Holding the counter up (i.e. tales from the parts counter)

[Jim Ratto]

All of us have been on one side, or possibly both, of the local VW speedshop counter. (no internet shoppers need apply here...). Everybody I know that has worked the counter @ a VW parts place always have a good couple of stories. I know my illustrious career @ BH supplied me with some laughs for a good 10 years, and even before working there, just hangin around the place usually sent you home with a good "you wouldn't beLIEVE what happened @ Buggy House today..." story.
Mix in a bunch of characters that worked with me and.... endless run of knee slappers.

Let's hear some of your horror stories from the parts counter.... this oughta be good.

[Rennsurfer]

Too many to remember... but here's one; my long time friend and fellow DEEK Joe Aiken and I were working at Long Beach Auto Haus one day. Drinking cold ones from the bar next door (kept our mugs under the counter), KROQ 106.7 FM (punk/new wave radio station) in the background, talking about engines as usual, and having fun. In walks two guys. We ask 'em if they need any help and they said no. After a short while, one of 'em asks, "Say, man... how much is that spaghetti on the wall?" I walked around the counter over to the S&S Header display on the pegboard and point to the extractor with the single chrome tip quiet pack bolted to it. "This one?", I asked. They both nodded yes. I told 'em the price. A few minutes later, they asked Joe, "Do you all carry Hurst slap sticks?" Joe kept it together and politely gave them prices. Lastly, they made their way to where we were sitting on our bar stools near the register. After looking at the pictures of our cars, they exclaim, "HEY, that's the car from the BOOK, man!" Pointing to a snap shot of my orange '66.

After they looked around for a bit longer and left, we lost it and were cracking up for the duration of the day. From that day forward, even to this day, we jokingly refer to VW extractors as spaghetti, shifters as slap sticks and VW magazines as the BOOK. I'm quite sure that Mr. Rayburn can recall a few more funny moments that went down at that Auto Haus location. Be not shy, my brother.

[Jim Ratto]

Good one Mark. Someday you'll have to meet Sheep. It will explain everything.

Ask him to define "illegitimate" for you. Ask him about Dirty Bill. Ask him about the gasket burgers. Ask him directions to Buggy House.


 

[Rick Meredith]

I couldn't pass this one up. I used to work at a parts store on Main St. in downtown Santa Ana. For those of you who are not familiar, Downtown Santa Ana is one of the poorer areas around and largely Hispanic.

I'm working on a Saturday with Greg aka "Gigfish" the store assistant manager. I'm helping a customer on the phone and Gigfish is helping a obviously Hispanic and very drunk walk-in customer. He walks into the back to pull some parts. I get off the phone and the customer walks over to my end of the counter. The customer shows me a wide 5 Bus rear brake drum with a large hole in the center of it. In a slurred and heavily accented voice he says;

"Is there any trick to getting these things off?"
"No" I replied, "There just torqued down very tightly, more than 300 ft. pounds so you really need to crank on them. I usually get a breaker bar on it and jump on the end of it."
"Well I couldn't get the nut off so I cut it off with my torch." 

I had to excuse myself so I wouldn't laugh in this guys face!

My first thought was... "OK so now how are you gonna get what's left of the brake drum off the axle with no way to mount a wheel or lock down a brake?? 

[kingsburgphil]

My late wife used to work at a Bap Geon (Beck Arnely ?) parts store on S. Main st. in Santa Ana. Her best story...An obviously gay guy would come in every other week to buy a tube of Bosch grease. 

[Rick Meredith]

My late wife used to work at a Bap Geon (Beck Arnely ?) parts store on S. Main st. in Santa Ana. Her best story...An obviously gay guy would come in every other week to buy a tube of Bosch grease. 

Same store Phil. It was a BAP store. 1906 S Main. Last time I was by there, the BAP sign was still on top of the building. It was painted over but you could still see the relief of the logo on it.

[John Rayburn]

My late wife used to work at a Bap Geon (Beck Arnely ?) parts store on S. Main st. in Santa Ana. Her best story...An obviously gay guy would come in every other week to buy a tube of Bosch grease. 

                                                      It must have been Carlos.

