Prescription for Chaos (27 page)
* * *
SCHRAMM'S GARAGE
To: Jack W. Bailey
413 Crescent Drive
City
Parts: 6 qts oil$3.90
#14-66 oil filter$4.95
#6612 brake shoes,1 set$12.98
total$21.83
Labor: change filter
drain oil
put in fresh oil
install brake shoes
grind drums
total$24.00
total$45.83
Blue Wheel$45.83
Paid-J. Schramm
Note: Your transmission needs work. I can't work on it this week,
because I'm swamped. How about next Wednesday morning?
Joe Schramm
Dear Joe:
Sure. I'll have the wife leave the car early.
Jack Bailey
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SCHRAMM'S GARAGE
Dear Mr. Wrattan:
Please send me your latest information on your Automated Car Service Handling Machine.
I never saw so much business in my life. I am now running about a month behind.
Yours truly,
J. Schramm
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SUPERDEE EQUIPMENT
Interoffice Memo
To: W. Robert Schnitzer, Special Services Dept.
Dear Schnitzer:
We are now out of the woods, thanks to your stroke of genius on the prepayment plan.
Now see if you can find some way to step up production.
Sanson
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FORESYTE INSURANCE
Interoffice Memo
To: J. Beggs, Vice Pres. Blue Wheel Plan
Dear Beggs:
What on earth is going on here? After making money the first few months on Blue Wheel, we are now getting swamped.
What's happening?
Devereaux
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FORESYTE INSURANCE
Interoffice Memo
To: P. J. Devereaux, Pres.
Dear Mr. Devereaux:
I don't exactly know what's going on, but it completely obsoletes these figures of Sanson's.
We are going to have to raise our premium.
Beggs
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SCHRAMM'S SERVICATORIUM
Dear Wrattan:
Please put my name on the waiting list for another Handling Machine right away.
Yours truly,
J. Schramm
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BLUE WHEEL
Prepaid Car Care
Dear Subscriber:
Owing to unexpectedly heavy use of the Blue Wheel insurance by you, the subscriber, we must raise the charge for Blue Wheel coverage to $3.75 per month, effective January 1st.
Cordially,
R. Beggs
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SCHRAMM'S SUPER SERVICATORIUM
Dear Mr. Wrattan:
We're going to need another Handling Machine as soon as we get the new wing finished next month.
Yours truly,
J. Schramm
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FORESYTE INSURANCE
Interoffice Memo
To: P. J. Devereaux, Pres
.Dear Mr. Devereaux:
I have to report that ordinary garages are now being replaced by "servicatoriums," "super servicatoriums," and "ultraservicatoriums."
These places charge more, which is justified by their heavier capital investment, and faster service.
Nevertheless, it now costs us more for the same job.
R. Beggs
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BLUE WHEEL
Prepaid Car Care
Dear Subscriber:
Due to increasingly thorough car care offered by modern servicatoriums, and to continued heavy and wider use of such care, we find it necessary to increase the charge to $4.25 a month.
Cordially,
R. Beggs
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SCHRAMM'S ULTRASERVICATORIUM
To: Jack W. Bailey
413 Crescent Drive
City
Parts: 1 set 22-638 brushes$1.46
Labor: clean battery terminals
set regulator
overhaul generator$21.00
total$22.46
PAID
Note: There's a whine from the differential we ought to take care of on the Machine. How about Friday morning? I don't see why there was more trouble with the generator and regulator. I think we ought to check everything again. Your Blue Wheel will cover it.
Joe Schramm
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SCHRAMM'S ULTRASERVICATORIUM
Dear Mr. Wrattan:
I want three of your All-Purpose Diagnostic Superanalyzers, that will test batteries, generators, starters, automatic transmissions, etc., etc. Rush the order. I can't get enough good mechanics to do this work.
Yours truly,
J. Schramm
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FORESYTE INSURANCE
Interoffice Memo
To: P. J. Devereaux, Pres.
