ‘em. What do you think?”
Before I could answer, Darren interrupted.
“We’ve got a big run,” he said. “Four cars.”
I looked at Jeff.
“Think about what I said, kid.”
Darren grabbed the keys to a red Infiniti, so that he could drop us off at the Enterprise location, then take the car for the weekend. Ernie The Pothead called “shotgun.” Marlon and Tiny told me to take the “bitch seat,” then they pilled into the backseat, squeezing me between their massive frames.
“Friday night,” Tiny said as Darren drove us toward the Enterprise location. “Any plans?”
Darren tapped the steering wheel as if to say that whatever he had planned it would surely involved a “borrowed” Infiniti.
“A buddy of mine just got out of Chino,” Darren said. “We’re getting some hookers and an eight ball.”
Immediately, Tiny and Marlon expressed their approval for Darren’s weekend plans. Prostitutes and cocaine are post-prison celebratory classics. To show solidarity Ernie The Pothead said, “fuck the po-po.” Not wanting to be left out, I shared my take on Darren’s plans.
“Hookers and coke,” I said. “I guess he’s planning a return trip to Chino.”
Suddenly, the car went quiet. I had stuck my foot in my mouth, figuratively. But wedged between Tiny and Marlon, I knew that they wouldn’t think twice about sticking my foot in my mouth, literally.
Thankfully, Darren got the joke, albeit on a delay. He laughed. Ernie The Pothead laughed. Then Tiny and Marlon laughed too.
“The kid is funny,” Darren said.
At the Enterprise location, they gave Ernie The Pothead a Cadillac. But Darren, seeing an opportunity to upgrade his plans, took the Cadillac and gave Ernie The Pothead the keys to the Infiniti.
Tiny and Marlon each got a Ford Aspire. I asked if they had anything else, not because I had a problem with the Ford Aspire, but because I had spent enough time with Tiny and Marlon to know that they liked to play “bumper cars” in traffic when shuttling the rental chain’s budget model. The Enterprise clerk gave me a Nissan Altima.
As usual, I was the first driver to return to the shop.
“Where are the other guys?” Jeff asked.
I shrugged and played dumb. Jeff didn’t need to hear that Darren was on his way to pick up an ex-con, some hookers, and and an eight ball of cocaine in a borrowed Cadillac. He didn’t need to know that Ernie The Pothead had taken the Infiniti to an In ‘N Out Burger near his dealer’s house. And he really didn’t need to know that somewhere out there on the wild streets of Los Angeles, Tiny and Marlon were playing bumper cars with a pair of Ford Aspires.
“So this is it,” Jeff said. “Unless you want to stick around, kid, make a career out of this?”
Jeff took out his billfold and peeled off $100. My paycheck for the day. In two weeks, I had earned $1,000 cash driving for Jeff. That was a king’s ransom for a college student in 1996, and roughly half the amount of money I had made working for The Mann for two months.
“The money is tempting,” I said. “But I’m not looking to make a career move just yet.”
“No?”
“Sorry, no. This was just one crazy summer.”
Stick around and chat about the story!I love hearing from readers like you because it makes writing Situation Normal so much fun! If you enjoyed this story, please let me know by leaving a comment below. Or, if you’re the type of person who likes a prompt, consider the following questions:
As far as summer jobs go, driving for Jeff wasn’t bad. What was one of your memorable summer jobs?
Did you ever consider making a career out of your summer job?
Rental cars get a lot of abuse. What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done to a rental car?
One thing I forgot to mention was the old hearse at Jeff’s garage. Sometimes Jeff liked to put on a clown wig, blast classic rock at full volume, and drive around the neighborhood just to “mess with people.” Now that you know this fact about Jeff, do you see his hiring practices in a different light? Explain.
Years later, my dad needed to rent a car. He chose an Enterprise location near our house in LA. My dad told the clerk that his son drove for Jeff. The clerk gave him a 20% discount. When my dad told me this, I didn’t believe it. Do you?
Support Situation Normal by sharing it!Situation Normal grows because readers like YOU share these stories. Please forward this email to a friend (or enemy), post this story on social media, discuss it on Reddit and MetaFilter, link to it in your newsletter, or hit the share button 👇
Show your support for Situation NormalHit that ❤️ button 🙏👇
License to strive
Back in June, I wrote about seeing Top Gun: Maverick, disturbing displays of movie fandom, and my stint working for Mann Theaters during the summer of 1996. What I neglected to mention was that The Mann wasn’t my only employer that summer. For the final two weeks of that summer, before heading back to college, I also worked for a man named Jeff, who owned an auto repair shop. Like all great gigs, this one came to me through nepotism.
After The Mann canceled employee perks like free popcorn and soda, I quit. If The Mann wanted to be petty, I could be petty too.
“What are you going to do for the rest of the summer?” my dad asked.
I didn’t have an answer. Actually, I had an answer, but somehow I knew my dad wouldn’t appreciate my plan to watch old movies on cable, raid the kitchen for snacks, and generally fuck off for two weeks.
“If you don’t have a job, you can work with me,” Dad said.
I had worked for my dad plenty of times. He always needed a production assistant, or an extra hand in the shop to coil cables and help load the truck with audio gear. But The World’s Best Sound Man paid even less than The Mann, so I told my dad I had it covered. Then I called my friend Norm to see if he had any ideas.
A word about Norm. Some people are just plugged in to the nooks and crannies of society. Need a repo man for an out-of-this-world assignment? Norm knows a guy. Looking for an underground dinner club that serves panko-crusted Komodo dragon? Norm’s got the hookup. Got big trouble in little China? Norm’s on his way with the Pork Chop Express, if you get my drift.
“I’m gonna give you Jeff’s number,” Norm said. “He own this auto garage that’s kinda messed up, but also kinda rad. You’ll love it. Jeff needs drivers, and he pays cash.”
I knew how to drive, and I liked cash, so this opportunity seemed like it was right up my alley. But then I remembered that lots of people like cash, and driving isn’t exactly a rare skill in Los Angeles.
“Any tips for the job interview?” I asked.
“Yeah, when Jeff asks if you’ve got a criminal record, tell him no.”
I called Jeff and told him Norm had sent me. Jeff, the proprietor of Jeff’s Auto Repair, explained that he needed drivers to shuttle cars back and forth from dozens of Enterprise Rental car locations around Los Angeles.
“We service the rental cars,” Jeff said. “Mostly LOFRs.”
“LOFRs?”
“Lube, oil, filter, rotate the tires.”
“Oh. LOFR is an acronym. I thought you were talking about shoes. You know, loafers.”
The line went quiet. I worried I had blown my chance right out of the gate. But I guess Jeff was distracted by something happening at the garage because he yelled something about the need to “stop playing grab-ass” and “go out on a run.”
“Morons,” Jeff explained. “I’m surrounded by morons. You’re not a moron, are you?”
I answered in the negative.
“That’s good. I have too many morons. Do you have a criminal record?”
Thankfully, Norm had prepared me for that one. I told Jeff my record was clean. Jeff accepted my claim at face value, then told me to report to work tomorrow morning.
Right away, I saw what Jeff meant about the morons. The other drivers weren’t exactly firing on all cylinders.
There was Tiny, who was humungous. And there was Tiny’s friend, Marlon, who was even bigger. On my first day, Tiny and Marlon saved me from a parking ticket by threatening to “fuck up” the meter maid. I told them there was no need to threaten violence on my behalf, but they insisted that it was “no problem.”
There was Ernie The Pothead, who said he had zero fucks to give. Ernie The Pothead wasn’t kidding. On my second day, while stopped at red light, Ernie told me not to inhale, before lighting a joint. But when Ernie The Pothead went to roll down the passenger window, I noticed an LAPD cruiser next to us. “Don’t exhale,” I said. Thankfully, the light turned green before Ernie The Pothead turned blue.
Then there was The Gigolo. I never caught his real name. The Gigolo told me the “smart move” was to “screw your girlfriend’s mom at least once or twice.” I told The Gigolo his ethics were suspect, but he insisted that his logic was flawless. “It’s like a sneak preview of how your girl is going to be in the future,” The Gigolo said. On the next run, The Gigolo scored a Jaguar and disappeared for the reminder of my time at Jeff’s.
Next to lazy drivers, disappearing drivers were Jeff’s biggest problem.
“If one of these morons gets a luxury car,” Jeff told me, “they’re gone for weeks, playing grab-ass. But you’re different, kid. Someone hands you the keys to a BMW, and you bring it back. You’ve got a future in this business.”
The only other reliable driver was a part-timer known as The Old Man. He inhaled cigarettes like air and smelled of stale coffee. On our lunch breaks, the other drivers speculated that The Old Man was a contract killer.
“They call him The Butcher,” Tiny said.
“He’s killed more people than cancer,” Marlon agreed.
On a long run from Downtown to Venice, The Old Man set the record straight. He told me he used to be a butcher before retiring a few years ago.
“Never retire,” The Old Man advised me. “It’s boring. I drive for Jeff just to keep my shit tuned.”
Darren’s job was to dispatch the drivers. If we were slammed, he’d drove too. But usually Darren moved with the urgency of the DMV. He’d send three or four drivers out on a run, then use the quiet time in the garage to read Hustler and Screw. At the end of my first week, Darren gave me permission to borrow his magazines because a “college boy” like me knew how to put the smut back in alphabetical order. Darren was a surprisingly organized pervert, but he had to be. The garage’s porn library boasted more than one thousand periodicals.
On my last day, Jeff pulled me aside and made me an offer.
“Have you thought about making a career out of this?” Jeff asked.
“This?”
“Yeah, this.”
Jeff spread his arms wide, as if he meant to give the entire garage a bear hug. This wasn’t just a dirty auto garage on a derelict corner, in a bad part of town. This was an opportunity, according to Jeff.
“One go-getter like you, plus a couple good mechanics, and I can fire these morons,” Jeff said. “No more LOFRs for Enterprise. Just regular customers. Maybe restore some classic cars and sell ‘em. What do you think?”
Before I could answer, Darren interrupted.
“We’ve got a big run,” he said. “Four cars.”
I looked at Jeff.
“Think about what I said, kid.”
Darren grabbed the keys to a red Infiniti, so that he could drop us off at the Enterprise location, then take the car for the weekend. Ernie The Pothead called “shotgun.” Marlon and Tiny told me to take the “bitch seat,” then they pilled into the backseat, squeezing me between their massive frames.
“Friday night,” Tiny said as Darren drove us toward the Enterprise location. “Any plans?”
Darren tapped the steering wheel as if to say that whatever he had planned it would surely involved a “borrowed” Infiniti.
“A buddy of mine just got out of Chino,” Darren said. “We’re getting some hookers and an eight ball.”
