You know, I’m normally a pretty even-keeled guy.

Granted, I do tend to rant a bit on this site, but in the real world it actually takes quite a bit to get me upset.

That said, I was more incensed than I have been in a very long time at a kid at the local Nissan dealership on Saturday.

So I mentioned last week that I had to take the Juke in for its 75,000 service and an inspection.  What I didn’t mention was that they tried to sell me new windshield wipers in order to pass the inspection.  Thing is, I’d bought new wipers, from them, in December.

Granted, those wipers always sucked, and they left long streaks on the windshield, but I’m way too busy to have them replaced over something that’s a mere inconvenience.    So my agent looked it up, found that they had indeed installed these crappy wipers, and replaced them free of charge.

The end.

That is until it rained on Thursday evening, I turned on the new wipers for the first time, and found that the bottom half on the driver’s side wasn’t even touching the windshield.

So I called my rep and took the Juke back on Friday evening after work.  After about 45 minutes of waiting he informed me that the technician installed them upside down.

“You said you needed your muffler looked at, right?”

Nice work.

And so I drive away, assuming it’s taken care of.

Fast-forward to Saturday afternoon, when Jen, Daphne and I are leaving Babies-R-Us in a pouring rain.  I turn the windshield wipers on, and the driver’s side one flips upside down, then unceremoniously careened off of the car and spins onto the gravel parking lot.

After a few choice words I step out into the rain to mess with it for a moment, quickly realize that I it’s missing an through-screw to hold the thing in place and I don’t currently have the tools to fix it, and then resign myself to driving to the dealership in the rain (about a 20 minute trip), without a driver’s side wiper.

Sketchy trip, but we made it.  And each time I lost sight of the lane I was supposed to be in, I became more and more angry.  By the time we got to the dealership, I’d worked myself up into a pretty solid fury.

When we arrived, they had already closed the service department for the day.  But as I stood at the window in the rain, beckoning a service agent over with one slowly bending finger and storm-crackling eyes, they realized that they were going to open those doors once more…

Right.  Now.

So long story short, they did indeed fix the wiper.  It took 5 of them and 4 boxes of new wipers to do it, but it did get fixed.

Apparently this is very complicated…

And after it was done the manager and my service rep both apologized profusely.  I waved them off, with the assurance that I was not upset with them, however I was furious with the kid who’d actually done the installation.

But rather than yell or make demands of recompense, I simply asked them to remind that kid that his job is important.  And to let him know that the lives of my wife and 1-year-old daughter were just endangered, because he and he alone didn’t do his job and take care of his responsibilities.

The service rep nodded for a moment, seemingly stunned by this, and then promised he would do so.

I clapped him on the shoulder, smiled, then drove home without further incident.  Albeit with the nagging thought of, “you know, if they can’t even put a wiper on properly…  What else have they screwed up in my car?”

I guess we’ll find out.

j.s.