Funniest lines from the parts counter

I worked with My bro in law for a while when he had a little garage . Had a guy bring in a big block chevelle for some work. A month or so down the road we get notified that he is suing us because the work we did "stretched the connecting rods". Luckily the judge knew a thing or two about cars and suggested that they not waste anymore of the courts time.

 

We did this to a new troop when I was in service, sent a new kid to the parts counter for the part and the person behind the counter was female. He walked up asked for the fallopian tube and she said with out missing a beat "I don't have one to spare."

 

Wife was working a commercial mower place, guy asked for mower blades. Wife says what kind of mower do you have? Guy says "red one" I kid you not.

 

Not so funny, just scary. Here's props to a quick thinking AZ manager that probably stopped an assault or worse.

I'm standing in line at one of the home-based Memphis stores and this "gangsta brotha" storms in with his 300 lb. gurlfran, gets in front of everybody, throws a grimy greasy Duralast brake pad box and shouts "you m-f'ers gave me bad parts"! The counter guy asks what he needs, as the pads in the greasy box are worn to the metal. The "customer" says he bought those earlier and when he opened the box he found the worn out pads. The counter guy tells him he couldn't have bought worn out pads in a greasy box and this idiot goes off. Starts screaming and calling the AZ guy every name In the book and starts in playing the race card and starts threatening when he was accused of bringing in the worn old parts.

All the rest of us were starting to look for a place to get to, and wishing we had "carried" that day, when the Manager came up, put a fresh box of pads on the counter and said "Thank you for shopping at AZ, have a nice day".

WHEW!!

The idiot and his GF left, still cussing, before the MPD showed up.

 

Funny. You needed to "carry" because of the 300lb girlfriend, or because he was yelling?

 

American Motors, is that import or domestic? you do know that Renault was part of AMC for a while, and that Nash (pre-American Motors) built Metropolitans with English drivetrains... Willys is a HUGE thing in Brazil as well....

anyways. today i'm trying like hell to make it through a short-staff day and avoid really stoopid people but oh HELL no, i get one who's got a backyard engineer sending her to pick up parts for her car... parts that, oddly enough, we don't even have LISTINGS for..... red flag, anyone?
so, i'm trying to decipher geechee mechanic-speak on customer's cell phone while she's standing there being bitchy teenager and NOBODY is calling ANY of the parts out by any recognizable terminilogy... having fun yet? we sure are. SO... my boss asks if she can show him, on her car, WTF it is she's been told she needs... he finds hoses pulled off of the throttle body, relays unplugged, all sorts of dumbass attempts to "fix" this little "princess's" POS car.... he tells her that not only doesshe not need to replace the part she's been told to buy, but it RARELY fails IF AT ALL and she needs to take the car to a regular shop... now; get this...

"I can't affode to take it to no damn shop. They charge too MUCH..."
yet she can afford to buy parts she doesn't need, take them to a dumbass "mechanic" who doesn't know how to drain piss out of a boot....

i don't know why i bother with these people, and just sell them expensive shit and tell them they can't return it when it DOESN'T fix their car...

 

For all the new places it would have to be.....

CAN I HELP YOU ??????

 

I asked autozone for cam grease?assembly lube.the idiot handed me bulb grease and saidbthis should work.i was at a lose for words

 

a guy comes in the other night needing a part for his 1987 Dodge Aries, he needs that tube thing that behind the carburetor and he thinks it goes to the valve cover....but it is not a PCV valve or line

me ....what is it called? what does it do?

customer......i don't know , you are the parts guy.... you tell me

me....i have no idea. is the car here so we can look at it? do you have the part with you?