Immediately, Tiny and Marlon expressed their approval for Darren’s weekend plans. Prostitutes and cocaine are post-prison celebratory classics. To show solidarity Ernie The Pothead said, “fuck the po-po.” Not wanting to be left out, I shared my take on Darren’s plans.
“Hookers and coke,” I said. “I guess he’s planning a return trip to Chino.”
Suddenly, the car went quiet. I had stuck my foot in my mouth, figuratively. But wedged between Tiny and Marlon, I knew that they wouldn’t think twice about sticking my foot in my mouth, literally.
Thankfully, Darren got the joke, albeit on a delay. He laughed. Ernie The Pothead laughed. Then Tiny and Marlon laughed too.
“The kid is funny,” Darren said.
At the Enterprise location, they gave Ernie The Pothead a Cadillac. But Darren, seeing an opportunity to upgrade his plans, took the Cadillac and gave Ernie The Pothead the keys to the Infiniti.
Tiny and Marlon each got a Ford Aspire. I asked if they had anything else, not because I had a problem with the Ford Aspire, but because I had spent enough time with Tiny and Marlon to know that they liked to play “bumper cars” in traffic when shuttling the rental chain’s budget model. The Enterprise clerk gave me a Nissan Altima.
As usual, I was the first driver to return to the shop.
“Where are the other guys?” Jeff asked.
I shrugged and played dumb. Jeff didn’t need to hear that Darren was on his way to pick up an ex-con, some hookers, and and an eight ball of cocaine in a borrowed Cadillac. He didn’t need to know that Ernie The Pothead had taken the Infiniti to an In ‘N Out Burger near his dealer’s house. And he really didn’t need to know that somewhere out there on the wild streets of Los Angeles, Tiny and Marlon were playing bumper cars with a pair of Ford Aspires.
“So this is it,” Jeff said. “Unless you want to stick around, kid, make a career out of this?”
Jeff took out his billfold and peeled off $100. My paycheck for the day. In two weeks, I had earned $1,000 cash driving for Jeff. That was a king’s ransom for a college student in 1996, and roughly half the amount of money I had made working for The Mann for two months.
“The money is tempting,” I said. “But I’m not looking to make a career move just yet.”
“No?”
“Sorry, no. This was just one crazy summer.”
Stick around and chat about the story!I love hearing from readers like you because it makes writing Situation Normal so much fun! If you enjoyed this story, please let me know by leaving a comment below. Or, if you’re the type of person who likes a prompt, consider the following questions:
As far as summer jobs go, driving for Jeff wasn’t bad. What was one of your memorable summer jobs?
Did you ever consider making a career out of your summer job?
Rental cars get a lot of abuse. What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done to a rental car?
One thing I forgot to mention was the old hearse at Jeff’s garage. Sometimes Jeff liked to put on a clown wig, blast classic rock at full volume, and drive around the neighborhood just to “mess with people.” Now that you know this fact about Jeff, do you see his hiring practices in a different light? Explain.
Years later, my dad needed to rent a car. He chose an Enterprise location near our house in LA. My dad told the clerk that his son drove for Jeff. The clerk gave him a 20% discount. When my dad told me this, I didn’t believe it. Do you?
Support Situation Normal by sharing it!Situation Normal grows because readers like YOU share these stories. Please forward this email to a friend (or enemy), post this story on social media, discuss it on Reddit and MetaFilter, link to it in your newsletter, or hit the share button 👇
Show your support for Situation NormalHit that ❤️ button 🙏👇
August 3, 2022
Big Wednesday #5
Even if you live under a rock, you’ve probably heard that interest rates are rising, and therefore the cost of financing the rock under which you live is increasing. Maybe that explains why I’ve been getting so many calls about refinancing our mortgage “before rates rise again!” Here’s one from a caller named Ray.
“Michael, now is a great time to refinance,” Ray began. “Are you interested in a new mortgage?”
“I dunno, Ray. My current mortgage is a real peach.”
“What’s your interest rate?”
“It’s just a hair under three percent.”
“Damn, that’s lucky.”
“It’s not luck, it’s skill.”
Ray laughed, but I didn’t miss a beat.
“The bank wanted to charge us six percent,” I continued. “But I arm-wrestled the guy at the mortgage desk, slammed his hand down so hard I shattered his bones and knocked a stack of complimentary calendars onto the floor.”
“You’re joking.”
“I don’t joke about money, Ray. Now how much are you gonna pay me to take out a mortgage?”
“Well, our rates are around five percent, but that’s what you would pay us…”
“Five percent!? I don’t get out of bed for less than ten percent. Frankly, I should be sitting on a beach earning twenty percent, but some asshole cop from New York threw my partner off a building at Nakatomi Plaza in LA.”
“Huh?”
“Tell you what, Ray. I’ll take three hundred grand at ten percent per month.”
“Ten percent?”
“That’s right. Drop the three hundred grand off at my place. Cash, no crypto. For the monthly vig, I accept direct deposit, Venmo, and Zelle.”
“Um… I’m not sure you understand how mortgages work. You would be paying us, Michael.”
“I can’t make any money that way.”
“Well, no, that’s how we make money.”
“Wait a minute, Ray. Wait just one dang minute. You mean to tell me you’re in the business of calling strangers who don’t have money, signing them up for a mortgage, and then collecting payments from them every month?”
“Yeah.”
“And that works? That’s a solid business?”
“It’s a great business.”
“Well, Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker! That’s some gangster shit, Ray. I wish we had a guy with your brains on the Nakatomi Plaza job. Are you hiring? I’ve got some Silicon Valley outfits kicking the tires on my resume, but I’d much rather sell mortgages.”
Overheard magicSpencer Irwin wrote to share a magical overhead memory from his youth.
When I was probably around 12 or so, a friend and I stopped into a local hobby store so he could buy some baseball cards. But the store was more geared toward D&D and Magic the Gathering. The moment we opened the door and stepped inside we heard somebody protest:
“But that’s not what a REAL wizard would do!”
I love this overheard because 1) it implies that there are “real” wizards and 2) it leaves us with an irresistible mystery, namely what was this fake wizard attempting do?
By the way, Spencer has a Substack that hasn’t been updated since January. But don’t let that stop you. People still read the Game of Thrones books, even though George R.R. Martin doesn’t update much either. Check out Spencer’s Substack here.
They Screw You at the Car DealershipThere were some great responses to my story about leasing a Ford Fiesta. If you haven’t done so already, I encourage you to read the comments. One personal favorite was Elizabeth Marro’s story about losing her beloved VW Rabbit and then taking that loss out on her subsequent cars. Check out Spark, Elizabeth’s fantastic Substack!
Something I learned from the responses to last Sunday’s Situation Normal is that it’s common to get screwed when buying or leasing a car. Maybe that’s why this car dealer’s TikTok about not getting “fucked” resonated with me. Press ▶️ to hear his pitch👇
@mydad317"selling cars and delivering dreams baby" #mydad317 Your welcome[image error]Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browserDis misinformation is bad news
I didn’t receive any job offers for the other Michael Estrin this week, but I did receive an offer to move Situation Normal off of Substack and onto “the highest quality” platform. Here’s what George from Overlooked wrote:
George’s offer sounded great, but the fact that he thought I was monetizing Situation Normal led me to believe that perhaps he had been given some bad information. Here’s what I wrote back:
To my surprise, George, or an artificial intelligence in his employee, wrote back!
I haven’t replied to George yet because I wanted to ask YOU how I should repsond.
Stick around and chat!You know the drill. I’ve got questions, you may or may not have answers.
Can I interest you in a mortgage? Please note: my rates are considered usury in 49 out of 50 states (you rule, Idaho!)
Are wizards real? If so, what’s something a real wizard wouldn’t do? Right answers welcome, wrong answers strongly encouraged!
Would you buy a car from the guy in the TikTok video? Or, if you already bought a car from that guy, did you get fucked?
George seems to think I should monetize Situation Normal. Is he right?
Contribute to Situation Normal!Do you have a question about something I’ve written? Got a hilarious anecdote you want to share? See something on the internet, or IRL, that made you LOL or WTF? Find a funny typo in the wild? Send your submissions to me at 👇
michael.j.estrin@gmail.com
When submitting, please tell me if you’d like to use an alias, or do the first name last initial thing. If you write a newsletter, I’m happy to link to it, so let me know!
Until Sunday, when I’ll have a story about… well, I’m not sure yet. But I will have a story
Hit the ❤️ button🙏👇
Big Wednesday #5
Even if you live under a rock, you’ve probably heard that interest rates are rising, and therefore the cost of financing the rock under which you live is increasing. Maybe that explains why I’ve been getting so many calls about refinancing our mortgage “before rates rise again!” Here’s one from a caller named Ray.
“Michael, now is a great time to refinance,” Ray began. “Are you interested in a new mortgage?”
“I dunno, Ray. My current mortgage is a real peach.”
“What’s your interest rate?”
“It’s just a hair under three percent.”
“Damn, that’s lucky.”
“It’s not luck, it’s skill.”
Ray laughed, but I didn’t miss a beat.
“The bank wanted to charge us six percent,” I continued. “But I arm-wrestled the guy at the mortgage desk, slammed his hand down so hard I shattered his bones and knocked a stack of complimentary calendars onto the floor.”
“You’re joking.”
“I don’t joke about money, Ray. Now how much are you gonna pay me to take out a mortgage?”
“Well, our rates are around five percent, but that’s what you would pay us…”
“Five percent!? I don’t get out of bed for less than ten percent. Frankly, I should be sitting on a beach earning twenty percent, but some asshole cop from New York threw my partner off a building at Nakatomi Plaza in LA.”
“Huh?”
“Tell you what, Ray. I’ll take three hundred grand at ten percent per month.”
“Ten percent?”
“That’s right. Drop the three hundred grand off at my place. Cash, no crypto. For the monthly vig, I accept direct deposit, Venmo, and Zelle.”
“Um… I’m not sure you understand how mortgages work. You would be paying us, Michael.”
“I can’t make any money that way.”
“Well, no, that’s how we make money.”
“Wait a minute, Ray. Wait just one dang minute. You mean to tell me you’re in the business of calling strangers who don’t have money, signing them up for a mortgage, and then collecting payments from them every month?”
“Yeah.”
“And that works? That’s a solid business?”
“It’s a great business.”
“Well, Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker! That’s some gangster shit, Ray. I wish we had a guy with your brains on the Nakatomi Plaza job. Are you hiring? I’ve got some Silicon Valley outfits kicking the tires on my resume, but I’d much rather sell mortgages.”
Overheard magicSpencer Irwin wrote to share a magical overhead memory from his youth.
