Not what I intended to do at lunchtime ...

[hrj]

So on my lunch hour I drove over to the 4th St foodie cluster to do some shopping for the tea party, and just after I got out of my car in the parking lot, a woman in the next row over asks a passing guy if he could give her car a jump. "Sure, if you have cables," he says. No, she says, she doesn't have cables. "I have cables," I offer cheerfully, and tell the guy I have it under control.

Well, even though she had left her lights on, the problem doesn't seem to be only a dead battery, because we can get status lights and whatnot but not even the slightest click out of the ignition. In the mean time, she's stressing out because she's supposed to be teaching a class up near campus in half an hour, and she has a car full of class materials.

"So," I say, "If I take you to your class, do you have a way to get back to your car?" She is stunned and blathers something about all her boxes of materials. (It is, evidently, a scrapbooking class.) I jerk my thumb in the direction of my vehicle. "Duh! SUV!"

We load it up and I deliver her to Cedar & Walnut. She gets my address "For a little thank-you" but I tell her to pay it forward instead.

Just time to get back to my desk. No shopping. No lunch. Sudden unexpected (pointless) meeting waiting for me. *sigh* (Lunch later, though.)

My parting thought: Next time she has car troubles, will she return to assuming that you ask the man first?

Comments

[ichseke.livejournal.com]

Ha! I had a similar experience (to hers, not to yours) a couple of weeks ago and although I had a large and fairly competent-looking man with me, two other men (or should I say Guys) in the parking lot insisted on being knowledgeable and helpful. We *were* able to get the car started and kept the engine going throughout the rest of the errands (one person sits in car while other goes into store) and got home fine. But next time it not only wouldn't start but wouldn't take a boost.

Turns out it wasn't the battery but the starter. I guess the jumpstart was its last gasp. So next time you encounter this maybe you can get all macha and tell your victim to get the starter checked.

[gunnora.livejournal.com]

You can even work around a fried starter, if you have a long screwdriver and can reach in to gap across the starter and solenoid with the screwdriver. I did this for about three weeks back in the day when I had my old Chevy Vega, because I couldn't afford the rebuilt starter until then. Nowadays I call Triple A and pay someone else to do the car work, but back then I was a poor college student.