customer.....no , just look it up


me.....ok , searching for "the tube thing behind the carburetor" i find nothing


customer......you are all idiots......then walks out

 

we get all kinds.... i "get" that people think of AUTO parts stores as hardware stores, but seriously.... i also "get" that there's still a few folks who remember Advance selling appliances and lawnmowers and rotor tillers... but, as far as i can tell, they haven't sold one for thirty-odd years... yet, oddly enough, i'll bet you people STILL go in looking for spare parts for them.
i'll share something else with you; we don't like the fact that we just don't have the parts everybody's looking for, either, because a BUNCH of us drive oddball old shit and fuss like old women when we need to special order something we USED to have hanging behind us next to the tubs of assembly lube and under the pinup calendars from Wurth..... had to tell a guy today that we COULD get him some Corvette balljoints but they had to come from the warehouse..... well; they ARE Corvette specific and he might be lucky we had them at ALL. still.....
and, try as i might; i can't diagnose your car. i'm not a walking 5051 machine; i can't stick my finger in the OBD port and ask your car what's wrong with it. you need a shop, a REAL shop, not a rollaround cart from AZ to do that. stop asking me....

 

me: I need a set of lifters for a 67 390 Ford.

counter person: Is that a part that goes in the engine?

 

Had a guy at nationwise auto parts tell me to remove one of the plugs in my 318 in my 67 Polara so he could match it up....I guess he couldn't use a parts book. I went to another parts store....

 

Not really parts-counter related, but here it is anway. At the John Deere dealership I worked at, antifreeze was stored in a 55 gallon barrel in the wash room, but nothing else was in there except for a work bench and the power washer. The room was a little corner of the shop that was walled of and used in the winter to wash tractors without having the water freeze to them instantly.

The report from the OSHA inspection one year had a line in it about keeping the oil cleaned up on the barrel in the wash room...

 

He said " I'm not sure I understand everything I know about That "

 

Actually, the Met was designed in the US by Nash (remember, they were sold starting in the 1954 model year, the same year that Nash and Hudson merged to form AMC) and built exclusively for them by Austin Motor Company in England from 1954 all the way through 1960. All 102,000 of them! The entire car, not just the engine!

 

on a dodge truck i had about 10 years ago, the trans wasnt shifting and you had to redline the thing to get it to move when it was cold. so i took it to the dealer, and the service writer told me that it wasnt shifting because it needed new plugs and the air filter was dirty. the guys that work at dealers are even more retarded than the parts store tards.

 

In 1967 there were two choices since 318 heads were built that took 3/8 inch reach plugs for part of production and 3/4 inch reach for another part of the year. In this case the parts guy was asking the right question. Had a car come in years ago that someone had used 3/8 length plugs in a 3/4 reach head that I had to clean the carbon out of the threads so I could install the correct plugs.

Since I spent many years on both sides of a parts counter, I'd like to say I've seen it all, but I'm still amazed at some of the things I continue to see and hear.

 

Customer: I need a piece of stainless steel brake line.

Parts man: How long do you need it?

Customer: Quite a while, I plan on putting it on my car!

 

Me: I need a distributor gear for a small block chevy.

Dumb Parts Kid: What the hell is that???



Me: I need a set of Bendix Titanium brake pads for a 79 Cutlass Supreme.

Parts Guy: Oh, you don't want those.

Me: Yes I do, I asked for them, didn't I?

Parts Guy: They chew up your rotors.

Me: Well that's my problem, now isn't it? Are you getting them for me or do I have to talk to your boss?

Parts Guy: (gets off his ass and runs to the back).

What an ass.

 

ME: I need 6 R45T Ac Delco plugs

Counter dude: What are they going on?

ME: WHAT?! WTH does it freakin' matter i just gave you the part number!! I can see them from here just go get em'!

 

Heres one from the other side of the counter as i used to be a parts guy.....

Me (as the counter dude) How can I help you?

Customer-I need a gas cap like this do you have one?

Me-Possibly what did it come off of?

Customer-......uhhhh well i just need one thats close to this one (shows me said cap)

Me- Looking at it i knew it was early 70s nova/camaro because at the time I drove a 72' nova

Customer- thanks thats it.......Ill tell you now its not actually goin on a car......(whispers)Its for a beer keg....

 

Ha, I had a pretty good one once...

Walked into the local NAPA, and the usual guy that actually knows something about old cars wasn't there. So I walked up to the first open counter, and this is how it went:

Woman on Counter: Hi what can I help you with today??
Me: Hi, I need some rear brake parts for a '53-'55 Ford F250
Woman on Counter: Oh, need pads and rotors??
Me: Not exactly.....

