Midas & the Golden Touch

We are all familiar with the story of King Midas, the ruler who wished that all he would touch would turn to gold. And, it did. Including his beloved daughter. Then, he renounced his love of gold. Sometimes people have to lose before learning what should be really loved...and at least sometimes, unlike "a happy ever after" fairy tale, the loss is permanent and unrecoverable.

With this fairy tale in mind, it is interesting/odd that a franchise car repair shop would name itself Midas. Fears of every repair turning into to avarice-acquired gold. Stories of oily-handed & greasy-hearted barely-graduated or high school drop-outs, seeking to even the score against the mechanically-inept white collar Honor class princes and princess, proliferated for years. A kind of micro-Marxian mechanical and monetary battle being fought in the trenches between the classes. The automobile, caught in a car custody battle, of sorts.

On Saturday, I had a brief window of time to get my car worked on: I knew I needed an inspection (for I am not innumerate, even though hardly mechanical), an alignment, a transmission fluid change, back brakes replaced--the wail, when backing down my driveway, clued me in, and at least one or two other things (an assumption). I initially was considering only a brake repair, but then decided to go all out and see if I could get everything finished at once.

I made a matrix--a hand-written Excel spreadsheet of sorts, where I listed along the top the four places I was considering going to--two Honda dealerships and two franchises. Then, along the side, I put down the repairs needed. Then, I called the places up. I visited websites and ran off coupons, so that I could adjust the quotes. Since I knew what I needed to have done, this made the acquisition of information on pricing available. I tend to favor the dealership when a complex repair is needed. I just hand over the credit card and wince. Take it like a man. But these repairs were more routine maintenance.

The dealerships, both supposed to be open on a Saturday by 7:30, failed to answer the phone twice apiece at 7:35. Scratched them off my list. It came down to Midas and Meinecke. The Meinecke store rep was nice enough but they don't do alignments. The pricing also favored Midas as a rule. I decided to not go to a local garage because I think these places can either be better or much worse than franchises. It is more an issue of competence than cash. It just seems that some local shop mechanics don't have the training to do good work.

I did a quick search of reviews on Google about the local Midas shop and the one entry was very positive. People tend to post reviews on-line when they are highly-pleased or highly-pissed...and more often when pissed, at that. Anger is an energizer. The review mentioned the Midas rep dude by name and said that he was honest and does not push unnecessary work. Businesses beware...your on-line reputation precedes you. And, the work you lost b/c of your unethical and incompetent work, will be hard to quantify but real. The lack of reviews can mean that people were generally satisfied.

The Midas rep said that he did not have time in the shop schedule to write me in for Saturday morning but that he would call another local Midas shop to see if they could work me in. Yes, they could. I was impressed that he would hand-off the work. All in all, it turned into a highly-favorable experience. There were two opportunities for the shop to lie to me...one where I knew the correct answer and one where, by what the mechanic said, I knew that the guys were being honest. In the end, the work cost close to $ 500 dollars, but the shop had earned their gold properly. It truly was a "Win-Win." The work appeared to be done well.

The Free Enterprise system has been bashed a lot recently. I agree that Capitalism without a conscience is dangerous. The inequalities of those who have capital versus those who do not, with the power of the law always favoring the rich, creates an unjust and unfair context of exchange. The Golden Rule, as my African-American buddy Troy told me one time, is "He who has the gold makes the rules." But anyone who thinks that Socialism and Communism are structurally better systems, are ignorant of history...and dangerously uneducated. The greed is not in the structure of the system, it is in the human heart. You want someone to presume that every dollar you make in profit is unjust and unethical? That's pure Socialism folks. That kid out shoveling snow off of driveways or mowing grass is corrupt, just like the corporate executives.

The Apostle Paul warned that the love, the inordinate affection, for money, is the root of all evil. How like God to take away our gold, so that our hearts may ponder anew what holy affections need to fill that now empty chamber.