Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself?
—Tao Te Ching - Verse 15
I recently bought a Certified Pre-Owned vehicle that was only two years old and had very few miles on it. It was essentially brand new, or so the greasy sales rep told me.
The problems started the day I drove it off the lot, beginning with a window that wouldn’t roll up properly after being lowered. I drove 45 minutes back to the dealership the next day, at which point they did a “program reset,” flickering the switch some combination of up and down for some combination of seconds. My initial thought was, Do they pre-program a system reset in anticipation of the window failing by design? But anyway, the window was fixed—for about twenty-four hours, that is, until the issue returned, and I had to drive back again.
They insisted that the “re-programming” was the solution, which it was, for about twenty-four hours. I wasn’t keen on making that same drive so soon, but fortunately for me, the “brand new” car battery began failing a month later, stranding me in various places and giving me another reason to return.
After the new battery was replaced and the window pointlessly re-programmed once more, the replacement battery died two months later. Did I mention the main counsel pooped out somewhere in between? So they had to ship a new one from Japan, requiring another trip to the dealership. Oh, then the cables connected to the replacement battery began draining the replacement battery excessively, so those had to be replaced.
At this point, I insisted the window unit be replaced as well, because it was clear that re-programming was nothing but a sham. After they called me in once the window parts had arrived, they were nice enough to keep me waiting for only two hours before they informed me that the parts technician had ordered the wrong parts for the door, and that I’d have to come back again.
Incompetence is usually a trigger of mine, but at that point, I just laughed—which either signifies the remarkable personal growth I’ve experienced over the course of owning the vehicle for a year, or it’s the first sign of insanity. I’m not sure which.
Despite what the quote above suggests, there’s not really a lesson about patience here. The real lesson is that sometimes life bends you over, and that’s that.