 

So I'm the Assistant manager of the Oreilly auto parts here in Sun Prairie. The other day a guy called on the phone asking for some advice so I said sure, whats going on? Guy says his car wont start. He then proceeded to tell me he is going to set the phone down and leave the screen door open to listen to it... :O all I got was static and noise... For some reason he wouldn't accept that I couldn't tell him what was going on by just listening through a static phone connection. I proceeded to give him a basic check list of things to look over... However if any of you guys are tired of dumb counter guys in the Madison area (shameless plug here) stop by the sun prairie Oreilly's. were all big gear heads and have a pretty good knowledge of old stuff. I also have a man that is a "professional" account with us... he came in asking why his old '74 C6500 wouldn't run. I asked if he had fuel going to it. he then started asking all the ways to check that, which I explained to him. Then I asked if he knew if he had spark. "what do you mean by spark?" he asked me. I explained to him to pull a plug wire off and put a screwdriver in it and hold it to a ground closely and watch for an electrical arc... he then asked what a ground was... I was done...

 

Hey hey hey, we are bagging on parts guys here, got it? I work at a dealer and I know EVERYTHING!! so there...

 

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I'm always amazed how often the 710 cap story gets relayed here as gospel truth.

I kinda doubt it has ever really happened...

The closest instance I've personally seen was when I gave my sister in law her very first car, a 1970 Datsun 510, I told her to check it out and make a list of parts to pick up for it, and when she did she said it had the oil cap off of a Datsun 710 and that she wanted me to find a 510 cap... it took my brain a few seconds to register what I had just heard... luckily she was messing with me.

 

Okay so I think my story is the best. I was an innocent bystander who observed this.

I was at the local AZ to pick up a part for my OT car. I walk up to the counter just after another customer had walked in.

Customer: I need 3 quarts of oil
AZ counter guy: Okay, 10w40?
Customer: The dash says I only have 20% of my oil left. Is 3 quarts enough?
AZ counter guy: Oh yeah, weren't you here yesterday and bought some oil?
Customer: Yes, but my dash still says I only have 20% left.
AZ counter guy: That is your oil "life" not how much oil you have left in the car.
Customer: So should I get 4 quarts?
AZ counter guy: You dash is telling you that you need an oil change, not that you are low on oil. You need to check your dipstick to see if it needs oil.
Customer: oh

I got the definite impression that the customer did not understand and would be going to another store to buy his oil.

Poor little 4 cylinder car running around with 7-8 qts + of oil in it.

 

1985...first customer in the door on a sunday morning handed me a fuel pump and asked we had one like it... she could tell me what it was from but said I would laff and tell her no and go away
... go ahead I said .
. its from a old carnival Tom Thumb donut machine ....
hmmmmm

I looked for the casting number but only found a partial ...
reviewing the partial number and comparing the body and pump arm and fittings to the pictures in the back of the "fuel pump book" narrowed it down to 4 compared those to what was on the shelf narrowed it down to two ...one had fixed inlet and outlet fitting the other did not ...
the one was easily re fitted with proper sized and angled fittings ...
SOLD with a section of new hose and clamps all under 20 bucks

I told her next time ask for a 1950-54 chev six fuel pump or a diaphgram repair kit

on her way HAPPY in 15 minutes

 

Had a 30 rpu with sbc in it. I was on my way home from the redneck rumble and the lower rad hose started leaking. Stopped at O'riellys. Parked in front of the door.

Me: where are the hoses?
Parts guy: what do you need a hose for?
Me: pointed outside and said THAT!
Parts guy: what year
Me:1930
Him: what make?
Me: Ford P/U
Him: engine
Me:1972 350ci chevy
Him: oh I won't have a listing, you'll have to go back there and match it up.
Me: ok where are they? Went to the back took 5 min to find new hose.
Him: next time someone asks where the hoses are I'm just going to take them back there!

 

On the other hand my wife used to be a manager at a parts house. Manager of Napa wanted her to come to work at Napa. The day she started at Napa a smart ass came in and asked for the old water pump for a corvair. She told him to kiss her ass and not come back till he needed real parts.