When I was probably around 12 or so, a friend and I stopped into a local hobby store so he could buy some baseball cards. But the store was more geared toward D&D and Magic the Gathering. The moment we opened the door and stepped inside we heard somebody protest:
“But that’s not what a REAL wizard would do!”
I love this overheard because 1) it implies that there are “real” wizards and 2) it leaves us with an irresistible mystery, namely what was this fake wizard attempting do?
By the way, Spencer has a Substack that hasn’t been updated since January. But don’t let that stop you. People still read the Game of Thrones books, even though George R.R. Martin doesn’t update much either. Check out Spencer’s Substack here.
They Screw You at the Car DealershipThere were some great responses to my story about leasing a Ford Fiesta. If you haven’t done so already, I encourage you to read the comments. One personal favorite was Elizabeth Marro’s story about losing her beloved VW Rabbit and then taking that loss out on her subsequent cars. Check out Spark, Elizabeth’s fantastic Substack!
Something I learned from the responses to last Sunday’s Situation Normal is that it’s common to get screwed when buying or leasing a car. Maybe that’s why this car dealer’s TikTok about not getting “fucked” resonated with me. Press ▶️ to hear his pitch👇
@mydad317"selling cars and delivering dreams baby" #mydad317 Your welcome[image error]Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browserDis misinformation is bad news
I didn’t receive any job offers for the other Michael Estrin this week, but I did receive an offer to move Situation Normal off of Substack and onto “the highest quality” platform. Here’s what George from Overlooked wrote:
George’s offer sounded great, but the fact that he thought I was monetizing Situation Normal led me to believe that perhaps he had been given some bad information. Here’s what I wrote back:
To my surprise, George, or an artificial intelligence in his employee, wrote back!
I haven’t replied to George yet because I wanted to ask YOU how I should repsond.
Stick around and chat!You know the drill. I’ve got questions, you may or may not have answers.
Can I interest you in a mortgage? Please note: my rates are considered usury in 49 out of 50 states (you rule, Idaho!)
Are wizards real? If so, what’s something a real wizard wouldn’t do? Right answers welcome, wrong answers strongly encouraged!
Would you buy a car from the guy in the TikTok video? Or, if you already bought a car from that guy, did you get fucked?
George seems to think I should monetize Situation Normal. Is he right?
Contribute to Situation Normal!Do you have a question about something I’ve written? Got a hilarious anecdote you want to share? See something on the internet, or IRL, that made you LOL or WTF? Find a funny typo in the wild? Send your submissions to me at 👇
michael.j.estrin@gmail.com
When submitting, please tell me if you’d like to use an alias, or do the first name last initial thing. If you write a newsletter, I’m happy to link to it, so let me know!
Until Sunday, when I’ll have a story about… well, I’m not sure yet. But I will have a story
Hit the ❤️ button🙏👇
July 31, 2022
We leased a Ford Fiesta in 2013. The party never stopped (but sometimes it stalled)
The other day, I received an email with the following subject line: Important Safety Recall Regarding Your Vehicle from Santa Monica Ford Lincoln. A lesser man might’ve panicked. A more cynical man might’ve thought he was being scammed. But I knew better. This email was sent to me for two reasons:
Nine years ago, we signed a three-year lease on a Ford Fiesta.
Ford manages their email lists about as well as they make cars.
But sometimes an errant belch from a mismanaged data mine can be a godsend. Case in point: I didn’t know what I was going to write about this week, but now I do.
Sign this lease and party with FordBack in 2013, Christina and I needed a new car ASAP. We had tied the knot two years earlier, and my parents had given Christina their used 2003 Lexus. That car saw us through some tough moments: my broken ankle, a failed start-up, and the Mayan Apocalypse. But then one day, some dipshit slammed into Christina’s Lexus, totaling the vehicle. A few days after our insurance company cut us a check, we began shopping for a new car.
“What kind of car should we get?” Christina asked.
“No clue. I don’t know jack about cars.”
“What’s your dream car?”
“We can’t afford my dream car.”
“Just play along,” Christina said. “Tell me your dream car, and maybe that’ll help inspire our search.”
“OK, my dream car is a Toyota Corolla.”
“You already drive a Toyota Corolla, honey.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t let me finish. My dream car is a Toyota Corolla with a driver who makes a six-figure salary, with health, dental, pension, and six weeks paid vacation.”
“You’re right, we definitely can’t afford that.”
Eventually, for reasons I don’t remember, we ended up at the North Hollywood Ford dealership, which incidentally, is where dreams go to die.
Our salesman was new. He looked like he was twelve going on thirteen. I think we were his first customers ever. Speaking of firsts, this was our first major financial decision as a married couple. We were no match for this novice car salesman.
We told the salesman we were on a budget. He showed us a silver Ford Fiesta. Christina was able to pair her phone to the stereo on the first try (something of a technology coup in those days). We took it for a test drive and everything went fine. Back at the dealership, the rookie salesman played his ace card.
“Check this out,” he said as he flipped a switch on the dashboard.
Suddenly, the Ford Fiesta’s interior lights began to change colors: blue, purple, green.
“Party mode,” the salesman said.
We immediately agreed to sign a three-year lease. Six hours later, we finished the paperwork for a silver Ford Fiesta, named it The Silver Bullet Band, and drove home.
This fiesta is no partyAbout a month into the lease, we noticed something odd about The Silver Bullet Band. Although our Ford Fiesta had an automatic transmission, things would go kerflooey at low speeds.
“It feels like a manual transmission being driven by someone who doesn’t know how to drive stick,” Christina said.
We decided to swap cars for a few days. Christina drove my Corolla, The Midnight Rider, and I drove The Silver Bullet Band.
“Yeah, that transmission is fucked six ways from Sunday,” I said. “It reminds me of when I learned to drive stick. The car would shake until I managed to get it into gear, but I always had trouble getting into gear because the shaking made me giggle, and my driving instructor would yell at me about how I needed to be serious.”
“That all tracks, especially the image of young Michael giggling while he mashes the gears on a manual transmission.”
Since The Silver Bullet Band was an automatic, and therefore immune to the bumping & grinding associated with poorly-operated manual transmissions, we decided to take it back to the dealership so their mechanics could take a look.
“Nothing wrong with the transmission per se,” the mechanic told me.
“Per se?”
The mechanic looked around to make sure nobody was eavesdropping.
“Truth?” he asked.
“Please.”
“The geniuses at Ford,” he began, “and you understand when I use the word genius, I’m being sarcastic because we’re really talking about idiots… well, the idiots who designed this transmission tried to do the impossible.”
“The impossible?”
“Yeah, they tried to marry the efficiency of a manual transmission with the user experience of an automatic. There’s a computer chip that actually does the shifting.”
“And there’s something wrong with the chip?”
“No, the chip works perfectly.”
“Then why does it shake so badly in low gear?”
“Because this whole idea is dog shit.”
“You’re saying it’s a design flaw?”
The mechanic looked around again to make sure we were alone.
“I didn’t say anything. But if I were you, I’d get a different car.”
Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option. I took The Silver Bullet Band home, explained the situation to Christina, and for the next year, whenever we drove our Ford Fiesta, we made believe we were student drivers struggling to master a manual transmission.
Then one day, Ford sent us a letter explaining that there was a recall on our Fiesta’s transmission. The mechanic had been right about the design flaw, although that’s not how Ford’s lawyers put it in the letter. Regardless, Ford invited us to schedule an appointment to replace the transmission free of charge. So, I dropped The Silver Bullet Band off at North Hollywood Ford. A week later, I came back to pick it up.
“Did they finally dump that stupid idea for a transmission?” I asked the mechanic.
“Nope. It’s the same design, but this time they swear it works.”
Then the mechanic laughed, which was the opposite of comforting.
The new transmission didn’t improve anything. So, I called Ford corporate and gave them a piece of my mind. Naturally, Ford gave my complaint their full attention, which is to say, a vice president of customer service uttered some boilerplate words of sympathy, explained that nothing could be done, and then assured me that I was a “valued customer.”
A few months after my experience with Ford corporate, I went back to the dealership and demanded that they fix the transmission. To my surprise, they agreed! But to my chagrin, the second replacement transmission suffered from the same design flaw.
“Are we just supposed to drive this piece of shit car forever?” Christina asked.
At first, I didn’t know what to say. But Christina’s phrasing—piece of shit car—reminded me of the underrated Adam Sandler song, Ode to My Car.
“So, what’s the plan here?” Christina asked. “Are we just going to drive around in a shaking Ford Fiesta that can’t get into gear, listening to Adam Sandler sing about his piece of shit car?”
While that didn’t seem like a solution in the classic sense of the word, the Sandler plan did seem like a decent way to cope. And that’s what we did. We coped until the lease came to an end. And on that day of freedom, I drove that shaking piece of shit Ford Fiesta back to the dealership in North Hollywood.
“Is there anything we can do to put you in a new car?” a salesman asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “You can sell me a Toyota.”
Post Mortem FiestaOf course, this three-year lease wasn’t all fun and games. There were times when our piece of shit car really got under our skin. In fact, driving around in a shaking shit bucket, as I sometimes referred to The Silver Bullet Band, occasionally caused some bickering. After one argument, Christina suggested we do a post mortem on our car search and the decision to lease a Ford Fiesta.
“Post mortem, who died?”
“It’s just a phrase we use when we do an analysis after a project, or a product launch,” Christina said. “I do them all the time.”
“You mean, like, we talk about what went right, what went wrong, and then we try to learn from our mistakes?”
“You got it.”
So, we talked about our ill-fated car search. Christina walked us through a timeline of our search, from reading online reviews to showing up at the Ford dealership in North Hollywood. As much as possible, we tried to stick to facts without inserting our feelings into the analysis. It took about an hour.
We learned that we could’ve done more research into the Ford Fiesta. But of course, you can always do more research. We also learned that we make better decisions when we don’t feel like we’re under the gun to solve a stressful problem like transportation. But of course, minimizing stress isn’t always possible, even if doing so contributes to better decision-making. The real learning, however, was that we both made the exact same mistake at the car dealership.
“I didn’t really question the salesman because I thought you wanted the Fiesta, and I didn’t want to upset your plans,” I said. “You’re the person I respect most when it comes to making decisions. I figured if you were on board, don’t be an idiot and rock the boat. Is that weird?”
“Same thing with me! I respect your judgment more than anyone else in the world, Michael. I thought you were all in on the Fiesta, so I didn’t say anything.”
“Wait a minute. Did we lease a piece of shit Ford Fiesta because neither one of us wanted to look like a dumbass in front of the person we love?”
“I think so,” Christina said.
“Crazy.”
“Bonkers.”
“So, what do we do with this information?”
“Well, what we got here is failure to communicate.”
