The Beginning

This encompasses my delightful experience at a mechanic's garage and what I believe are important skills that I have picked up from it.

I've been working at a mechanic's garage for approximately one year now, and I have thoroughly enjoyed the experience so far. I have always enjoyed working with my hands ever since I was a child. I have dozens of memories of me and my father working on his cars, fixing lawn mower engines, etc. It was one of the few things that he and I would bond over and spend time doing together. He wasn't the type of father to go out and throw a baseball with as he felt I would never gain anything from it. I connected with my father through work from a young age. My father started working from a young age to support his family in Lebanon, so he has had a specific mindset drilled into him from a very young age. If you wanted anything in life you would have to work for it and the sooner you started, the better.

During the summer, I worked fifty hours a week at the garage, and I only remember having good experiences. I learned many different skills such as how to diagnose, repair, and understand cars, but one of the most important skills I learned was how to talk to a customer. Customers seem to be uneasy at a mechanic's garage, especially those who are not car-savvy. Mechanics have a bad reputation, to begin with, which makes the job of communicating with the customer much harder. They are rightfully skeptical of what you are telling them, but it allows you to learn how to convince people to trust you. It allows for the development of important social and conversational skills which I feel are important to living a normal life.

I will admit it was frustrating learning at first. As the newbie, I was mainly tasked with the cleaning and preparation of tools that frustrated me at first, but I realized that I had to start somewhere. As an impatient teenager, I wanted to get straight into the fixing of cars, but I had to be realistic. I could not learn and experiment on a customer's car especially with the little to no experience that I had coming in. I had to develop patience and learn how to work efficiently and correctly as time progressed.

I found the best way to learn was to pay attention to how the other mechanics would work. I would note down certain techniques and tips needed to complete certain jobs. I would watch them do certain things so often that it would become ingrained in my head over and over again. I learned to fix and replace things that I enjoyed. I was excited every time I would change something and fix a car. I would recount what I did each day to my father every day and he enjoyed me learning just as much as I did. I believe he was proud to see me finding something I enjoyed and working towards bettering myself in it.

Another aspect that I enjoyed was the conversation of many different people from different ethnicities, generations, etc. I met so many genuine people. As this was a German car shop we had quite a few repeat customers and I got to meet and conversate with most of them. It was great meeting so many different people. I enjoyed meeting a variety of different people who were keen to share information about themselves with me. I especially enjoyed conversating with some of the older customers who came in as they were always willing to offer up knowledge and advice about life.

One final thing that I learned is that the responsibility you have to develop. I had to account for my actions and mistakes that I made. I opened and closed the shop daily and was made responsible for all the cars. It helped me develop a sense of responsibility and made me want to do things right. I wanted to do things to the best of my ability. As a general conclusion, I learned so many important skills and life lessons and I enjoyed working there and hope to work there for years to come.