Dear Mr. Devereaux:
When I was a boy, I rode a bicycle with bad brakes down a steep hill one time, and got up to around sixty miles an hour as I came to a curve with a post-and-cable guard rail at the side, and about a sixty foot drop into a ravine beyond that.
This Blue Wheel plan gives me the same no-brakes sensation.
Incidentally, have you visited a garage lately?
R. Beggs
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FORESYTE INSURANCE
Interoffice Memo
To: R. Beggs, Vice-Pres. Blue Wheel
Dear Beggs:
What we seem to have here is some kind of weird mechanism that just naturally picks up speed by itself.
Without our insurance plan, the garages could never have gone up to these rates, because car owners wouldn't or couldn't have paid them. Thanks to us, the car owners themselves now couldn't care less what the bill is. In fact, the higher it is, the more the car owner thinks he's getting out of his insurance.
The effect of this on the garage owner is to go overboard on every kind of expense.
Yes, I've visited a garage lately. I got a blowout over in Bayport, bought a new front tire, and on the way back noticed a vibration in the front end. Obviously, the wheel needed balancing.
However, when I tried to explain this to the Chief Automotive Repair Technician in Stull's Superepairatorium, he wouldn't listen. Before I knew what was going on, the car was up in the air.
Here's the bill:
Parts: 4 22-612 balance weights$1.60
Labor: Complete diagnostic$40.00
Wheel removal$2.00
Transport$1.50
Superbalancomatic$6.50
Transport$1.50
Wheel attachment$2.00
Car transport$3.25
Total parts and labor$58.35
Blue Wheel$58.35
PAID—L. Gnarth, C.A.R.T.
I think you can appreciate how I felt about Stull's Superepairatorium. I shoved past the Chief Automotive Repair Technician, and got hold of Stull himself. He listened, looked sympathetic, and said, "If you want, I will pay all of this but $2.75, which is about what it should have cost. But that won't change the fact that at least half of these bills are going to be higher than they should be, and it's going to get a lot worse, not better."
"Why?"
"Do you think anybody that learns how to tell what's wrong by using one of these diagnostic machines, and that learns how to repair a car with hydraulic pressers and handlers at his elbow, is ever going to be able to figure out what's wrong on his own, or do the work with ordinary tools? All he's learned to do is
work with the machine
. He
can't
do a simple job. He's
got
to make a big job out of it,
so he can use the machine
.
"Now," Stull went on, "a good, old-style mechanic narrows the trouble down with a few simple tests. For instance, if the car won't start, he tries the lights and horn, sees how the lights dim when he works the starter, watches the ammeter needle, notices how the starter sounds, checks the battery terminals and cables, checks the spark, bypasses the solenoid and sees if that's the trouble—in fifteen minutes, a good mechanic with a few simple tools has a good idea where the trouble is, and then it's a question of putting in new points, pulling the starter to check for a short, or maybe working on the carburetor or fuel pump. To do this,
you've got to understand first-hand the things you're working with
. Then the know-how is in your brain and muscles, and you can use it anytime.
"But now, with these new machines, especially this damned Combination Handling Machine and Diagnostic Analyzer, the skill and know-how
is in the machine
.
"What kind of mechanics do you think we're going to turn out this way? How many of them will ever be able to do
anything
without using the machine? And since the machine costs so much, what is there to do but charge more?"
That was how it went at the garage. I thought that was bad enough, but this thing is snowballing, and there's more to it. After I left the garage, I happened to take another look at the bill and noticed that this Chief Automotive Repair Technician had "C.A.R.T." after his name. This struck me as peculiar, so I stopped at a roadside phone, and called up Stull. He sounded embarrassed.
"It's his . . . well . . . degree. It used to be a mechanic would have laughed at that. He had his skill, and knew, and that was enough. But now, with these machines, a lot of these new guys don't
have
the skill. Now they've got no way to prop up their feeling of being worth something. So, we've got this NARSTA, and—"
"You've got
what
?"