Whether she knew it or not, Christina was quoting the dirtbag-poet Axl Rose, who had sampled those very words from a speech in Cool Hand Luke for the opening of the Guns & Roses classic Civil War. But I didn’t point that out because I didn’t want to interrupt Christina’s flow.
“The thing we didn’t do,” Christina continued, “was have a pre-meeting?”
“A pre-meeting?”
“It’s a meeting between you and me before we talk to a third-party. The idea is we use that time to get on the same page about what we want. Plus, we can game out negotiation strategies, set expectations, articulate dealbreakers, and even pre-plan a good cop / bad cop routine.”
“Wow. This seems way better than our previous half-assed approach.”
“Absolutely. The pre-meeting is a full-ass approach.”
We decided then and there that every big decision—a new car, buying a home, investments, etc.—would require a pre-meeting. In fact, we’ve been doing pre-meetings ever since the Ford Fiesta Fiasco. Whenever friends ask us for relationship advice, we stress the value of the pre-meeting.
“If a couple isn’t hashtag aligned,” Christina likes to say, “they’re hashtag fucked.”
Stick around and chat about the story!I love hearing from readers like you because it makes writing Situation Normal so much fun! If you enjoyed this story, please let me know by leaving a comment below. Or, if you’re the type of person who likes a prompt, consider the following questions:
The Ford Fiesta was the worst car I’ve ever owned or leased. What was the worst car you ever owned or leased?
The names of our previous cars were music references: Midnight Rider and The Silver Bullet Band. Our current cars are Shuttle Tydirium (Star Wars) and Dark Helmet (Spaceballs). Do you name your vehicles? If so, please share those names!
I wasn’t kidding about my dream car. It remains a Toyota Corolla with a driver who makes a six-figure salary, with health, dental, pension, and six weeks paid vacation. What’s your dream car?
If you’re lucky enough to live without a car, how do you get around? Please share everything you can about your car-free paradise!
Pre-meetings have helped us work through some difficult decisions with minimal stress. What’s your best piece of relationship advice?
Support Situation Normal by sharing it!Situation Normal grows because readers like YOU share these stories. Please forward this email to a friend (or enemy), post this story on social media, discuss it on Reddit and MetaFilter, link to it in your newsletter, or hit the share button 👇
Still wanna show your support?Hit that ❤️ button 🙏👇
We leased a Ford Fiesta in 2013. The party never stopped (but sometimes it stalled)
The other day, I received an email with the following subject line: Important Safety Recall Regarding Your Vehicle from Santa Monica Ford Lincoln. A lesser man might’ve panicked. A more cynical man might’ve thought he was being scammed. But I knew better. This email was sent to me for two reasons:
Nine years ago, we signed a three-year lease on a Ford Fiesta.
Ford manages their email lists about as well as they make cars.
But sometimes an errant belch from a mismanaged data mine can be a godsend. Case in point: I didn’t know what I was going to write about this week, but now I do.
Sign this lease and party with FordBack in 2013, Christina and I needed a new car ASAP. We had tied the knot two years earlier, and my parents had given Christina their used 2003 Lexus. That car saw us through some tough moments: my broken ankle, a failed start-up, and the Mayan Apocalypse. But then one day, some dipshit slammed into Christina’s Lexus, totaling the vehicle. A few days after our insurance company cut us a check, we began shopping for a new car.
“What kind of car should we get?” Christina asked.
“No clue. I don’t know jack about cars.”
“What’s your dream car?”
“We can’t afford my dream car.”
“Just play along,” Christina said. “Tell me your dream car, and maybe that’ll help inspire our search.”
“OK, my dream car is a Toyota Corolla.”
“You already drive a Toyota Corolla, honey.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t let me finish. My dream car is a Toyota Corolla with a driver who makes a six-figure salary, with health, dental, pension, and six weeks paid vacation.”
“You’re right, we definitely can’t afford that.”
Eventually, for reasons I don’t remember, we ended up at the North Hollywood Ford dealership, which incidentally, is where dreams go to die.
Our salesman was new. He looked like he was twelve going on thirteen. I think we were his first customers ever. Speaking of firsts, this was our first major financial decision as a married couple. We were no match for this novice car salesman.
We told the salesman we were on a budget. He showed us a silver Ford Fiesta. Christina was able to pair her phone to the stereo on the first try (something of a technology coup in those days). We took it for a test drive and everything went fine. Back at the dealership, the rookie salesman played his ace card.
“Check this out,” he said as he flipped a switch on the dashboard.
Suddenly, the Ford Fiesta’s interior lights began to change colors: blue, purple, green.
“Party mode,” the salesman said.
We immediately agreed to sign a three-year lease. Six hours later, we finished the paperwork for a silver Ford Fiesta, named it The Silver Bullet Band, and drove home.
This fiesta is no partyAbout a month into the lease, we noticed something odd about The Silver Bullet Band. Although our Ford Fiesta had an automatic transmission, things would go kerflooey at low speeds.
“It feels like a manual transmission being driven by someone who doesn’t know how to drive stick,” Christina said.
We decided to swap cars for a few days. Christina drove my Corolla, The Midnight Rider, and I drove The Silver Bullet Band.
“Yeah, that transmission is fucked six ways from Sunday,” I said. “It reminds me of when I learned to drive stick. The car would shake until I managed to get it into gear, but I always had trouble getting into gear because the shaking made me giggle, and my driving instructor would yell at me about how I needed to be serious.”
“That all tracks, especially the image of young Michael giggling while he mashes the gears on a manual transmission.”
Since The Silver Bullet Band was an automatic, and therefore immune to the bumping & grinding associated with poorly-operated manual transmissions, we decided to take it back to the dealership so their mechanics could take a look.
“Nothing wrong with the transmission per se,” the mechanic told me.
“Per se?”
The mechanic looked around to make sure nobody was eavesdropping.
“Truth?” he asked.
“Please.”
“The geniuses at Ford,” he began, “and you understand when I use the word genius, I’m being sarcastic because we’re really talking about idiots… well, the idiots who designed this transmission tried to do the impossible.”
“The impossible?”
“Yeah, they tried to marry the efficiency of a manual transmission with the user experience of an automatic. There’s a computer chip that actually does the shifting.”
“And there’s something wrong with the chip?”
“No, the chip works perfectly.”
“Then why does it shake so badly in low gear?”
“Because this whole idea is dog shit.”
“You’re saying it’s a design flaw?”
The mechanic looked around again to make sure we were alone.
“I didn’t say anything. But if I were you, I’d get a different car.”
Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option. I took The Silver Bullet Band home, explained the situation to Christina, and for the next year, whenever we drove our Ford Fiesta, we made believe we were student drivers struggling to master a manual transmission.
Then one day, Ford sent us a letter explaining that there was a recall on our Fiesta’s transmission. The mechanic had been right about the design flaw, although that’s not how Ford’s lawyers put it in the letter. Regardless, Ford invited us to schedule an appointment to replace the transmission free of charge. So, I dropped The Silver Bullet Band off at North Hollywood Ford. A week later, I came back to pick it up.
“Did they finally dump that stupid idea for a transmission?” I asked the mechanic.
“Nope. It’s the same design, but this time they swear it works.”
Then the mechanic laughed, which was the opposite of comforting.
The new transmission didn’t improve anything. So, I called Ford corporate and gave them a piece of my mind. Naturally, Ford gave my complaint their full attention, which is to say, a vice president of customer service uttered some boilerplate words of sympathy, explained that nothing could be done, and then assured me that I was a “valued customer.”
A few months after my experience with Ford corporate, I went back to the dealership and demanded that they fix the transmission. To my surprise, they agreed! But to my chagrin, the second replacement transmission suffered from the same design flaw.
“Are we just supposed to drive this piece of shit car forever?” Christina asked.
At first, I didn’t know what to say. But Christina’s phrasing—piece of shit car—reminded me of the underrated Adam Sandler song, Ode to My Car.
“So, what’s the plan here?” Christina asked. “Are we just going to drive around in a shaking Ford Fiesta that can’t get into gear, listening to Adam Sandler sing about his piece of shit car?”
While that didn’t seem like a solution in the classic sense of the word, the Sandler plan did seem like a decent way to cope. And that’s what we did. We coped until the lease came to an end. And on that day of freedom, I drove that shaking piece of shit Ford Fiesta back to the dealership in North Hollywood.
“Is there anything we can do to put you in a new car?” a salesman asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “You can sell me a Toyota.”
Post Mortem FiestaOf course, this three-year lease wasn’t all fun and games. There were times when our piece of shit car really got under our skin. In fact, driving around in a shaking shit bucket, as I sometimes referred to The Silver Bullet Band, occasionally caused some bickering. After one argument, Christina suggested we do a post mortem on our car search and the decision to lease a Ford Fiesta.
“Post mortem, who died?”
“It’s just a phrase we use when we do an analysis after a project, or a product launch,” Christina said. “I do them all the time.”
“You mean, like, we talk about what went right, what went wrong, and then we try to learn from our mistakes?”
“You got it.”
So, we talked about our ill-fated car search. Christina walked us through a timeline of our search, from reading online reviews to showing up at the Ford dealership in North Hollywood. As much as possible, we tried to stick to facts without inserting our feelings into the analysis. It took about an hour.
We learned that we could’ve done more research into the Ford Fiesta. But of course, you can always do more research. We also learned that we make better decisions when we don’t feel like we’re under the gun to solve a stressful problem like transportation. But of course, minimizing stress isn’t always possible, even if doing so contributes to better decision-making. The real learning, however, was that we both made the exact same mistake at the car dealership.
“I didn’t really question the salesman because I thought you wanted the Fiesta, and I didn’t want to upset your plans,” I said. “You’re the person I respect most when it comes to making decisions. I figured if you were on board, don’t be an idiot and rock the boat. Is that weird?”
“Same thing with me! I respect your judgment more than anyone else in the world, Michael. I thought you were all in on the Fiesta, so I didn’t say anything.”
“Wait a minute. Did we lease a piece of shit Ford Fiesta because neither one of us wanted to look like a dumbass in front of the person we love?”
“I think so,” Christina said.
“Crazy.”
“Bonkers.”
“So, what do we do with this information?”
“Well, what we got here is failure to communicate.”
Whether she knew it or not, Christina was quoting the dirtbag-poet Axl Rose, who had sampled those very words from a speech in Cool Hand Luke for the opening of the Guns & Roses classic Civil War. But I didn’t point that out because I didn’t want to interrupt Christina’s flow.
“The thing we didn’t do,” Christina continued, “was have a pre-meeting?”
“A pre-meeting?”
“It’s a meeting between you and me before we talk to a third-party. The idea is we use that time to get on the same page about what we want. Plus, we can game out negotiation strategies, set expectations, articulate dealbreakers, and even pre-plan a good cop / bad cop routine.”
