I’m not a big fan of car washes. Either their too piddling to do any good, or they are such a massive production I’m afraid the car is going to get shredded. And, while there’s nothing all the amusing about your local high-school or college girls wearing bathing suits for a fund raiser, they don’t seem to take the same kind of car and attention to detail a professional would. That said, I’m too lazy to do it myself.
The ones that really get me are the wanna-be car washes. You drive your car in, because there is no conveyor belt or tow system. The car gets whacked by thick cloth, which beats the dirt and grit into submission more than cleaning it from the vehicle. And the rise phase looks like a play area from the local water park.
So, when my co-worker asked it I minded if we swung through, I knew it was going to be entertaining.
We pull up to the entrance and there’s a big device that asks for your code. We didn’t have one. We fully expected to swipe a credit card. No dice. So, we pushed the Call-For-Help button. The speaker was obviously shorted out. So, we went to back out.
Only we couldn’t.
Some guy who had bought his code at the pump was behind us, and the line, enforced by reinforced concrete, insisted the only path was through the mouth of the beast.
There was someone in there already. And after his cheesy wash, he pulled up to the spray area where you are supposed to drive slowly under some spraying nozzles as a big LED clock counts down when they turn off on their own.
Almost everyone screws this part up because the clock that tells you how long you got is OUTSIDE the washing area. Once you’re through, you see how long you should have stayed. Good design, eh?
Well the guy in front of us exits, and seeing there’s no way out, and no help coming, I suggest we drive on through. However, as we do, I make out there’s 10 seconds left on the clock! So we drive through slowly.
We emerge, not paying a dime (especially as there was no wash) with a clean windshield, which was the entire objective anyhow.
I can only imagine the guy behind us who didn’t have the full story. From his perspective, we punched some buttons and floored it through the wash being too stupid to figure it out — or maybe we knew something he didn’t. It was fun as we turned the corner to see the very confused expression on his face before he went in.