[Rennsurfer]

HAHA!! Jim, Rick, & Phil... good stuff. John, you big meanie.

[John Rayburn]

Mark, should we talk about the giant binoculars?

[Rennsurfer]

Mark, should we talk about the giant binoculars?

Feel free to share, my friend. But just note that said binoculars were Mike's (the owner's son) and not mine. But they DID serve a rather helpful purpose, yes?

 

[Stan Davis]

Oh no...now we're into stories about retail counter work....ok here goes.....

I was the store manager for Auto-Haus in Orange (forget what years, so many ago, but sometime between 1974 and whenever....) (and by the way, I have Ed Craig to Thank for that job, seriously all kidding aside, I appreciated it)...anyway, ) at the same time I'm into photography. So you know how all Auto Haus stores used that orange pegboard with the holes in it.....i set up a camera with motordrive and a remote control aiming thru the holes (or one hole to be exact) put a telephoto lense on it and aimed it towards the floor mats that were on the bottom shelf on the aisle leading up to the front counter. During the summer we had a lot of chicks that would stop in on the way down to the beach. So a lot of the time they would come in wearing their little string bikinis (this is the 70's now) and flip flops to buy floor mats for their "Vee-Dubs" as they would call them. So I would lead them over to the floor mats and let them look the mats on the "bottom shelf"! As they would bend over to look thru the types, I would press the button on my remote and the motor drive would start taking pics! they never knew and we would crack up! We  put together a album of all the best "shots" and would pass it around to our friends. was going to paste them on the wall of the employee bathroom, but didn't want Lynn or Ron to see them. But Lordy we had fun, taking them and looking at em!

[marc1951]

Auto Haus- La Habra
I had a dummy motor set up on and engine stand in the middle of the store where I would display various products.....including a set of 48 Ida webers. It struck me funny that just about everyone would look down the throats of the carbs, so I put little notes inside like "lose something, pal?" or "don't look now but someone is laughing at you" or "you will have to put in a quarter before the movie will start", etc. That was good for a few laughs and then people would ask me questions about the dummy motor like "how much horsepower was it" or" how fast will it go"................it was obviously a mocked up motor!!!!
I decided to see how far I could go with this thing so I started setting it up with dual and then triple oil sumps. I had dual Holley Bug sprays on it and then once, I had 1 Bug Spray and 1 48 Ida. i even put the heads up side down on it and no matter what I did, people would still ask "how much horsepower and how fast".


Marc

[Dave Rosique]

Mark, should we talk about the giant binoculars?

Feel free to share, my friend. But just note that said binoculars were Mike's (the owner's son) and not mine. But they DID serve a rather helpful purpose, yes?

 

Let me guess... the car wash across the street?

[John Rayburn]

You guessed it, it was the jet wash across the street. All the girls from Cal State Long Beach used to wash their cars there. Serious entertainment. One of my favorite things to happen at Auto Haus was the guy in dress slacks and Members Only jacket that came in with the carb that "didn't work." He handed it to Mark, and Mark promptly held it up to look inside and flipped the throttle open. He shot a big stream of gas straight up the guy, from shoes to collar on the Polo shirt.

[Rennsurfer]

You guessed it, it was the jet wash across the street. All the girls from Cal State Long Beach used to wash their cars there. Serious entertainment. One of my favorite things to happen at Auto Haus was the guy in dress slacks and Members Only jacket that came in with the carb that "didn't work." He handed it to Mark, and Mark promptly held it up to look inside and flipped the throttle open. He shot a big stream of gas straight up the guy, from shoes to collar on the Polo shirt.

Conclusion: after a brief accelerator pump and diaphragm test, results proved that said carburetor DID indeed function. Side note: if memory serves correctly, that customer never returned to the store. So one can only assume, at that juncture, that his carburetor worked. Final synopsis: truly, a win/win situation.