“Wow. This seems way better than our previous half-assed approach.”
“Absolutely. The pre-meeting is a full-ass approach.”
We decided then and there that every big decision—a new car, buying a home, investments, etc.—would require a pre-meeting. In fact, we’ve been doing pre-meetings ever since the Ford Fiesta Fiasco. Whenever friends ask us for relationship advice, we stress the value of the pre-meeting.
“If a couple isn’t hashtag aligned,” Christina likes to say, “they’re hashtag fucked.”
Stick around and chat about the story!I love hearing from readers like you because it makes writing Situation Normal so much fun! If you enjoyed this story, please let me know by leaving a comment below. Or, if you’re the type of person who likes a prompt, consider the following questions:
The Ford Fiesta was the worst car I’ve ever owned or leased. What was the worst car you ever owned or leased?
The names of our previous cars were music references: Midnight Rider and The Silver Bullet Band. Our current cars are Shuttle Tydirium (Star Wars) and Dark Helmet (Spaceballs). Do you name your vehicles? If so, please share those names!
I wasn’t kidding about my dream car. It remains a Toyota Corolla with a driver who makes a six-figure salary, with health, dental, pension, and six weeks paid vacation. What’s your dream car?
If you’re lucky enough to live without a car, how do you get around? Please share everything you can about your car-free paradise!
Pre-meetings have helped us work through some difficult decisions with minimal stress. What’s your best piece of relationship advice?
Support Situation Normal by sharing it!Situation Normal grows because readers like YOU share these stories. Please forward this email to a friend (or enemy), post this story on social media, discuss it on Reddit and MetaFilter, link to it in your newsletter, or hit the share button 👇
Still wanna show your support?Hit that ❤️ button 🙏👇
July 27, 2022
Big Wednesday #4
When I first decided to launch a Wednesday edition of Situation Normal, Christina thought I might be taking on too much.
“Babe, that’s a lot more work,” Christina said. “And it’s not like writing the internet’s 57th most popular humor newsletter is bringing home the turkey bacon. Do you have time for a Wednesday edition?”
“You’re right,” I said. “I’m going to have to cut corners.”
“Cut corners? How?”
“The way crackerjack outfits like Facebook have been cutting corners for years: user-generated content.”
“User-generated content? That sounds like a food additive.”
“It’s an industry term. It means other people make stuff, and I monetize the shit out of their stuff, without cutting them in on deal.”
“But you don’t monetize Situation Normal at all.”
That comment led to a lengthy discussion about modern monetary theory, Keynesian and post-Keynesian economics, Marxism, and a series of straw man attacks on the Austrian school. I was going to summarize that discussion here, but Christina said it was “boring as shit.” She did, however, bless my idea of asking readers to submit their own funny content.
But right away reader submissions led to a problem. Actually, problem isn’t the right word. The right words are “good problem.” I love reader submissions! Every week, I get a dozen submissions, and I want more, so keep ‘em coming, people! Your submissions are funny, or at the very least interesting, and they really do help me produce something digital media folks call “premium content.” Unfortunately, this creates a perverse incentive structure where I fall more and more behind, while continuing to ask you to send more content. It’s sick, isn’t it?
I did some advanced economic modeling, ran my numbers by a team of quantitative analysts from the IMF, and determined that if I were to write Situation Normal for ten years, I’d have approximately seventy-eight cubic shit-loads of unused submissions.
Here’s a concrete illustration of this “good problem.” In the very first Wednesday edition, I shared a TikTok about a waiter who didn’t know how to calculate the surface area of the pizza he was serving. Some of you talked about this in the comments, and after a brutal flame war, a consensus opinion emerged that cheese is better than math.
Meanwhile, other readers took inspiration from the TikTok. Reader Lyle McKeany shared a story about a math-challenged salesperson. I liked the story! So, I promised Lyle I’d run his submission the following week. But that was a lie. Then I lied again when I told Lyle he could “bet his bottom dollar” that his submission would appear in the next Wednesday edition of Situation Normal. I thought about lying a third time, just to honor the rule of three, but that felt self-indulgent.
Anyway, here’s a story about Lyle buying a desk👇
Wheeler dealerI was at a used office furniture store looking for a desk for my new house. I didn’t have a ton of money to spend, but wanted something that wasn’t from IKEA, basically. Eventually, I saw this nice wood desk. Maybe it was maple? IDK, I don’t really know wood types. Anyway, I looked at the price tag and it said $399.
I turned to the guy working there and said, “I really like this one, but I don’t have that much to spend.”
He said, “How much were you looking to spend?”
“I was thinking around half that much.”
He thought for a bit and said, “I can’t do half off, but I could do it for $200.”
To which I said, “Sold!”
By the way, Lyle writes a beautiful Substack called Just Enough to Get Me in Trouble. Check it out, and tell him I sent you!
Obviously, you’re a golfer
Michael Estrin @slacker_noirToday, I pretended to be a golfer while chatting with a TJ's cashier. I'm not a golfer, but he was. Guy was stoked to go golfing with his coworker tomorrow & I guess I got carried away.July 18th 2022
4 LikesThere’s less to this story than meets the eye, but here it goes.
Trader Joe’s cashiers are chatty. That’s why I shop there. Usually, my checkout line conversations involve dropping obscure movie references, weekend plans, Dodgers baseball, and frank talk about Trader Joe’s products. But not this time.
As I approached the register, a Trader Joe’s manager said to the cashier, “I promise to go easy on you.”
“I’m going golfing with my manager tomorrow,” the cashier explained. “He’s a scratch golfer.”
Scratch golfer? Never heard that one before. But I am not a golfer. I went to a driving range a few times in college. I’m familiar with the classics: Happy Gilmore, Tin Cup, Caddyshack. These are my golf credentials, such as they are.
Obviously, I should’ve asked, “what’s a scratch golfer?” But the cashier was stoked, as I mentioned in my Tweet. Well, I guess I was stoked for him. Instead of clarifying, I said something like, “Cool, I love golf!”
That was the cashier’s invitation to go full Caddyshack. We talked local courses, then clubs. We were about to do a deep dive on the driving ranges in Koreatown, but he finished bagging the groceries. I wished him luck “on the links,” and that was that.
Should I have lied? I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. I’m not a moral philosopher. But once the lie was underway, I had to commit. Had to. The cashier was stoked. You gotta respect that. So I lied, respectfully. I nodded when he nodded, smiled when he smiled. When he delivered a punchline I didn’t understand, I faked it.
And guess what?
He bought every minute of my performance!
Overheard some shitI love eavesdropping. I tell friends and family that I spy on strangers because listing to candid conversations is a great way to improve your dialogue. But honestly, I’m just nosy. As it turns out, reader Tab is nosy too. Here’s what he wrote: 👇
Oddest overheard conversation was at a Scuba convention years ago. Several guys were having a serious discussion about the type of adult diapers they liked to wear under their dry suits when doing hours-long decompressions after very deep dives. I had never desired to do that type of diving, and that conversation convinced me I
never would.
I’m not a diver, but thanks to Tab’s contribution I’m confident I could pretend to be an avid diver for as long as it takes to scan and bag my groceries.
Help Wanted: Problem ArchitectAnother week, another job offer for the wrong Michael Estrin. This time, Chris, a recruiter for a “multi-brand e-commerce retailer with roots in holiday and home décor” reached out looking for a “Solutions Architect.” Here’s what Chris wrote:
I was really intrigued by this offer for two reasons. First, Annie at Apixio seems to have ghosted me. Second, Balsam Brands pays better! Naturally, I wrote back to Chris.
I haven’t heard back from Chris at Balsam Brands — yet! Keep your fingers crossed for me, gang.
ICYMII wrote an update on my stolen catalytic converter story. Spoiler alert: the supply chain ate my catalytic converter, and now I'm a straight pipe scofflaw.
This TikTok lives rent-free in my head🚽🍝
@qzma1934_vn#italy #spaghetti #fyp #fypシ #tiktok #lifehacks[image error]Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browserStick around and chat!
You know the drill. I’ve got questions, you may or may not have answers.
We’ve established that I’m not a golfer. But what about you? Are you stoked by the idea of hitting the links with a scratch golfer?
We’ve also established that I’m not a Scuba diver. But I’m wondering if you’re a diver? And if so, do you go deep enough to require adult diapers? Please explain!
Does anyone know if there’s a certification or course of study for Problem Architecture, or is it just one of those things you learn to do on the job?
What is up with that TikTok? Do people really strain pasta into the toilet? Or, is this the kind of thing that only happens on social media?
Is Lyle still using his half-price desk? Note: everyone except Lyle is eligible to answer this one.
Bonus question just for Lyle. Did you also get a deal on a chair?
Contribute to Situation Normal!Do you have a question about something I’ve written? Got a hilarious anecdote you want to share? See something on the internet, or IRL, that made you LOL or WTF? Find a funny typo in the wild? Send your submissions to me at 👇
michael.j.estrin@gmail.com
When submitting, please tell me if you’d like to use an alias, or do the first name last initial thing. If you write a newsletter, I’m happy to link to it, so let me know!
Until Sunday, when I’ll have a story about marriage and leasing a Ford Fiesta…
Hit the ❤️ button🙏👇
Big Wednesday #4
When I first decided to launch a Wednesday edition of Situation Normal, Christina thought I might be taking on too much.
“Babe, that’s a lot more work,” Christina said. “And it’s not like writing the internet’s 57th most popular humor newsletter is bringing home the turkey bacon. Do you have time for a Wednesday edition?”
“You’re right,” I said. “I’m going to have to cut corners.”
“Cut corners? How?”
“The way crackerjack outfits like Facebook have been cutting corners for years: user-generated content.”
“User-generated content? That sounds like a food additive.”
“It’s an industry term. It means other people make stuff, and I monetize the shit out of their stuff, without cutting them in on deal.”
“But you don’t monetize Situation Normal at all.”
That comment led to a lengthy discussion about modern monetary theory, Keynesian and post-Keynesian economics, Marxism, and a series of straw man attacks on the Austrian school. I was going to summarize that discussion here, but Christina said it was “boring as shit.” She did, however, bless my idea of asking readers to submit their own funny content.
But right away reader submissions led to a problem. Actually, problem isn’t the right word. The right words are “good problem.” I love reader submissions! Every week, I get a dozen submissions, and I want more, so keep ‘em coming, people! Your submissions are funny, or at the very least interesting, and they really do help me produce something digital media folks call “premium content.” Unfortunately, this creates a perverse incentive structure where I fall more and more behind, while continuing to ask you to send more content. It’s sick, isn’t it?
