Now, wait a minute!

It's Sunday afternoon and it is time to go to our favorite restaurant. A local steak house for an early evening meal. It's a good restaurant. The prices are good, the food is excellent. We get into my car and I back it out of the garage. Because the garage holds two cars and there is no room on the right to open the passenger door, Faye waits outside until I back out so she can get in the car.

As I back up near her, she gestures at me and points to the right rear of the car. I have a flat. A couple of days ago, the car was in the shop for an oil change, a nail was found in one tire and the tire was repaired. But now I have a flat. Completely flat. Since the car has not been moved since I drove it home after the oil change, the car has likely been sitting on that flat tire since Friday evening.

I leave my car in the driveway and pull Faye's car out for the drive to the restaurant. My dinner, while good, is tainted by the knowledge that I will have to put the spare (that little bitty donut tire) on after I get home. It's also affected by the slowly building suspicion that the tire that was repaired wasn't done properly.

When I get home I spend a half hour swapping the flat for the spare. I check the work order from the dealer's service center. It doesn't reveal which tire was repaired beyond "front". But front when? After rotation or before?

This is not over, check back later. First I play golf then I go to the service center.


Later

So I go to the dealer, limping in on the little donut, and explain my problem. I ask him to confirm which tire was repaired. He says it seemed to him that it was a front tire. So I explain that the only way I would accept that, since the patch inside the tire rather than use plugs, would be to take that tire off, break it down and show me the patch. He said they would do that if it took that for me to have trust in them but that he would check with the tech.

He comes back a minute later and sheepishly says, "It was put on the right rear and we will fix it for you right now."

And they did. They said so. It was a poor patch job, they said.

And I will check it again in a few hours to make sure it holds air this time.