Not right now

This is Moe. I doubt he would approve of his employee's behavior.

 A few weeks ago in the midst of our transition from one city to another my daughter and I stopped into a Pep Boys  to get a quick oil change for the Prius. I don't like neglecting my car, and it's not something I do intentionally, but who among us hasn't looked at the service sticker and thought "Eh, a little longer won't hurt"? Life is crazy and sometimes the things that make the other things possible just don't line up with the things that actually are at the moment...

So we park the car, it was opening time for Pep Boys and I was excited to be the first customer, hoping to get in quick and get on my way since I had no more than an hour to devote to getting the oil changed.

Daughter ran ahead and opened the door for me, she's that kind of kid and that makes me proud!

I walked through the door to find a clean lobby, a wall on the right is three layers deep with all variety of oil and knick knacks for the unprepared consumer to grab on impulse while killing time during their wait. Everyone could use more pine scented phone bedazzling kits. Sorry, that's not real. I hope.

I waited to be courted by the man behind the counter (an early 20's looking fella in a never used mechanics uniform, or, in his case, costume) with a friendly greeting, somehow hoping that with the outer styling of the building designed to look like the 1950's he might talk like it was the 1950's. He didn't. In fact, he never greeted me, just kind of stared at me, waiting.

Me: "Good morning, do you guys have time for an oil change?"

The kid responded with the morning vigor of a sea turtle, if the sea turtle were a retired professional boxer.

Idiot: "Not right now. It'll be later in the afternoon  before we can get to it."

Me: "Oh... Are you sure? I just need a quick oil change. It's a Prius, so it should go pretty fast."

Idiot: "Yea. I'm sure. We have a lot happening right now. It will be later today."

I looked past the man, through the window behind the counter that looked into the shiny, clean, and empty service area. Then I looked to the my right, to the end of the lobby where the manager was audibly briefing his crew on how to up sell customers on services like transmission service and alignments. Then back to the idiot.

Me: "Okay then, can I just get a quart of 0W20? I'm running a bit low". 

Idiot: "Sorry, no synthetic here. Only conventional."

Me: "You don't carry synthetic oil? How to do you do oil changes?"

Idiot: "We have synthetic, but it's in 50 gallon drums. We don't sell that to customers."

Me: "Okay... I'm not from around here, can you tell me where I can get a quart of synthetic nearby?"

Idiot: "Any car place should have it."

I looked around to confirm internally that I was, indeed, standing in a car place.

I was.

Me: "Goodbye."

Daughter and I walked out and got into my car. She asked me if the guy was crazy because I wanted to pay them to work on my car and they told me no. I told her that they are more interested in people paying more money to fix bigger problems, but made a point of the fact that my $60 was not the only one that had walked through that door. How many other $60 oil changes have these guys lost in the interest of upsells?

I now live in the area, and had the idiot's attitude been more appropriate, had they changed my oil, the eager consumer with money in hand, they would have won a regular customer. Many more $60 would have been deposited into Mr. Pep's bank account.

Maybe he was having a rough morning, or maybe it's policy to schedule walk ins for later in the day. I don't know, and I won't be back to find out.