The roads here in Brazil can be a little rough during the rainy season and there are a few roads that just weren't built that well. At times you will see huge craters in the road that are big enough to swallow a small car. The road workers try their best to keep up with repairing the roads, but with this much rain it almost impossible. During the dry season the roads are usually better.
I've had a few problems with flat tires, a couple nails and another time I hit a huge pot hole that broke the bead on the tire. It was time to get a few new ones. So I contacted my Brazilian friend who works at the garage I get oil changes from and he is also the owners son. You will learn here, that loyalty is important and most businesses will reward a return customer with discounts. It's a general maintenance car shop that does engine repairs and other stuff. Not a tire shop, but my friend assured me that he could get me a great deal on tires. That's great, I figured he could or that he had another garage to refer me to.
It seemed everything was in place; date, time, prices for the different brands of tires and oil change. This was arranged a week in advance. I contacted my friend the day prior to confirm the appointment and to pick the brand of tire I would like. He reconfirmed that they were ready for me to be there the next day and that "Luciana" was expecting me. My friend unfortunately was out of town and wouldn't return until after New Years. Not a big problem, but I was hoping he would be there to make this a smooth process. Oh well, stuff happens and we all need to just roll with it.
I get up early that morning and drag the kids with me to this garage that is about a 30 minute drive away. Yes there is closer garages, but remember the loyalty thing. My in-laws also use this same garage and they were the ones who took me here in the past. Its our place to go for car needs and I think my mother in-law had done something to help these folks out in the past. There is also a huge shopping area close to this garage I like to walk around in. I usually don't buy anything there because it is the very cheap Chinese made stuff. It reminds me of any Chinatown you may have visited with the shops pretty much on top of each other and interesting things to see. A lot of knock off stuff!
We arrived and drove into the garage, my oldest son said "Wow Dad this is a beautiful garage." Indeed it is! Very well kept and maintained. A place I would recommend to anyone and I am glad I found this gem of a place. I parked and ushered the kids into the waiting room and proceeded to look for "Luciana" or someone else I may recognize. I ended up with a mechanic I never met before, but he seemed to know who I was and what I wanted. I explained to him in broken Portuguese what I needed done and showed him that I wanted the front right tire to go back as the spare tire. Told him that Hankook (Korean) was the brand I wanted and he agreed that was a good choice. All was good, went to the waiting room to wait.
As we sat there the kids got restless and I decided to walk them around the small shops. We left and walked around and returned in about 20 minutes. The mechanic saw us walk back in, but was busy on the phone. I knew something was wrong when my car was sitting in the middle of the garage ready to go...no new tires. He got off the phone and took me out into the garage to show me what he did. It was partly right, moved the front right tire back to being the spare tire and put my repaired tire back on. I had repaired this tire at another place a week ago to get me by until I could arrange tires at this place.
In my broken Portuguese I asked where was my new tires? He replied that they were not a tire shop and I was in need of new tires. I told him, that's why I'm here. He explained that they don't do tires and hey look at this tire...it's not good. He then proceeded to take a photo of it and my license plate just incase something happened. You know cover your ass type of stuff. I did the palm to the forehead and then kindly asked if the oil had got changed at least. Sadly, no and he didn't have time to do it right now.
What a mess, it wasn't that much of a language barrier but a huge screw up on my friends part. I am not sure why he thought that they could do this, but he wasn't there to fix the problem. I sent him a nice message telling him what happened and it went without a reply for awhile. Uh oh, he knows that he screwed up and is avoiding me. A few hours later he replied with "Oh my god, I am so sorry." He just woke up and is 3 hours behind us in Mexico on vacation. He will fix this when he returns. I told him no problem and that I will deal with it next week. He is on vacation and at that point I didn't want to bother him. Enjoy yourself man!
It's what I would like to call "Its Brazil" type of situation. Whenever something happens and someone is like "why isn't this working" or "What happened" I say this. He probably thought it was no big deal to do this type of work and is willing to do anything to please the family. Things happen here and there is not much you can do about it. I am disappointed to not get this done and will now need to find another place next week. It's hard to explain the culture here, but it is for the most part laid back and people want to make you happy. Yeah, I wasted my morning for nothing but what can I do about it.
Well thanks for reading and being part of my daily struggles here...to be continued!
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