Speaking of the self service car wash, do you remember us joking around about always wanting to make up score card with number ratings (i.e. 8, 9.5, 10, etc.)? Because on a few occasions, a few of the um... contestants, were savvy enough to glance across the street and look seemingly right into our uh, lenses. So we figured that a few 16"x16" score cards would be a desirable system. Later, since all of us were too lazy to make up some cards, we ended up just randomly blurting out numbers like, "9.7." right in the middle of helping customers. It was code speak to alert our fellow employees and a few of the regular customers that there was something worth looking at, directly to the north on Pacific Coast Hwy.

Good times is putting it mildly.

John, since your recollections of that shop are rather tack sharp, do you recall a regular customer named Paul? He drove a Squareback. Trippy cat... one time, he came in all "drowsy" and saying to Joe and me, "Hey guys, I feel kinda weird... " (trailed off) So we asked why and he replied, "Well... I took a bunch of Contact and Nyquil together." Trying not to laugh, we advised him that driving was probably not his best option. Another time he came in to show us something that he'd done to his car in the parking lot, he started quacking like a duck. Joe and I lost it and were laughing our arses off. After that outburst, he exclaimed, "Hey, guys... I think I'm freaking out!" We looked at each other then scanned the parking lot to make sure no one else witnessed this display of behavior. Then told him that we needed to tend to the store. Joe still brings up that day and we still get a chuckle from it.

Plus, working across from the Long Beach V.A. Hospital, we had our share of um... "interesting" characters roaming in and out of the shop. Factor in, also, the fact that we worked next door to the 49'r Tavern (Long Beach State University watering hole). So it we were constantly treated to a Drunks R Us fest' almost daily.

One of these days, I gotta get Joe on this forum.

[Jim Ratto]

Some of these some of you may have heard before but these memories still make me cry laughing whenever they come up with old friends from the BH days. Most involve my co-worker and best friend, Little Frank, aka “Sheep”.

Two of the stories involve car pooling to Buggy House almost every day, since Frank lived en route to Buggy House, I’d stop by and pick him on my way in. This went on for probably 12-18 months before one day, I hear Frank answer the phone @ the counter: “Buggy House, this is Frank. Yeah we’re open ‘til 6pm. (pause)…..the address is 21030 Mission in Hayward. Yeah we have sunvisors. Yeah hang on, I’ll check….(puts guy on hold, check price in computer for sedan sunvisors, gets back on the line)…Hello? Yeah we have plenty, they’re twenty two bucks a pair. Yeah I’ll put a set aside. …uh huh… uh huh… How do you get here? I don’t know, Jim drives me in every day… hang on…”

On our way in almost every day, Frank would be squirming and bitching about how we has “frickin’ starving.” To ease his pain, we’d either stop @ the taco truck parked out at the end of his freeway onramp, or we’d pull through the drive thru @ the Jack in the Box just down a few blocks from the shop before we got there. One morning Frank asked we stop @ Jack, and during most of the 18 mile drive in, he kept reminding me… “dude I got 8 bucks in change, and I’m getting as many 99 cent cheeseburgers as I can.” We pull in, I do some rough math in my head, and pull to speaker. Mind you, it’s 8:20am…roll window down, and the speaker squawks “Welcome , can we take your order?”, “yeah, I’ll have seven 99 cent cheeseburgers.” Pause of silence from speaker….. “Seven 99 cent cheeseburgers? Seven, right? Anything else?” “Nope”, I reply. We pull forward and Frank scoops about 4 pounds of nickels and pennies from his shorts pockets and uses both hands to hand it to me, which I hand to clerk at window.
Later in the day, Frank had eaten 3 of his 7 cheeseburgers, it’s now maybe 2pm. He would bring the food in, and leave it on our special order receiving shelf. So on this day, I walk by and there are 4 grease-stained white paper-wrapped burgers lined up like pawns on a chessboard. By now they’ve been sitting there 6+ hr. Frank gets a customer that needs to unload a core in the back dock, so he’s away from the counter for a good 15min. While he’s helping some guy unload the longblock core, I get the wise idea to insert a little surprise in his stash of burgers. I walk over to the exhaust inventory and grab a 111251261B exhaust metal gasket. I unwrap one of the burgers and slide the gasket between the bun and wrap it back up. Maybe an hour later, Frank is “frickin’ starving again” and remembers his stash. In between calls and counter customers, he grabs THE burger, unwraps it, totally unaware, and take a big old bite...then scream “what the FUCK!!! Jesus Christ! Ow my fucking TEETH!!!! Holy Shit!” By now I am bent over in half laughing my ass off and Frank peels the bun back and sees the manifold gasket with a dent tooth impression. No harm done.