I did some advanced economic modeling, ran my numbers by a team of quantitative analysts from the IMF, and determined that if I were to write Situation Normal for ten years, I’d have approximately seventy-eight cubic shit-loads of unused submissions.
Here’s a concrete illustration of this “good problem.” In the very first Wednesday edition, I shared a TikTok about a waiter who didn’t know how to calculate the surface area of the pizza he was serving. Some of you talked about this in the comments, and after a brutal flame war, a consensus opinion emerged that cheese is better than math.
Meanwhile, other readers took inspiration from the TikTok. Reader Lyle McKeany shared a story about a math-challenged salesperson. I liked the story! So, I promised Lyle I’d run his submission the following week. But that was a lie. Then I lied again when I told Lyle he could “bet his bottom dollar” that his submission would appear in the next Wednesday edition of Situation Normal. I thought about lying a third time, just to honor the rule of three, but that felt self-indulgent.
Anyway, here’s a story about Lyle buying a desk👇
Wheeler dealerI was at a used office furniture store looking for a desk for my new house. I didn’t have a ton of money to spend, but wanted something that wasn’t from IKEA, basically. Eventually, I saw this nice wood desk. Maybe it was maple? IDK, I don’t really know wood types. Anyway, I looked at the price tag and it said $399.
I turned to the guy working there and said, “I really like this one, but I don’t have that much to spend.”
He said, “How much were you looking to spend?”
“I was thinking around half that much.”
He thought for a bit and said, “I can’t do half off, but I could do it for $200.”
To which I said, “Sold!”
By the way, Lyle writes a beautiful Substack called Just Enough to Get Me in Trouble. Check it out, and tell him I sent you!
Obviously, you’re a golferMichael Estrin @slacker_noirToday, I pretended to be a golfer while chatting with a TJ's cashier. I'm not a golfer, but he was. Guy was stoked to go golfing with his coworker tomorrow & I guess I got carried away.July 18th 2022
4 LikesThere’s less to this story than meets the eye, but here it goes.
Trader Joe’s cashiers are chatty. That’s why I shop there. Usually, my checkout line conversations involve dropping obscure movie references, weekend plans, Dodgers baseball, and frank talk about Trader Joe’s products. But not this time.
As I approached the register, a Trader Joe’s manager said to the cashier, “I promise to go easy on you.”
“I’m going golfing with my manager tomorrow,” the cashier explained. “He’s a scratch golfer.”
Scratch golfer? Never heard that one before. But I am not a golfer. I went to a driving range a few times in college. I’m familiar with the classics: Happy Gilmore, Tin Cup, Caddyshack. These are my golf credentials, such as they are.
Obviously, I should’ve asked, “what’s a scratch golfer?” But the cashier was stoked, as I mentioned in my Tweet. Well, I guess I was stoked for him. Instead of clarifying, I said something like, “Cool, I love golf!”
That was the cashier’s invitation to go full Caddyshack. We talked local courses, then clubs. We were about to do a deep dive on the driving ranges in Koreatown, but he finished bagging the groceries. I wished him luck “on the links,” and that was that.
Should I have lied? I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. I’m not a moral philosopher. But once the lie was underway, I had to commit. Had to. The cashier was stoked. You gotta respect that. So I lied, respectfully. I nodded when he nodded, smiled when he smiled. When he delivered a punchline I didn’t understand, I faked it.
And guess what?
He bought every minute of my performance!
Overheard some shitI love eavesdropping. I tell friends and family that I spy on strangers because listing to candid conversations is a great way to improve your dialogue. But honestly, I’m just nosy. As it turns out, reader Tab is nosy too. Here’s what he wrote: 👇
Oddest overheard conversation was at a Scuba convention years ago. Several guys were having a serious discussion about the type of adult diapers they liked to wear under their dry suits when doing hours-long decompressions after very deep dives. I had never desired to do that type of diving, and that conversation convinced me I
never would.
I’m not a diver, but thanks to Tab’s contribution I’m confident I could pretend to be an avid diver for as long as it takes to scan and bag my groceries.
Help Wanted: Problem ArchitectAnother week, another job offer for the wrong Michael Estrin. This time, Chris, a recruiter for a “multi-brand e-commerce retailer with roots in holiday and home décor” reached out looking for a “Solutions Architect.” Here’s what Chris wrote:
I was really intrigued by this offer for two reasons. First, Annie at Apixio seems to have ghosted me. Second, Balsam Brands pays better! Naturally, I wrote back to Chris.
I haven’t heard back from Chris at Balsam Brands — yet! Keep your fingers crossed for me, gang.
ICYMII wrote an update on my stolen catalytic converter story. Spoiler alert: the supply chain ate my catalytic converter, and now I'm a straight pipe scofflaw.
This TikTok lives rent-free in my head🚽🍝
@qzma1934_vn#italy #spaghetti #fyp #fypシ #tiktok #lifehacks[image error]Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browserStick around and chat!
You know the drill. I’ve got questions, you may or may not have answers.
We’ve established that I’m not a golfer. But what about you? Are you stoked by the idea of hitting the links with a scratch golfer?
We’ve also established that I’m not a Scuba diver. But I’m wondering if you’re a diver? And if so, do you go deep enough to require adult diapers? Please explain!
Does anyone know if there’s a certification or course of study for Problem Architecture, or is it just one of those things you learn to do on the job?
What is up with that TikTok? Do people really strain pasta into the toilet? Or, is this the kind of thing that only happens on social media?
Is Lyle still using his half-price desk? Note: everyone except Lyle is eligible to answer this one.
Bonus question just for Lyle. Did you also get a deal on a chair?
Contribute to Situation Normal!Do you have a question about something I’ve written? Got a hilarious anecdote you want to share? See something on the internet, or IRL, that made you LOL or WTF? Find a funny typo in the wild? Send your submissions to me at 👇
michael.j.estrin@gmail.com
When submitting, please tell me if you’d like to use an alias, or do the first name last initial thing. If you write a newsletter, I’m happy to link to it, so let me know!
Until Sunday, when I’ll have a story about marriage and leasing a Ford Fiesta…
Hit the ❤️ button🙏👇
July 24, 2022
The supply chain ate my catalytic converter. Now I'm a straight pipe scofflaw
Photo by Noel Broda on UnsplashRecently, I wrote about how scoundrels stealing my catalytic converter inspired half-baked fantasies of vigilantism. I wanted that to be the end of the story, but as the poet-entrepreneur Mick Jagger famously sang, you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometime you’ll find, you get what you need.
Well, Mick, the only thing I need is a replacement for my catalytic converter. But four weeks later—and counting!—I’m still waiting for someone, somewhere to unfuck the supply chain. I’m not holding breath.
Harbinger at the gas stationAfter I filed a claim with my insurance company and took my car to a nearby mechanic, I had a lesser of two evils kind of choice.
Option #1: Wait a three or four months for manufacturer parts.
Option #2: Wait three or four weeks, give or take, for after-market parts.
Neither choice felt great, but I went with the shorter wait time. Charlie, my mechanic, validated my decision, saying, “that’s what I’d do if I were you.” On my way home, I was received further validation when I stopped to get gas.
“I’ve never heard a Prius make noise like that,” the man at the pump next to me said.
“Yeah, scoundrels stole my catalytic converter.”
“I figured that was it,” the stranger said. “I mean, I never heard of someone street racing in a Prius.”
We both laughed. For a moment, I even imagined myself trading paint with Vin Diesel in the next installment of the Fast & Furious franchise. Someone has to replace The Rock, after all, and I just don’t see why it can’t be me in a Prius.
“Same thing actually happened to me,” the stranger said. “Fuckers stole my catalytic converter, but I didn’t have the money to get it fixed. The deductible is five hundred bucks, and I don’t have it.”
“So you just ride around with your car making that god-awful noise?”
“Nah, man, I got a straight pipe.”
“What’s a straight pipe?”
“Hell if I know. But for like fifty bucks my mechanic worked it so I don’t need a catalytic converter.”
“You don’t need one?”
“Well, you do need one. But I can’t afford one, so that’s how it goes.”
“Gotcha.”
“Thing is, I’m gonna have to get one when my registration is up because you can’t pass a smog test without a catalytic converter.”
I checked my tags. I had registered the Prius two months prior.
“Basically, I’m screwed,” he continued. “Sooner or later, I’m gonna have to pay money I don’t have.”
I felt bad for the stranger. We had both been the victim of the same crime, but what amounted to an unpleasant bill and a funny story for me was, quite possibly, a catastrophic event for him.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “This whole thing sucks.”
“Yup. But what are you gonna do?”
I shrugged because that’s what you do when you don’t know what to do.
“Anyway, at least I got the straight pipe now so I can get to work,” he said. “A few things break my way, and I’ll have the money.”
I wished the stranger luck, and we went our separate ways.
Word on the streetAbout a week after I met the straight pipe stranger, Christina and I went to a friend’s house for a barbecue. The last time we saw our hosts, their three children were toddlers and the word “pandemic” was always preceded by the year 1918.
As we walked up the driveway toward the house, their oldest son, Will, jumped out of the bushes to surprise us.
“Oh my god, you totally got us,” Christina said.
“I was hiding in the bushes,” Will said.
“I totally didn’t see you,” I said. “You’re very sneaky.”
“I have to be,” Will said. “I’m a spy.”
“I thought you were a six-year-old boy,” Christina said.
“I am,” Will said. “I’m a six-year-old boy who is a spy.”
“Wow!” Christina said. “That’s amazing.”
Christina was impressed to be in the presence of a bona fide intelligence operative, but I wasn’t so sure.
“Will, don’t take this the wrong way. But should you be telling people you’re a spy? Isn’t secrecy a big part of the job?”
“You’re right,” Will said. “I’m not a spy.”
Then he ran off to eat some Doritos.
A little later, as the adults talked and the kids splashed in the pool, one of Will’s moms told me their son was an actor.
“He’s playing the role of the spy,” I said, “but I think that’s on the down-low.”
Will’s other mom laughed.
“No, he’s just messing with you,” she said. “He’s not a spy. But he really is doing some acting. He booked a short film the other day, and he’s got a movie that’s in post.”
“Holy shit! This kid is gonna be a star.”
Both of Will’s moms laughed.
“I don’t know about that, Michael. These are small roles. We’ll let him keep acting as long as he’s having fun and it doesn’t interfere with school. But we don’t want him to be one of those child stars.”
We talked some more and I learned a few more things about Will. Yes, he could act. But he was also a musician. And he was learning to speak Spanish!
“Plus, he’s precocious,” I said, “so, he’s got that going for him.”
Later on, as we ate, Will played the guitar and his sister played the violin. At intermission, I went for a second helping of pesto pasta salad. When I returned to my seat, a friend who reads Situation Normal asked about my stolen catalytic converter.
