All it takes is a smile

It was another regular day in Dubai.  This time I had to bring my new car for a tinting job.  I figured if I bring it to a reputable place I'd get my money's worth and none of the headaches.  Three years in this city and I still get sucked in.  The next day, in broad daylight I saw how horrendous the job was.  It was sickening.  The guy who did my Alfa back in KL who had half a shop and an expired credit card to push the bubbles out did a better job than this.

So I gave it two weeks (so that the guy can't tell me to wait for it to dry out and the bubbles would disappear) before I went back to the shop.  The manager of that shop (I found out about this much later) has a very bad reputation so I knew I had to avoid him at all cost.  If I did I had a plan anyway.  So I walked into the shop and looked for a familiar face.  I saw the sales guy who took a few grand away from me a couple of weeks ago and smiled at him.  He recognized me.  I reminded him what he did (or more precisely, attempted to do) to my car and told him we have a problem.   I parked my car in the sun this time and showed him, in all it's glory, how stupid my car looks.

It didn't take much convincing at all.  He agreed to replace the whole thing.  He even explained it to his friend the installer (who Effed up) how bad his job was.  So tomorrow I'm sending the car back in to reinstall the whole thing for free. 

  I didn't get to use the speech I practiced because all it took was a smile and a human approach to a human mistake.