Damn! What a pisser of a year so far.
My wife's car breaks down at the beginning of summer to the tune of $600. Chevy Lumina with its factory defective intake gasket. The first time it happened it was still under warranty luckily. Thirty thousand miles later, it happens again. This time it comes out of our pockets, even though the mechanics say that Chevy knows that it is a defect with all the engines in these cars and mini vans. I think that it should be covered under the lemon law. We were told to expect to have to replace it again in another thirty thousand miles. The darned things are made from a hard plastic that crack and cause a coolant leak. Most people think that their water pump has gone bad when it happens. I'll bet that more than one owner has paid a large price for these repairs.

After my wife's car gets fixed, not three weeks goes by and my clutch on my truck goes out. That cost six hundred dollars to get fixed as well. It happened at a bad time but, its the only major thing that has gone wrong with my Ford Ranger in thirteen years. It had over 110,000 miles on it before it went out. I did get tons more life out of my other Rangers clutch. However, it never pulled the kind of weight that this Ranger has pulled. Surprisingly, this truck is much heavier than you would think with the king cab and four wheel drive. It is just a much more beefier made vehicle.

Our home air-conditioner went on the fritz this summer as well.

The concert gig fell flat and I lost some money on that.

Our ceiling fan in the living room just gave up tonight.

We had the main drain pipe from the kitchen and washer bust under the house. What a mess that was for me to be crawling around in all night trying to get it fixed. Course, I had to lay down in it as the space is small down there. The trap clean out that goes to the street wouldn't budge, so I had to take the pipe loose. Then I discover that the old cast iron pipe has a crack in it after I get it all back together and it still leaked. Had to undo it all and start over. By then it was late at night and I couldn't get parts to fix it. Digging up the cast iron pipe to replace it would have been very costly. So I repaired the broken spot with an epoxy made to work on cast iron the next day. She still holds now.
Thing is, that last night the whole works starts backing up again so we get a plumber out here today to clean it out. The clog is twenty feet out and down the pipe so my sewer rat wouldn't touch it. The plumber blew out the pipes after using their rig on it. They said my patch was fine and wouldn't suggest replacing the cast iron pipe all the way to the street. It was just years of buildup and it happens. Half a gallon of Clorox down the pipe every month should keep the grunge eaten out.

My job went to shit and I wasn't ever going to go anywhere there anymore. It was a dead end. Several people have left the place because of their business practices and how they have begun to treat their long term employees. Just saw another man who left a week after I did. He said that the owner asked him what he though the reason was that people keep leaving. Ken told him straight up about how they treat people and customers like dirt. Ken also told him how he and the others just don't appreciate the lies that employees are told and customers are pulling out for the reason also.
my cousin in-law knows the owner before he ever had his own business. John used to always call her for her advice on matters as she is someone that he will listen to. He got the big head and tried talking to his customers like he does to his employees and it back fired on him. He lost a multi-million dollar customer for his attitude. She also said that every since he turned the business over to his son-inlaw and son, that it has gone down hill fast.
"You can't treat people that way and expect them to stay around. And your two boys are running the place into the ground. " she told him

Not to mention that he wouldn't give pay raises for over seven years because he was buying up old vacant business properties that were costing money to just sit. Can't keep them rented out so he quit giving pay raises to cover his losses. All of his trucks and other equipment are past there prime and under federal law, will all have to be replaced next year because they are to old to be on the road. I was only one of the five that had been with him from the beginning that were left. We were the loyal ones and they started treating us like we didn't know anything about our jobs. What the deal is, is that his son in-law and son wanted to cut costs by pushing us out.
Not to forget that they continually make drivers run over their mandated hours and how unsafe a lot of their equipment is maintained. Forklifts included. If you told them that a piece of equipment was unsafe, they'd just tell you to keep running it anyway.

I finally got fed up with the unsafe practices, like the others did, that they do on a daily basis. Someone is going to get killed there and I'm just glad that I won't have to be there to see it. Or it to be me. So I took a lower paying job because of their many bad practices and treatment. Like thumbing their noses at the D.O.T and OSHA and even the fire Marshall.
Others are doing the same. And with today's job situation, you know it must be bad to leave a place after so many years. Speculation from other business people is that they will be out of business within the next twelve months. Glad I'm gone before that happens.

Well, that's my rant for the day.