Posted On: Monday - February 15th 2021 7:19PM MST
In Topics: The Future Race/Genetics Customer Care
(Continued from our Introduction.)
Hotels or motels, business or pleasure, probably all of our readers have been customers of the lodging "sector". Under the previous post, commenters have noted the ownership by foreigners, particularly •Indians. The •Indians, from what I gather many from the Patel clan, extended family, whatever, have ownership of mostly the low-end of the business. Yes, you can bargain, with cash, with these people when the places have lots of vacancies. (This is perhaps another bright spot of this Kung Flu LOCKDOWN business, with lodging places going out of business all over. Some of these "entrepreneurs", doing the motel management that Americans "just won't do", will tell their caste and/or clan members* back in the old country that they'd be better off staying home.)
I'd like to see competent American owners of these businesses. However, this post is more about competence in maintaining hotel/motel rooms and facilities,
Face it, when there's something wrong with the plumbing, and this goes for at home too (if you're not a DIY'er) who would you like to see show up? Unless it's someone I know already, anyone but a White guy or an occasional American-born-sounding Oriental guy gives me no confidence whatsoever. That's the way it is. Yeah, it's a stereotype, It's not always the case that my confidence or lack thereof is warranted. "Stereotypes are bad, mmmkay..." is what we are told. However, stereotypes come from noticing patterns.
It's the same story for a car mechanic. Who would you be comfortable with working on your car? How about if you are on an airliner and see mechanics come into the cockpit to talk to the pilots about something? Would you rather the heavy hangar maintenance on that plane be done by white guys in Dallas or Chinese guys in Shenzhen or a facility in Lagos, NIgeria?
I'll admit right here that I've rigged up some things in some questionable ways in my house and under the car hoods. It's work that I'm responsible for, and I've learned some lessons and had to redo things. If you work for someone else who relies on your job though, you need to have some knowledge and competence. I've met a couple of black aircraft mechanics who are quite knowledgeable and I'd trust them. I can't say the same for any black auto mechanic, though that's an area in which it's always been hit-or-miss for anyone. There's a reason for the word "nigger-rigged", though.
This is why I am separating the housekeeping function out of the subject matter here. As I said, I respect this hard work. It's pure drudgery, without any serous thinking required to get the job done. Yes, there is an aspect of competence required, as sloppy work will be noticed by some of the customers. There may be for some an aspect of pride to the work too. "Nobody will get the COVID-19 off of anything in MY rooms!" It's always good to work with pride. This goes along with the caring trait in some people vs. others.
As with plenty of other manual labor work, such as mechanic work and handyman work, the maintenance of hotels requires thinking and competence. Not everything just fits together nicely, and there are jobs that can be done sloppily or right. For our ubiquitous wood-framed construction in America, the 2 big enemies are fire and water. Other than from the actions of the customers (subject of the next post), it's shoddy electrical work that can cause fires and shoddy plumbing work that can cause water damage. It pays off to have these things done right in the first place, another story, but shoddy maintenance in these areas costs lots of money and customer goodwill. I can simply tell when a hotel is maintained by non-white people. Things aren't always working in the rooms, and things seem to be headed downhill quality-wise over time.
A quick anecdote involves my taking a bath one time in a hotel. I heard people from the hotel out in the hall talking about something, and I got a call from the front desk after a while. Water was out in the hall, coming from my room. Hey, wait, nothing was overflowing. I thought about it later and realized that the tub overflow drain must not have been routed right. One should be able to take a bath.** This problem could have been just a long term thing, the piping having rusted out somewhere. On the other hand, had someone just not hooked it up right, but not many guests had taken baths? My use of the tub caused a possibly major problem. I can see a lot of work in taking that tub out to get to that overflow line. You've got to do things right, and you've got to fix things right.
I'll digress now to a novel (recommended by commenter Dieter Kief) called "Our Lady of the Forest". I'll review it soon as, though it was a bit strange, the book was interesting, and the novel did put in some very good description of 3 things. The author really knows his stuff about: 1) The lay of the land and the climate and beauty of the Pacific NW rain forest, 2) The devastation of the economy of that region (not just the rain forest, but the Cascades too) due to the near shut-down of the logging industry from its heyday years, and 3) The problems with mass immigration.
I bring this novel up now only because one of the main characters of the book, a former logger named Tom Cross, has ended up staying long-term in a small room at a cheap motel owned and managed by a •Indian couple in return for maintenance work. It seems clear that the •Indian couple and Mr. Cross himself all know that it takes a white guy like him to do a proper job keeping the place in shape. In particular, a logger would have the skills to keep up chainsaws and much bigger and just as dangerous mechanical equipment, as the book describes well. Small maintenance in a motel would be kid stuff.
White guys are just good at this kind of work. As I wrote in the intro., I'm not trying to cover every race and ethnicity here. However, Peak Stupidity has already discussed the difference in the Do It Yourself handyman mentality of white Americans vs. Chinese guys in China vs. American and the local hardware store.*** Some of it is cultural, as in the Chinese people just don't respect those who do manual labor. Some has got to be situational, as Americans have grown up working on cars for many generations, while most Chinamen didn't HAVE a car to work on one generation ago. Lastly, there is probably a genetic component, as usual.