"N.A.R.S.T.A.—National Automotive Repair Specialists and Technicians Association. They award what amounts to
degrees
. They limit the number of people who can be mechanics, because anybody off the street could learn to run the machines in a few weeks.
"The mechanic who writes 'C.A.R.T.' after his name? Is he your
chief
mechanic?"
"Naturally."
"Why pick him for chief mechanic?"
"Because he has a 'C.A.R.T.' degree. If I use a guy with an A.A.R.T., or an A.R.T., I get in trouble with NARSTA. NARSTA says all its people are professionals, and have to be treated according to their 'professional qualifications.'"
"That is, how good they are as mechanics?"
"Of course not. 'Professional qualifications' is whether the guy's got an A.R.T., an A.A.R.T., or a C.A.R.T. He may or may not be as good as another mechanic. What counts is that C.A.R.T. after his name. That changes his wage scale, changes his picture of himself, and makes an aristocrat out of him."
There was more to this phone conversation, but I think you get the picture.
This mess is compounding itself fast. I talked to Sanson over at Superdee about it, but Superdee is making so much money out of this that Sanson naturally won't listen to any objections. Instead, he went into a spiel about the Advance of Science. Sanson doesn't know it, but this trouble comes because there is one science, and the Master Science at that, that is being left out of this. But I think if we put it to use ourselves we can end this process before it wrecks the country.
I have hopes that you know what I am talking about, and will see how to put it to use.
Bear in mind, please, that when the rug is jerked out, we want
somebody else
to land on his head, not us.
I might mention that I have recently had cautious feelers from one Q. Snarden, who turns out to be the head of NARSTA. Snarden wants, I think, to take over Blue Wheel.
He would then, I suppose, run it as a "nonprofit" organization. Do you get the picture?
Devereaux
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FORESYTE INSURANCE
Interoffice Memo
To: P. J. Devereaux, Pres.
Dear Mr. Devereaux:
I don't know just what you mean by the "Master Science." But I have a good idea what we ought to do with this Blue Wheel insurance.
Suppose I come up this afternoon about 1:30 to talk it over?
R. Beggs
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FORESYTE INSURANCE
Interoffice Memo
To: R. Beggs, Vice Pres. Blue Wheel
Dear Beggs:
I have now had a chance to analyze, and mentally review, your plan for dealing with Snarden, and Blue Wheel. I think this is exactly what we should do.
We want to be sure to run out plenty of line on this.
Devereaux
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BLUE WHEEL
A Nonprofit Organization
NARSTA-Approved
Dear Subscriber:
In these days of rising car-care costs, one of your most precious possessions is your Blue Wheel policy. To assure you the best possible service at the lowest cost, Blue Wheel is now operated under the supervision of the National Automotive Repair Specialists and Technicians Association, as a
nonprofit
organization.
Yes, Blue Wheel now gives you real peace-of-mind on the road. And your Blue Wheel card will continue to admit your car to the finest Servicatoriums, whenever it needs care.
But as costs rise, the charges we pay rise.
As we spend only 4.21% on administration expenses, you can see we are doing our best to hold prices down; but costs are, nevertheless, rising.
To meet the costs, we find it is necessary to raise our premium to $5.40 a month.
When you consider the cost of car care today, this is a real bargain.
Cordially,
Q. Snarden
* * *
BLUE WHEEL
(Nonprofit)
NARSTA-Approved
Dear Subscriber:
For reasons mentioned in the enclosed brochure, we are forced to raise our premium to $6.25 a month.
Cordially,
Q. Snarden, Pres.
* * *
BLUE WHEEL
Dear Subscriber:
Blue Wheel has fought hard to hold the line, but next year, rates must go up if Blue Wheel is to pay your car-care bills.
As we explain in the enclosed booklet, Blue Wheel will now cost $8.88 a month.
This is one of the greatest insurance bargains on earth, when you consider today's car-care costs.
Cordially,
Q. Snarden, Pres.
* * *
BLUE WHEEL
Dear Subscriber:
Blue Wheel is going to have to raise its rates to meet its ever-increasing costs of paying
your
car-care bills.