The speedometer cable story is legendary among those that were there to witness it. One morning this grouchy older guy walks in with a scowl and an attitude. I was lucky enough to get this guy out of the line @ the counter. I greet him, “Help ya?”. His eyes look from floor at me, eyebrows in a V, brow all wrinkled in years of bad luck and missed opportunity. “Need a speedometer cable” he says emotionless. “Ok, what are you working on?”
“Bug.” Great, one of these guys, next words out of his mouth will be “they’re all the same” (which, that “theory” and the willingness of so many of our idiot customer base to work on their own crap, is what kept or service and repair business hopping). Anyway, I dig it out of him…”what year Bug?”
“74”. Great. “Is it a Super Beetle or a Standard Bug?” By now the guy is at his wits’ end. “It’s just a 74 Bug!”
Ok dude you got it. I pull the appropriate cable, bill him, invoice him, and he’s down the road.
Maybe 2 or 3 hors pass, and a green Super Bug pulls up out front. I see the bitchy old guy amble out of the car and to the shop door. Upon entering, he gets one foot in the door, sees me, and yells across the showroom, “hey asshole, you sold me the wrong fucking part! This piece of shit doesn’t fit!!” I sigh, roll my eyes, go grab the correct cable for the Super, all the while that guy is cursing me up and down. Of course the wrong cable he brings me back is kinked, and covered in grease. While I’m wrting the guy’s invoice up, Frank’s got his back to the guy, while going through the WAWD catalog, but snickering at the situation I’m in with World’s Biggest Asshole. Since the guy dug his own hole even deeper with me, I charge him full VW list price on the correct cable, so his exchange of the Standard Bug cable isn’t going to do much for him. “That’ll be twenty seven dollars you owe me, after the exchange.” The guy give me the death glare, “What’d you say, boy?”
“I said you owe me twenty seven bucks”
“That other goddamn cable was 8 bucks. How much is this one?!!”
“Thirty Five”
Now the guy’s white hot mad. He pulls his wallet out and hands me $40 cash, muttering things like “useless sonofabitch, goddam stupid sonafabitch, goddam punk kids… thirty five fucking dollars my ASS” All the while Frank is still snickering away at me getting bitched at by this old guy. I’ve had it by now, and bring the guy his change back. He holds out his hand, but I throw the cash on the floor and tell him “get the fuck out of here, we don’t need your bullshit”. He stoops over, scabbles up his dough, and walks to door. Before leaving he turns around and screams at me “I’m never coming back to this shithole, you ILLEGETIMATE bastard!!” At this point, Frank turns around and looks the guy right in the eyes and says “Hey FUCK you man, He can READ!!!!”
The old man AND I both stared blankly at Frank dumbfounded. Later I said, “dude, look up ‘illegetimate’ in the dictionary sometime”


 
 

[bugnut68]

Oh no...now we're into stories about retail counter work....ok here goes.....

I was the store manager for Auto-Haus in Orange (forget what years, so many ago, but sometime between 1974 and whenever....) (and by the way, I have Ed Craig to Thank for that job, seriously all kidding aside, I appreciated it)...anyway, ) at the same time I'm into photography. So you know how all Auto Haus stores used that orange pegboard with the holes in it.....i set up a camera with motordrive and a remote control aiming thru the holes (or one hole to be exact) put a telephoto lense on it and aimed it towards the floor mats that were on the bottom shelf on the aisle leading up to the front counter. During the summer we had a lot of chicks that would stop in on the way down to the beach. So a lot of the time they would come in wearing their little string bikinis (this is the 70's now) and flip flops to buy floor mats for their "Vee-Dubs" as they would call them. So I would lead them over to the floor mats and let them look the mats on the "bottom shelf"! As they would bend over to look thru the types, I would press the button on my remote and the motor drive would start taking pics! they never knew and we would crack up! We  put together a album of all the best "shots" and would pass it around to our friends. was going to paste them on the wall of the employee bathroom, but didn't want Lynn or Ron to see them. But Lordy we had fun, taking them and looking at em!