“Still waiting on the part,” I said. “Supply chain.”
Everyone groaned. Like pandemic, supply chain was one of those terms regular people rarely used before 2020. But these days, supply chain is a catchall for whatever happens to be standing between you and your goals.
“So, does that mean you can’t drive your car at all?” someone asked.
“Pretty much. My mechanic said I shouldn’t drive faster than thirty miles an hour, but that’s a joke because the car struggles to get up to that speed. Plus, it makes this awful death-rattle-farting sound. So, we’re a one-car family for now.”
“Isn’t there anything you can do in the meantime?” someone else asked.
“You can get a straight pipe,” I said. “But it won’t pass a smog test.”
I explained what I knew of straight pipe life, which wasn’t much. Then I explained that my source was a stranger I met at a gas station. After retelling what I knew of the stranger’s story the mood seemed gloomy.
“This guy didn’t do anything wrong,” another friend said. “Actually, he did the right thing and got auto insurance, but a five hundred dollar deductible is crazy if you’re living paycheck to paycheck.”
There it was, one of the most common phrases in our political discourse: paycheck to paycheck. The parties can’t agree on why so many Americans live paycheck to paycheck, and they certainly can’t agree on a solution, but the phrase is a bipartisan meme. Don’t believe me? Watch any Presidential debate from the last four decades and take a shot each time one of the candidates says, “paycheck to paycheck.” You’ll be drunk inside of twenty minutes.
“This is how hard-working people end up living on the street,” my friend continued. “One stroke of bad luck, and they can’t afford to get their car fixed. Then when it’s time to renew their registration, they can’t because they can’t pass a smog test. Then they get a ticket for driving without tags. Then the tickets add up and the car gets impounded, and they can’t get to work to earn money to pay the tickets, and everything just snowballs.”
My friend was right. The stranger’s straight pipe saga sounded all too common. It also sounded a little like what Ernest Hemingway wrote about how people go bankrupt: “gradually, then suddenly.”
“This makes me so mad,” my friend continued. “I wish you could catch the thieves in the act, beat them up, and make them see what they’re doing to people.”
At that point, Christina, who is a loving wife and a relentless marketer, signed our friend up for Situation Normal and directed her to the story of my half-baked vigilante fantasies. But sitting around in broad daylight, I had a more practical take on vigilantism.
“I’m right there with you on the vigilantism, but it’s tough crime to stop,” I said. “It only takes a few minutes to steal one, and I’d have to spend every night hiding in the bushes, waiting for some scoundrels to jack my catalytic converter. But if they do show up, it’s not like I’m prepared to do anything about it.”
“You could call the cops,” someone suggested.
“They’d be gone before the cops get there,” I said. “I’d have to stop them myself, and it’s not like I’m some kind of Karate Man who only bruises on the inside.”
Everyone laughed because everyone was old enough to remember Eddie Murphy’s Karate Man bit from the movie Trading Places. Well, everyone except for Will, who sat down next to me and whispered an offer in my ear.
“Do you want me to teach you karate?” Will asked.
“I thought you were a bilingual actor and a musician,” I said.
“I’m also a spy, remember?”
“So?”
“So, spies know karate.”
Bad newsI didn’t take Will up on his offer to teach me Karate. For one thing, I figured my mechanic would call any day now and I’d be back in gear, so to speak. Also, I didn’t think sparring with a six-year-old kid, even a really talented and precocious six-year-old, was a good look for me.
“Michael, I’ve got some bad news,” Charlie said. “The distributor sent us the wrong part.”
“That is bad news.”
“Well, it gets worse I’m sorry to say.”
“Oh shit.”
“We called them and there was a little back-and-forth, boring stuff to be honest, and anyway, they’re sending us the right part.”
“That sounds like good news.”
“It will be good news when it gets here.”
“But?”
“But that’s going to take another four or five weeks.”
“Yikes.”
“What we can do is install a straight pipe for you,” Charlies said. “It’ll hold you over until we get the part, but you won’t pass a smog test.”
“Yeah, I met a guy who did the straight pipe. How much does that cost?”
“We’ll do it for free,” Charlie said. “I feel bad. I told you to go for after market parts because it would be faster, but now it’s looking like that’s a mess too.”
“Free? Are you sure? We’ve been managing with just the one car.”
“Yeah, it’s no trouble on our end. I don’t know how long we’ll have to wait for the part, and I don’t want to leave you in a lurch if you need your wheels and your wife is using the car.”
Charlie made a good point. Shit happens, after all. Heck, shit happening was pretty much the theme of my catalytic converter saga.
Straight pipe scofflawWhen I brought my car into the garage for my straight pipe, I found Charlie talking to another customer about her stolen catalytic convertor.
“It sucks,” Charlie said. “But if it’s any consolation, you’re not alone.”
“Tell me about it,” the woman said.
Charlie looked at me, and I told her all about it, from my half-baked vigilante fantasies to my fear that supply chain limbo would never end.
“What a mess,” she said. “I can’t believe the cops aren’t doing anything to stop this.”
“One hundred percent,” I said. “Someone is buying these stolen catalytic converters. There’s no such thing as a non-profit theft ring.”
“Absolutely,” she said. “Follow the money, am I right?”
I nodded. I didn’t know this woman, but together we had managed to do what dozens of law enforcement agencies operating in Los Angeles County couldn’t do: identify a plan to take down Mr. Big and put these catalytic converter thieves out of business.
“Now all we need are badges,” I said.
“Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges.”
I liked the cut of this woman’s jib. I was just about to ask her if she wanted to form a posse, rent some low-emission horses, and mount up for justice, when Charlie interrupted.
“That reminds me, Michael, I need to tell you something about the straight pipe.”
“What’s that?”
“Technically, it’s illegal.”
“Huh? I thought it just means I won’t pass smog inspection.”
“Right. In the state of California, it’s illegal to operate a vehicle that doesn’t pass smog inspection.”
“Yeah, that tracks.”
“But don’t worry. I’m going to give you my card. So, if the cops hassle you… they shouldn’t hassle you, but if they do, because you never know with cops, I’ll vouch for you.”
“Vouch for me? Does that work?”
“Yeah, I’ve had to do it a couple of times. It always works. Well, one time it didn’t. But that cop was just being a dick.”
“Say more.”
“The customer went off on him about how he wouldn’t have gotten a straight pipe if the cops did their job and arrested people for stealing catalytic converters.”
“Follow the money,” the woman said. “Take down Mr. Big.”
“Yeah, well, don’t tell the cops that,” Charlie said. “Those guys are on a power trip.”
The way Charlie explained the legal downsides to the straight pipe life, not to mention the environmental consequences, the situation felt like a real clusterfuck.
“So, you’re telling me there’s a better chance of the cops hassling me for a straight pipe then there is of the cops actually catching the people who stole my catalytic converter?” I asked.
“It’s messed up, isn’t it?” Charlie replied.
“It’s fucked six ways from Sunday, is what it is,” the woman said.
“So, you still want the straight pipe?” Charlies asked.
“Yeah, I might as well join the crime wave,” I said. “If you can’t beat the scofflaws, might as well join ‘em.”
Stick around and chat about the story!I love hearing from readers like you because it makes writing Situation Normal so much fun! If you enjoyed this story, please let me know by leaving a comment below. Or, if you’re the type of person who likes a prompt, consider the following questions:
“Will” is an alias because the real life kid is a minor, and possibly a spy. Is Will a good alias, or should I have come up with something more on brand like Mitch Mata Hari, James Beard Bond, or Jumpin’ Jack Flash Ryan?
Unless there’s an emergency, I’m not driving my straight pipe Prius because I don’t want to put anymore smog into the air, so we’re a one-car family for now. Are you a one-car family? No car family? Any tips?
Prior to 2020, how often did you have conversations about supply chains?
Throughout this story and the previous one, I’ve made the case that catalytic converter theft is an economic crime, and that law enforcement should follow the money and take down Mr. Big. But I don’t see that happening. Do you think the cops are just lazy, or are we dealing with some real Keyser Söze shit?
Do you think I’ll get a replacement catalytic converter before Labor Day?
Support Situation Normal by sharing it!Situation Normal grows because readers like YOU share these stories. Please forward this email to a friend (or enemy), post this story on social media, discuss it on Reddit, link to it in your newsletter, or hit the share button 👇
Still wanna show your support?Hit that ❤️ button 🙏👇
The supply chain ate my catalytic converter. Now I'm a straight pipe scofflaw
Photo by Noel Broda on UnsplashRecently, I wrote about how scoundrels stealing my catalytic converter inspired half-baked fantasies of vigilantism. I wanted that to be the end of the story, but as the poet-entrepreneur Mick Jagger famously sang, you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometime you’ll find, you get what you need.
Well, Mick, the only thing I need is a replacement for my catalytic converter. But four weeks later—and counting!—I’m still waiting for someone, somewhere to unfuck the supply chain. I’m not holding breath.
Harbinger at the gas stationAfter I filed a claim with my insurance company and took my car to a nearby mechanic, I had a lesser of two evils kind of choice.
Option #1: Wait a three or four months for manufacturer parts.
Option #2: Wait three or four weeks, give or take, for after-market parts.
Neither choice felt great, but I went with the shorter wait time. Charlie, my mechanic, validated my decision, saying, “that’s what I’d do if I were you.” On my way home, I was received further validation when I stopped to get gas.
“I’ve never heard a Prius make noise like that,” the man at the pump next to me said.
“Yeah, scoundrels stole my catalytic converter.”
“I figured that was it,” the stranger said. “I mean, I never heard of someone street racing in a Prius.”
We both laughed. For a moment, I even imagined myself trading paint with Vin Diesel in the next installment of the Fast & Furious franchise. Someone has to replace The Rock, after all, and I just don’t see why it can’t be me in a Prius.
“Same thing actually happened to me,” the stranger said. “Fuckers stole my catalytic converter, but I didn’t have the money to get it fixed. The deductible is five hundred bucks, and I don’t have it.”
“So you just ride around with your car making that god-awful noise?”
“Nah, man, I got a straight pipe.”
“What’s a straight pipe?”
“Hell if I know. But for like fifty bucks my mechanic worked it so I don’t need a catalytic converter.”
“You don’t need one?”
“Well, you do need one. But I can’t afford one, so that’s how it goes.”
“Gotcha.”
“Thing is, I’m gonna have to get one when my registration is up because you can’t pass a smog test without a catalytic converter.”
I checked my tags. I had registered the Prius two months prior.
“Basically, I’m screwed,” he continued. “Sooner or later, I’m gonna have to pay money I don’t have.”
I felt bad for the stranger. We had both been the victim of the same crime, but what amounted to an unpleasant bill and a funny story for me was, quite possibly, a catastrophic event for him.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “This whole thing sucks.”
