A five-dollar exercise in futility
All I wanted was to spiff up my car a bit, maybe sweep out the crumbs and bits of leaves.
That was my plan when I headed to the do-it-yourself car wash, but things didn’t go as planned. I’ll be lucky if I don’t end up on a funny home video show, or as a “confused lady” meme.
The vacuuming went fine. (You don’t realize how often – and what – you eat in your car until you attack it with the sweeper. What the heck is this orange dust, circus peanuts?)
Feeling refreshed about the interior of my car, I decided to work on the rest of it. Because of the bike rack, I can’t take it through an automatic drive-thru wash, but I could pull it into the bay and scrub it myself. (My approach to my cars has always been one of benign neglect. By the time I drove into the bay, my car had last been washed in March, and was just a Subaru-shaped block of dust, road salt and pollen.)
The machine reeled in my five-dollar bill and the clock started ticking. First to wet ‘er down. I pulled the spray hose out of the holder and pulled the lever. Nothing happened. The sign on the wall instructed me to “turn the knob” to begin the spray rinse.
What knob? I didn’t see a knob. I put the hose back in the holder and walked around to the other side of the car. No knob there, either. I returned to the machine and found that the digital clock was ticking. I read the sign again.
“Turn the knob.”
Maybe the knob blended in with gray brick walls, and so I paced the perimeter of the bay, searching. I found no knob, but did see the security camera high in the corner above me. I waved, probably more frantically than was appropriate, hoping someone in an office somewhere was watching this.
“Where’s the knob?” I mouthed to the camera, raising my arms in question.
This is normally a busy car wash, but not that day. The other bays were empty, as was the dog wash next door. I checked the other bays and found no knobs. By now, the clock had ticked down to just one minute left; if someone was watching, they’d see a visibly confused and frazzled woman with hands on hips, staring at the money machine.
With my five dollars gone, I pulled out of the bay and parked around the side, hoping someone would arrive to help. Nobody came, but I did get the email address of the company that runs the place. I sent a note.
“At 2:45 this afternoon I was at your car wash on such-and-such road. After I’d paid, I was not able to find the knob to start the hoses running. I have excellent eyesight and two college degrees and yet the knob eluded me. On the security video, you will see a somewhat squirrelly woman scampering around her Subaru and the bay looking in vain for a knob. That was me. May I have my five dollars back please?”
The response came almost immediately. It included a photo of the sign. Next to each line of instructions was a metal button, which he circled.
“You push that button,” the email said.
“Pushing a button is not the same as turning a knob,” I wrote back, still embarrassed.
He replied with a code for one free automatic car wash.
“Just don’t go through there with your bike rack,” he wrote.
I already knew that. He must think I’m dumb, but who would blame him.