Surely you have proofs leftovers somewhere in your archives... as they say on the 'net these days, pics or it didn't happen! Lol

[Rick Meredith]

Ok Carb story... we sold rebuilt carbs and the store policy was that we couldn't take a return on a carb if it had been installed. One saturday, I sold this guy a carb for a Corolla. He comes back to return it a few hours later. I smell gas when I open the box and explain the policy to him. He swears that he never installed it. I take the carb out of the box and flip it over onto the counter... all the gas from the float bowl gushes onto the counter. He still swears that he never installed it and that we must have sold it to him with the gas in it.. WTF???  

[RFbuilt]

hahahahaahahaha JIM

the  directions to BH  and the he can read story is timeless!!!!! 

[Tony M]

Working a BH, had a guy come down fron Oakland, checked out the store, asked a few questions, came back to the counter and asked for : sharpies, sparkies, and a wind strap. ? duh, did not know what he wanted, then he went to one of the display engines and pointed out the points, plugs, and fan belt. Have never heard them called that, but will never forget them either. Dirty Bill is a book in it self.  Someday we will pool all of the stories from Jim, Sheep,others, and my self, will need many cases of beer and wine to get it all done.

[Jim Ratto]

I can remember "somebody" changing descriptions of many, many parts in the computer's inventory database...(Hi Sheep). Our boss had an atomic temper, it was so bad it was actually amusing (well not really at the time, but now looking back 15-20 yr it was funny). Anyway, yu'd enter a part number for a vent wing weather strip... 113845625 or whatever, and instead of the description reading "LH VNT WTHRSTRP '65- SDN", the description would now come up as "RAVIOLI W/ MEAT SAUCE", or some 12V choke, 113129191G instead of "12V CHOKE, 34PICT", it would come up "SIZE 7-1/2 ROLLER SKATE". Once our boss caught on one day, ringing a customer up, you could almost hear the fuse burning before the explosion. I thought we were dead. MAN he was pissed, but at the same time, it was like he couldn't comprehend how, why, who, when.... but somehow he knew we were behind it.

Our co worker, Mark MAyonnaise, back in mid 90's got a pager and thought he was uber cool.... anyway, we got the bright idea to start calling his pager and entering just random phone numbers. It was funny as hell, he'd get a beep then at that second stop what he was doing (usually nothing) and call the number. Of course, the person he called had no clue.
Sometimes an argument woudl follow: "yes you DID page me! Your number is XXX XXXX right???"
We bettered that. We’d call his pager and then key in VW part numbers. So he’d be standing there doing nothing, the pager would go off and he’d read it and you could see him mouthing the numbers….  “1 1 1 5 9 8 0 5 1 A” and then squint and wrinkle his brow in perplexion. THEN, I shit you not, he would walk to the BIN BOX and slide it out and look inside and slide all the way out and look behind it, take all the seal kits out of the box and shake the box…. It was priceless. I don’t know how we didn’t get caught we would laugh so hard.

[Rick Sadler]

Keep 'em comin' Jim. It's just like being there! I love these stories.

[Rennsurfer]

Wind strap... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

[Jim Ratto]

Little Frank was infamous for his indigestion issues as well.

One day he was helping this nice middle aged woman special order a Hartz canvas top for her Ghia 'vert. As she was looking at different color samples in the catalog, I noticed Frank started hopping from foot to foot and getting real squirmy. His face looked really worried and he kept squirming. The lady didn't seem to notice. "Oh no... uh oh.... oh boy..." said Frank, "uh I'll be right back..." and he hot footed it to the store restroom, just leaving the lady stadning there. As he shut the door, he winces in pain and yelps "oh man, that WASN'T a fart!"
About 20 minutes later he comes limping out of the restroom and first thing out of his mouth: "Dude, do we have any ice?"

 

[Rennsurfer]

Hence why one must eat ice cream after ingesting serrano chili peppers. Those are the only ones that tear me up. Great story, though.