Whatever the reason, if you want mechanical/electrical stuff repaired and maintained, you need to keep on the white guys. I don't care how un-PC this is. Do you want happy customers or not? Place the gregarious black girls in the coffee shops in these big open lobbies in the modern hotels. Let the black guys drive the vans and help guests with their stuff. Of course there will be plenty that can work at the desk and help manage the place. Practicing affirmative action may make you feel virtuous, but customers don't like 3rd-world broken-down rooms. Just let the white guys keep your place up. It's a core competency for them, as the HR people say.
* And even if one is of the opinion that the best and the brightest from all over the world are good for America (not my opinion), these people, likely lots of them here illegally, are not your molecular biologists and computer scientists.
** These overflow openings are usually hidden by the metal around the tub stopper lever. Oftentimes, they are too low to allow for a good bath, and I wonder if that is done on purpose.
*** See also DIY and mechanical aptitude in Americans vs. Chinese - self rebuttal.
Comments:
Moderator
Thursday - February 18th 2021 7:00AM MST
PS: Adam, regarding the power steering pump, it was not that they went and "did" a job that was not necessary. I came in with a well-working power steering pump, and out with a leaking one. Luckily, it was easy to get at on that car, and parts were cheap then. I never went back to that shop.
Adam Smith
Wednesday - February 17th 2021 10:15AM MST
PS: Good morning everyone...
"I had a power steering pump failure that wasn't there when I brought the car in."
I hate it when shops take advantage of people. Years ago, long before my wife and I met, her car overheated and she pulled into a shop. They told her she needed a new thermostat. They charged her $600 dollars for the repair. After we met and she helped me play mechanic a few times she learned more about thermostats and cooling systems and how badly that shop ripped her off.
I learned to fix my cars after paying for a few shoddy repairs that I ended up having to fix myself. If I'm going to have to fix it anyway there's no point in paying someone to make it worse. I can break stuff myself for free.
It's good you have a mechanic friend who is a perfectionist. Cars are too expensive to not fix properly. If America had a better education system everyone would know how to change their fluids, thermostat, brakes, spark plugs, wires, light bulbs, alternator, starter, rotate tires, etc. Normal maintenance stuff. Everyone should know how to maintain a car at least well enough to not get ripped off. If more people had a better understanding of car maintenance shops wouldn't be able to take advantage of people. Unfortunately many Americans don't know anything about their cars. More unfortunately new cars are needlessly complex which only makes the situation worse.
☮
"I had a power steering pump failure that wasn't there when I brought the car in."
I hate it when shops take advantage of people. Years ago, long before my wife and I met, her car overheated and she pulled into a shop. They told her she needed a new thermostat. They charged her $600 dollars for the repair. After we met and she helped me play mechanic a few times she learned more about thermostats and cooling systems and how badly that shop ripped her off.
I learned to fix my cars after paying for a few shoddy repairs that I ended up having to fix myself. If I'm going to have to fix it anyway there's no point in paying someone to make it worse. I can break stuff myself for free.
It's good you have a mechanic friend who is a perfectionist. Cars are too expensive to not fix properly. If America had a better education system everyone would know how to change their fluids, thermostat, brakes, spark plugs, wires, light bulbs, alternator, starter, rotate tires, etc. Normal maintenance stuff. Everyone should know how to maintain a car at least well enough to not get ripped off. If more people had a better understanding of car maintenance shops wouldn't be able to take advantage of people. Unfortunately many Americans don't know anything about their cars. More unfortunately new cars are needlessly complex which only makes the situation worse.
☮
Moderator
Tuesday - February 16th 2021 2:00PM MST
PS: Peter, I take it you missed a letter and "here" was supposed to be "there". Sorry for the lack of editing features, everyone.
iSteve goes crazy for 2-day periods sometimes. If you didn't mean that, well, I try to get in 9 to 11 posts a week. Sometimes it's just a music video though, as with yesterday's 2nd one.
iSteve goes crazy for 2-day periods sometimes. If you didn't mean that, well, I try to get in 9 to 11 posts a week. Sometimes it's just a music video though, as with yesterday's 2nd one.
Moderator
Tuesday - February 16th 2021 1:57PM MST
PS: Mr. Smith, I am lucky to have a mechanic friend who is very competent, a perfectionist in fact (costs him a hell of a lotta money on his own vehicles of which he has too many and for which he will never get back the money and time spent except by selfing them to friends). This guy has shopped stuff out and hardly every is satisfied with the work others do. I'm sure he knows, too.
Good on you getting rid of the catalytic converter. (We already discussed that bit on iSteve.)
