My Life

How much does a free car wash cost?

Today as my boss and I ended a mini meeting and he was about to leave my store, I started telling him about how I had joined Sneezy’s NASCAR group and Pax’s campfire and how it all worked. While we stood there chit chatting, a K-9 police officer unit (Range Rover type vehicle) came in to get a car wash. My cashier handled the transaction as my boss and I talked about Writing.com for me, music for him. We are both thrilled about all we are learning!

About that time, we see the officer come around the corner and punch in the car wash code. We watched as he entered the car wash, my boss made the statement that that car wash wasn’t going to get that unit cleaned! It needed a hands on type wash. We laughed together realizing the degree of mud and grime that was on the unit.

We then continued our chit chat when all off a sudden, I see the tail end of the vehicle disappear quickly with much soap still on it. I jump, My boss looks at me in confusion.

I say, “That cop just took off with soap all over his truck!” He says, “Well he must have gotten a call or something.” We watched towards the stop light expecting to see him, we didn’t.

A few minutes later we see the officer walking around the other end of the car wash. I ran out and asked if he was OK? His response...“Yeah I’m OK, but I don’t know that my truck is.”

The reason he had left the car wash bay so quickly was due to the top arm of the wash busting in the middle and coming down on his hood, it was then pulled over the windshield and ultimately busted one of the lights on top of the truck.

Because of where my boss and I, as well as my cashier were standing at the time, we couldn’t see that. We just thought he left on a call and would return.

We went to the carwash bay and couldn’t believe the site in front of us. We originally thought the machine was just trying to recycle from his quick exit. Then we saw the way the boom (arm) was hanging, we couldn’t believe it had snapped! The metal rod that goes through it, is about a 1 1/2 to 2 inches in diameter yet it snapped like a crayon.

In disbelief, I returned to the store where I proceeded to fill out the necessary paperwork so my company would pay for the damages to the unit. He said the shop would call me. I faxed everything to my corporate office, my boss then left.

The kicker...IT WAS A FREE CAR WASH! We never charge the police department for car washes!

I swear it’s the truth!