"Favorite" Quotes

So there is a wide variety of people that come to the car wash. Rich, not so rich, old, young, middle aged, college students, high school students, military people, asians, caucasian, african american, polish, indian, jew, catholic and so on and so forth. All these different people are all unique as you can imagine with the  way the talk and the things they say. Certain people say their own things but a lot of people say the same thing over and over. Here are a number of my "favorite" things that people say to me when I'm selling.

-(Me) "Hi, what kind I get for you?"
-(customer) "A wash"
-(Me) ".......ok"

- "Give me a wersh"

- "I just got back from (insert a state/city) and I got a lot of bugs on my car can you clean them off?"
(We remove bugs off cars automatically. No need to ask)

- "I have a lot of sand/dirt/mud/sticks in my trunk because.....(full story). Can you vaccuum it out?"

- "The exterior wash doesn't come with a vaccuum?" **(probably the best/most common)

This is only a start of the things that people will say to me. Some of these things drive me nuts others are just hilarious to me cause its so stupid. The last quote is a perfect example of something that drives me both nuts and cracks me up. Why people think an EXTERIOR wash comes with a vaccuum is beyond me. I mean, if it came with a vaccuum we wouldn't call it an exterior wash and charge $5.95 for it. People are so funny sometimes.

People and Tips

So during my 1.9 years of working at the car wash, I have had my share of tips. Good tips, bad tips, normal tips, no tips. All different kinds of tips. I've gotten pretty good at tell who will give a good tip or a bad tip just by looking at someones car or the person themselves. Most elderly people tend to be bad tippers. They normally give about $2 or $3 for most kinds of washes. Young people, ie high school/college aged, also tend to give $2 tips for most washes. Middle aged people vary. Middle aged people are the people that will either stiff (not tip) you or will tip you a good amount($10) for a Executive Wash(24.95). They keep you guessing but if they come in often enough you know who gives what kind of tip for what service. For example, there is this one costumer that comes to the car wash on a regular basis because he has a vip package. It doesn't matter what you do to his vehicle, you will only get tipped $1. Whenever I get stuck doing his car, I don't work as hard on it because I know I'm only going to get that $1 so why do I need to break my back drying his car off. The Best tips come from people that actually work for tips because they understand what it is like to do a lot of hard/dirty work and get a poor tip. So these are the people that tend to tip around 20% and up! Myself, I tend to tip at minimum 20% for that very reason previously stated. Now, the worst tips come from, believe it or not, christians and people with children. These are the people that you can always expect to get either $1 or $2 for any wash. The people that are supposed to be helping other people in need with resources that we have and teaching the next generation to live good lives, are making it difficult for the people who work for tips and depend on tips to make a living to actually make a living. What tends to make it worse with these people is that most of them drive mini vans. Mini vans are the one car that all car wash employees hate washing! they are big and difficult to move around in because most people will have lots of stuff in their vans and we have to climb around all these things and it gets cramped. Even when they are empty it still gets cramped to move around and clean all the interior windows. My point for all this rambling is that one good tip(more than 15%) or one bad tip (less than 15%) can make our day or ruin our day, especially if we get consecutive bad tips, and remember, that we are working for less than minimum wage. We rely on tips to pay our bills and to pay for school.

Car Wash Experience

So I have been working at the car wash for about a year and 9 months now and I have seen so many strange things that people have in their cars and I have seen what people leave behind in their cars/on their cars. Here is a list of things that I have found or seen on someones car.

 Baseball bats
 Machettes
 Bags of money(large amount)
 Crow Bars
 Batons(metal and wooden)
 Hunting Knifes
 Other Large Knives(non hunting knives)s
 Vomit
 Drug Paraphernalia
 Bullets
 Guns
 Used Tissues
 Rats/Mice
 Frogs(2x)
 Pepper Spray
 Months worth of fast food garbage
 Candy
 4 day old spilled milk
 quarry of rocks
 Diapers
 Condoms
 Tampons



I could keep this list going. The amount i've seen is vast. I've seen the most disgusting things that people keep in their cars and dont think that they need to take car of getting cleaned up anytime soon. You name it i've probably seen it in a car or cleaned it out of a car. Since i've started working at the car wash, my bodily cleanliness has become a importance to me. I cannot eat if I dont wash my hands, after all I have to touch everything thats in a car and all the dirt, gunk, and everything people do/leave in their cars. Not to mention, my hands get covered in all the chemicals we use to clean the cars and make them look shiny.