Report from the pit

Promises, undeliverable

So, I stopped by the local VIP Tire shop for an oil change today because my road trip pretty much exhausted the shelf life of what’s in there now. No soap

As I was coming in, two would-be customers were walking out: “good luck, one of them said, “there’s no one back there”. I went in anyway and prowled around, finally finding a harassed employee changing tires. “There’s just two of us” he sighed, “but we might be able to get to you tomorrow.” Off I went.

The owner of this franchise has a problem: either raise the hourly rate of his unskilled labor (and the kids assigned to oil changes are always the least skilled — hell, even I changed my junkers’ oil when I was a teenager) and raise his prices to compensate, or lose customers, like the three of us who walked out today.

That’s a Hobson’s choice; he’ll have to do something to wean our couch-dozers from their diet of government cheese, but multiplied by businesses all across the country, the inflation outlook doesn’t seem promising.

IMPORTANT CORRECTION: FWIW’s New Mexico Grammarian points out that our VIP owner, unlike a customer of Thomas Hobson, does in fact have a choice: while those who would hire a horse from Hobson’s stable were faced with a “take it or leave it” proposition, our unfortunate oil changer has two choices, though equally unpalatable, and should more properly be described as “on the horns of a dilemma”. I might also have said “between Scylla and Charybdis”, but either way, Mr. Hobson shouldn’t have been dragged into the discussion. Your editor deeply regrets the error.