Jack of All Trades

We all know mechanics or should I say the mechanic industry robs us blind. I try not to be a victim of this as much as possible. So my brakes have been grinding for the last week. I basically know I need to change them. It’s just such a pain but as I’ve encountered problems with my car, I’ve also become a lot savvier to those thieves. I’ve changed my brake pads before and was so amazed at how simple but time consuming it was. I’m not as daunted by the mechanics of cars but I’m still always annoyed because I know it’s going to be a day’s work. So I took my car to Just Brakes (yea I’m calling them out) and I think they think I’m a sucker. The dude in charge was telling me all sorts of stuff that I needed to get done and I was like, um ok, so just need new brake pads? I’ll do them myself. He was nice to me at first because he thought he could sucker me. When it seemed like I somewhat new my stuff he started to be more curt and annoyed. I guess I would be too if someone had me take off all the tires, do an inspection and then say no thanks. Whatever though. That’s his job. It passes the time. I’ve worked customer service so I know how it is. He was going to charge me 90 bucks for front, 90 for back brakes and 90 bucks to change a fuel filter. I know that the filter costs $7 at Auto Zone and I can get brake pads for under $30. The only think is I don’t have any tools and I kinda need supervision. Luckily I know someone who can do the labor for cheap and he doesn’t lie to me. Just Brakes told me I needed back brakes but I really didn’t. I watched the whole time they were doing my car and the mechanics showed me some shavings left on my back brakes. They said that was the shavings of the drums wearing down. They lied though because if you know the operations of how back brakes work, you know those shavings are normal. All cars do that. I may be a girl, and yes, a very typical girl with cars but I’m not stupid about them. I know my stuff. I can change my own tires, batteries, oil and other minor maintenance work. I can even push start a car. The more I learn about cars the less intimidated I get with mechanics. I remember when I was really young and took my car in to get repaired I paid $300 for the maintenance. I was pretty happy until I read the itemized list and thought about what the parts did and realized that I basically paid that much for a simple spark plug change. I vowed not to be stupid like that ever again or at least to research and ask questions. Today I also learned how warranties work. I had paid for pads before and they had a lifetime warranty but I don’t ever pay too much attention to them. So I bought new ones and the person fixing my car today told me that I can always get free pads b/c of the warranty. Sweet. So I saved even more money because I didn’t have to buy new parts. I want all women to not be scared about cars. Honestly they aren’t that complicated and a lot of things you can do yourself. It really is just time consuming and dirty.