First two questions on the oil change guy hiring quiz should be: 1) What's an oil filter "double gasket"? 2) How do you prevent a double gasket from happening when changing an oil filter?
Sorry, that just doesn't happen at a WM. I've got two stories about a WM TLE store that I'm going to mention here. One of them is hearsay, the other actually happened to me. First story: Was shopping at a WM one afternoon and I heard two ladies in the checkout lane talking. One lady says to the other that her brother just got hired into the WM TLE section and had no automotive experience background whatsoever. Okay, perhaps she was making that up. Perhaps this guy was just a guy who drives the cars in and out, I don't know and I'll leave it at that.
The next story actually did happen to me. It was a Sunday afternoon and I needed a 13" car tire immediately. Around here the WM TLE store is the only place open on a Sunday afternoon, so that's who I called. Checking the needed tire and the other three tires on the car to make sure it was the exact size I needed, the voice from the WM TLE store said they had one to sell and if I came right in, they would fix me up. I had already taken the tire off the car, dismounted the old tire from the rim and all they had to do was install it and balance it. It was a carry-out. This was a 13" tire, remember. As I sat in the TLE waiting area watching their tire tech, I noticed he was having somewhat of a hard time. (BTW, all of their employed TLE techs had their photos hanging up in the TLE customer waiting area. I noticed he had been there 8 years) He fought with a tire to get it on and then went back to inventory to get another tire. That one didn't work either. After about 15 minutes he comes in to me and says my rim won't take a 13" tire and it's too small for a 14" tire also. He takes me back there (surprised their insurance would allow that
) and showed me that the 14" tire was too big for the rim. But then he says the 13" tire won't fit either. Now I knew I had given him the right size of 13" tire. I had checked the bad tire and made sure it matched the other three for size. Also, right out of tech school, I had done some tire work in a repair shop and also had installed tires as a tech in a Ford dealership. So before he could say or do anything, I grabbed the tire, soaped up the bead, put it in place on the rim and installed it before he could say anything more. Somehow, after working there eight years, he didn't have the knowledge to drop the bead down into the narrower part of the rim so that the rest of the bead would fit over the lip of the rim. You should have seen the look on his face as I got the second bead in place and the tire was now ready to inflate and seat the beads.
Most of you won't believe it and I can't understand why a 13" tire would be any different than any other size of tire that's he's installed over an eight year period.