[Neil Davies]

Surely he'd need a 141-951-231 Monkey Sex Diaper then?

[team97]

Ok Carb story... we sold rebuilt carbs and the store policy was that we couldn't take a return on a carb if it had been installed. One saturday, I sold this guy a carb for a Corolla. He comes back to return it a few hours later. I smell gas when I open the box and explain the policy to him. He swears that he never installed it. I take the carb out of the box and flip it over onto the counter... all the gas from the float bowl gushes onto the counter. He still swears that he never installed it and that we must have sold it to him with the gas in it.. WTF???  

Rick, what about the Corona and the Crown or the 911 with hubcaps? I'll share some later but I need to make sure Greiner isn't lurking.

Glenn

[The Ideaman]

Plus, working across from the Long Beach V.A. Hospital, we had our share of um... "interesting" characters roaming in and out of the shop. Factor in, also, the fact that we worked next door to the 49'r Tavern (Long Beach State University watering hole). So it we were constantly treated to a Drunks R Us fest' almost daily.
One of these days, I gotta get Joe on this forum. [/b]

Never worked the counter of an auto parts store, but this reminds me of another VA story worth spamming the thread.
Around 15 years ago, I worked as an RN for Carl Hayden VA hospital in Phoenix, on a surgical floor.  It was the first of the month, and seemed unusually quiet all around.  Back then, some of these guys lived in the hospital for months.  The phone rings, and I answer, with "Deedee Marie" on the other end.  She tells me that Mr. Jones needs another bag of IV fluid. Perplexed,  I look and see Mr Jones room is empty.   "Deedee, where is Jonesy?"  He was one of the guys who had taken up residence on the floor, and had been there longer than I had worked there.  She tells me, "Where he always is on the first of the month, Cheetahs III."  As you all can imagine, Cheetahs III is a nudie bar across the street from the hospital.  So, at 11:30 AM on a weekday, there were about a dozen Vets all sitting around drinking and getting lap dances from the girls, with extension cords all over the floor so the IV pumps would stay charged up.  I rousted Jonesy, and wheeled him back to his room in time for lunch.  He was pissed off for a week.  "Payday is half price lap dances and dollar well, wine and draft" he told me.  These guys would blow their whole disability check in one day of debauchery.  I was offered a free lunch to leave him there, cause Jonesy was a good tipper.

[Rick Meredith]

Ok Carb story... we sold rebuilt carbs and the store policy was that we couldn't take a return on a carb if it had been installed. One saturday, I sold this guy a carb for a Corolla. He comes back to return it a few hours later. I smell gas when I open the box and explain the policy to him. He swears that he never installed it. I take the carb out of the box and flip it over onto the counter... all the gas from the float bowl gushes onto the counter. He still swears that he never installed it and that we must have sold it to him with the gas in it.. WTF???  

Rick, what about the Corona and the Crown or the 911 with hubcaps? I'll share some later but I need to make sure Greiner isn't lurking.

Glenn

Ok the 911 with the hubcaps... that's a good one...

Had customer come in with an early 911 and he needed tune up parts. The car could either have a Bosch or Marelli Dist in it and of course the customer didn't know so I strolled out to take a look. Now the Santa Ana BAP store didn't have a parking lot so this guy was parked along the curb on Main St. Back in the day JC Witney sold these very cheezy & cheap looking wheel covers that were made to look like Porsche Alloy's. So I stroll up to this rather beat 911 that is sporting a set of these hubcaps. I stick my head in the engine compartment and determine that it has a Bosch distributor. I start to walk back into the store and I glance over at the rear wheel. Now these wheel covers have the same round triangle cut outs that the real alloys have on them.... I stop, rub my eyes and peer a little closer... through the cut out I can clearly see that there is a real Porsche Alloy under the wheel cover?? Front wheel was the same. 

Glenn, you'll have to remind me about the Corona/Crown thing.

[team97]

Didn't you have a customer come in looking for a part for a To#¤ta Crown / Corona. I believe that these were two different models way back when. From what I remember you asked if it was a Crown or a Corona and he just nodded yes. (I believe Corona means Crown in spanish?)