Re your last part. I agree completely. I had a shop tell me in a half-joking fashion years ago "oh, we hate guys that work on their own vehicles. We charge extra for that." I can kind of see their point of being tired of working on n-rigged-up stuff. However, all I know is that it wasn't a friendly relationship, and I had a power steering pump failure that wasn't there when I brought the car in. Midas wouldn't let me drive the car into the bay, and I had my reasons due to a couple of special deals built into the car. I told them "see you later" and got it aligned a couple of years later ...
Good on you getting rid of the catalytic converter. (We already discussed that bit on iSteve.)
Re your last part. I agree completely. I had a shop tell me in a half-joking fashion years ago "oh, we hate guys that work on their own vehicles. We charge extra for that." I can kind of see their point of being tired of working on n-rigged-up stuff. However, all I know is that it wasn't a friendly relationship, and I had a power steering pump failure that wasn't there when I brought the car in. Midas wouldn't let me drive the car into the bay, and I had my reasons due to a couple of special deals built into the car. I told them "see you later" and got it aligned a couple of years later ...
PeterIke
Tuesday - February 16th 2021 1:14PM MST
PS
"BTW, thanks for commenting in here on some of the threads, Peter."
My pleasure! TBH, I'm getting a bit tired of commenting at Sailer. My main problem here is sometimes the blogs show up so quickly I can't get to them all.
"BTW, thanks for commenting in here on some of the threads, Peter."
My pleasure! TBH, I'm getting a bit tired of commenting at Sailer. My main problem here is sometimes the blogs show up so quickly I can't get to them all.
Adam Smith
Tuesday - February 16th 2021 11:48AM MST
PS: Good afternoon everyone...
"Who would you be comfortable with working on your car?"
I haven't felt comfortable letting anyone else work on my car, or anything else, for a really long time.* I wouldn't trust the above average mechanic to change my oil properly. I find that most people are not very competent anymore, and I live in a place that is 98% white.
If you want something done right you have to do it yourself.
* I remember clearly the last time I let someone else work on my car. It was that guy who welded the straight pipe in my exhaust when my catalytic converter was in need of replacement, about 10 years ago. I found him to be quite competent. He was one of those mechanics who let me in the shop to help with the repair. All the best mechanics I've ever met let me into the shop to help or to watch. If they won't let you in the shop while they are working I would recommend that you go someplace else or do it yourself.
☮
"Who would you be comfortable with working on your car?"
I haven't felt comfortable letting anyone else work on my car, or anything else, for a really long time.* I wouldn't trust the above average mechanic to change my oil properly. I find that most people are not very competent anymore, and I live in a place that is 98% white.
If you want something done right you have to do it yourself.
* I remember clearly the last time I let someone else work on my car. It was that guy who welded the straight pipe in my exhaust when my catalytic converter was in need of replacement, about 10 years ago. I found him to be quite competent. He was one of those mechanics who let me in the shop to help with the repair. All the best mechanics I've ever met let me into the shop to help or to watch. If they won't let you in the shop while they are working I would recommend that you go someplace else or do it yourself.
☮
Moderator
Tuesday - February 16th 2021 11:12AM MST
PS: Alarmist, I should post one of those lists with pilot-written squalks and funny mechanic replies some time.
"Right engine sounds like it's missing."
"Found right engine on starboard wing."
etc.
Always carry a 0.050" Allen driver...
"Right engine sounds like it's missing."
"Found right engine on starboard wing."
etc.
Always carry a 0.050" Allen driver...
The Alarmist
Tuesday - February 16th 2021 8:25AM MST
PS
Funniest thing I did with an avionics tech struggling with getting one of the boxes to work was to take a rubber mallet to the box, which fixed the problem that had plagued all three replacements he had tried, and told him to write “Re-seated the unit” on the squawk ticket.
Funniest thing I did with an avionics tech struggling with getting one of the boxes to work was to take a rubber mallet to the box, which fixed the problem that had plagued all three replacements he had tried, and told him to write “Re-seated the unit” on the squawk ticket.
Moderator
Monday - February 15th 2021 8:44PM MST
PS: Yeah, Peter, I meant white Americans, as in guys that come from here. Alas, sometimes, it's hard to find anybody competent anymore.
BTW, thanks for commenting in here on some of the threads, Peter.
BTW, thanks for commenting in here on some of the threads, Peter.
Peterike
Monday - February 15th 2021 8:14PM MST
PS
White guys yes, in general. But “men with chains” whites — like Bulgarians and such — are not to be trusted one bit. Maybe that’s a North East thing. New York City is crawling with them.
White guys yes, in general. But “men with chains” whites — like Bulgarians and such — are not to be trusted one bit. Maybe that’s a North East thing. New York City is crawling with them.
“ Whatever the reason, if you want mechanical/electrical stuff repaired and maintained, you need to keep on the white guys.”
Years ago I joined the U.S. Navy. I ended up being trained in a submarine related job, maintaining nuclear missile fire control systems. The submarine community was considered to be manned by the top 10% of the USN, and reactor tenders and nuke maintainers were the top 10% of the top 10%. Out of a couple thousand people in those jobs, one (count ‘em one) black represented. He was considered incompetent.