“Yup. But what are you gonna do?”
I shrugged because that’s what you do when you don’t know what to do.
“Anyway, at least I got the straight pipe now so I can get to work,” he said. “A few things break my way, and I’ll have the money.”
I wished the stranger luck, and we went our separate ways.
Word on the streetAbout a week after I met the straight pipe stranger, Christina and I went to a friend’s house for a barbecue. The last time we saw our hosts, their three children were toddlers and the word “pandemic” was always preceded by the year 1918.
As we walked up the driveway toward the house, their oldest son, Will, jumped out of the bushes to surprise us.
“Oh my god, you totally got us,” Christina said.
“I was hiding in the bushes,” Will said.
“I totally didn’t see you,” I said. “You’re very sneaky.”
“I have to be,” Will said. “I’m a spy.”
“I thought you were a six-year-old boy,” Christina said.
“I am,” Will said. “I’m a six-year-old boy who is a spy.”
“Wow!” Christina said. “That’s amazing.”
Christina was impressed to be in the presence of a bona fide intelligence operative, but I wasn’t so sure.
“Will, don’t take this the wrong way. But should you be telling people you’re a spy? Isn’t secrecy a big part of the job?”
“You’re right,” Will said. “I’m not a spy.”
Then he ran off to eat some Doritos.
A little later, as the adults talked and the kids splashed in the pool, one of Will’s moms told me their son was an actor.
“He’s playing the role of the spy,” I said, “but I think that’s on the down-low.”
Will’s other mom laughed.
“No, he’s just messing with you,” she said. “He’s not a spy. But he really is doing some acting. He booked a short film the other day, and he’s got a movie that’s in post.”
“Holy shit! This kid is gonna be a star.”
Both of Will’s moms laughed.
“I don’t know about that, Michael. These are small roles. We’ll let him keep acting as long as he’s having fun and it doesn’t interfere with school. But we don’t want him to be one of those child stars.”
We talked some more and I learned a few more things about Will. Yes, he could act. But he was also a musician. And he was learning to speak Spanish!
“Plus, he’s precocious,” I said, “so, he’s got that going for him.”
Later on, as we ate, Will played the guitar and his sister played the violin. At intermission, I went for a second helping of pesto pasta salad. When I returned to my seat, a friend who reads Situation Normal asked about my stolen catalytic converter.
“Still waiting on the part,” I said. “Supply chain.”
Everyone groaned. Like pandemic, supply chain was one of those terms regular people rarely used before 2020. But these days, supply chain is a catchall for whatever happens to be standing between you and your goals.
“So, does that mean you can’t drive your car at all?” someone asked.
“Pretty much. My mechanic said I shouldn’t drive faster than thirty miles an hour, but that’s a joke because the car struggles to get up to that speed. Plus, it makes this awful death-rattle-farting sound. So, we’re a one-car family for now.”
“Isn’t there anything you can do in the meantime?” someone else asked.
“You can get a straight pipe,” I said. “But it won’t pass a smog test.”
I explained what I knew of straight pipe life, which wasn’t much. Then I explained that my source was a stranger I met at a gas station. After retelling what I knew of the stranger’s story the mood seemed gloomy.
“This guy didn’t do anything wrong,” another friend said. “Actually, he did the right thing and got auto insurance, but a five hundred dollar deductible is crazy if you’re living paycheck to paycheck.”
There it was, one of the most common phrases in our political discourse: paycheck to paycheck. The parties can’t agree on why so many Americans live paycheck to paycheck, and they certainly can’t agree on a solution, but the phrase is a bipartisan meme. Don’t believe me? Watch any Presidential debate from the last four decades and take a shot each time one of the candidates says, “paycheck to paycheck.” You’ll be drunk inside of twenty minutes.
“This is how hard-working people end up living on the street,” my friend continued. “One stroke of bad luck, and they can’t afford to get their car fixed. Then when it’s time to renew their registration, they can’t because they can’t pass a smog test. Then they get a ticket for driving without tags. Then the tickets add up and the car gets impounded, and they can’t get to work to earn money to pay the tickets, and everything just snowballs.”
My friend was right. The stranger’s straight pipe saga sounded all too common. It also sounded a little like what Ernest Hemingway wrote about how people go bankrupt: “gradually, then suddenly.”
“This makes me so mad,” my friend continued. “I wish you could catch the thieves in the act, beat them up, and make them see what they’re doing to people.”
At that point, Christina, who is a loving wife and a relentless marketer, signed our friend up for Situation Normal and directed her to the story of my half-baked vigilante fantasies. But sitting around in broad daylight, I had a more practical take on vigilantism.
“I’m right there with you on the vigilantism, but it’s tough crime to stop,” I said. “It only takes a few minutes to steal one, and I’d have to spend every night hiding in the bushes, waiting for some scoundrels to jack my catalytic converter. But if they do show up, it’s not like I’m prepared to do anything about it.”
“You could call the cops,” someone suggested.
“They’d be gone before the cops get there,” I said. “I’d have to stop them myself, and it’s not like I’m some kind of Karate Man who only bruises on the inside.”
Everyone laughed because everyone was old enough to remember Eddie Murphy’s Karate Man bit from the movie Trading Places. Well, everyone except for Will, who sat down next to me and whispered an offer in my ear.
“Do you want me to teach you karate?” Will asked.
“I thought you were a bilingual actor and a musician,” I said.
“I’m also a spy, remember?”
“So?”
“So, spies know karate.”
Bad newsI didn’t take Will up on his offer to teach me Karate. For one thing, I figured my mechanic would call any day now and I’d be back in gear, so to speak. Also, I didn’t think sparring with a six-year-old kid, even a really talented and precocious six-year-old, was a good look for me.
“Michael, I’ve got some bad news,” Charlie said. “The distributor sent us the wrong part.”
“That is bad news.”
“Well, it gets worse I’m sorry to say.”
“Oh shit.”
“We called them and there was a little back-and-forth, boring stuff to be honest, and anyway, they’re sending us the right part.”
“That sounds like good news.”
“It will be good news when it gets here.”
“But?”
“But that’s going to take another four or five weeks.”
“Yikes.”
“What we can do is install a straight pipe for you,” Charlies said. “It’ll hold you over until we get the part, but you won’t pass a smog test.”
“Yeah, I met a guy who did the straight pipe. How much does that cost?”
“We’ll do it for free,” Charlie said. “I feel bad. I told you to go for after market parts because it would be faster, but now it’s looking like that’s a mess too.”
“Free? Are you sure? We’ve been managing with just the one car.”
“Yeah, it’s no trouble on our end. I don’t know how long we’ll have to wait for the part, and I don’t want to leave you in a lurch if you need your wheels and your wife is using the car.”
Charlie made a good point. Shit happens, after all. Heck, shit happening was pretty much the theme of my catalytic converter saga.
Straight pipe scofflawWhen I brought my car into the garage for my straight pipe, I found Charlie talking to another customer about her stolen catalytic convertor.
“It sucks,” Charlie said. “But if it’s any consolation, you’re not alone.”
“Tell me about it,” the woman said.
Charlie looked at me, and I told her all about it, from my half-baked vigilante fantasies to my fear that supply chain limbo would never end.
“What a mess,” she said. “I can’t believe the cops aren’t doing anything to stop this.”
“One hundred percent,” I said. “Someone is buying these stolen catalytic converters. There’s no such thing as a non-profit theft ring.”
“Absolutely,” she said. “Follow the money, am I right?”
I nodded. I didn’t know this woman, but together we had managed to do what dozens of law enforcement agencies operating in Los Angeles County couldn’t do: identify a plan to take down Mr. Big and put these catalytic converter thieves out of business.
“Now all we need are badges,” I said.
“Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges.”
I liked the cut of this woman’s jib. I was just about to ask her if she wanted to form a posse, rent some low-emission horses, and mount up for justice, when Charlie interrupted.
“That reminds me, Michael, I need to tell you something about the straight pipe.”
“What’s that?”
“Technically, it’s illegal.”
“Huh? I thought it just means I won’t pass smog inspection.”
“Right. In the state of California, it’s illegal to operate a vehicle that doesn’t pass smog inspection.”
“Yeah, that tracks.”
“But don’t worry. I’m going to give you my card. So, if the cops hassle you… they shouldn’t hassle you, but if they do, because you never know with cops, I’ll vouch for you.”
“Vouch for me? Does that work?”
“Yeah, I’ve had to do it a couple of times. It always works. Well, one time it didn’t. But that cop was just being a dick.”
“Say more.”
“The customer went off on him about how he wouldn’t have gotten a straight pipe if the cops did their job and arrested people for stealing catalytic converters.”
“Follow the money,” the woman said. “Take down Mr. Big.”
“Yeah, well, don’t tell the cops that,” Charlie said. “Those guys are on a power trip.”
The way Charlie explained the legal downsides to the straight pipe life, not to mention the environmental consequences, the situation felt like a real clusterfuck.
“So, you’re telling me there’s a better chance of the cops hassling me for a straight pipe then there is of the cops actually catching the people who stole my catalytic converter?” I asked.
“It’s messed up, isn’t it?” Charlie replied.
“It’s fucked six ways from Sunday, is what it is,” the woman said.
“So, you still want the straight pipe?” Charlies asked.
“Yeah, I might as well join the crime wave,” I said. “If you can’t beat the scofflaws, might as well join ‘em.”
Stick around and chat about the story!I love hearing from readers like you because it makes writing Situation Normal so much fun! If you enjoyed this story, please let me know by leaving a comment below. Or, if you’re the type of person who likes a prompt, consider the following questions:
“Will” is an alias because the real life kid is a minor, and possibly a spy. Is Will a good alias, or should I have come up with something more on brand like Mitch Mata Hari, James Beard Bond, or Jumpin’ Jack Flash Ryan?
Unless there’s an emergency, I’m not driving my straight pipe Prius because I don’t want to put anymore smog into the air, so we’re a one-car family for now. Are you a one-car family? No car family? Any tips?
Prior to 2020, how often did you have conversations about supply chains?
Throughout this story and the previous one, I’ve made the case that catalytic converter theft is an economic crime, and that law enforcement should follow the money and take down Mr. Big. But I don’t see that happening. Do you think the cops are just lazy, or are we dealing with some real Keyser Söze shit?
Do you think I’ll get a replacement catalytic converter before Labor Day?
Support Situation Normal by sharing it!Situation Normal grows because readers like YOU share these stories. Please forward this email to a friend (or enemy), post this story on social media, discuss it on Reddit, link to it in your newsletter, or hit the share button 👇
Still wanna show your support?Hit that ❤️ button 🙏👇
