Mechanics who work out of service trucks tend to have “free range” personalities, and prefer to be unfettered by the confines of shops and the direct supervision of management. But every so often they have to return to civilization, and Lord have mercy on coworkers in the shop when they do.
Like the time a field tech visiting his dealership’s shop dribbled a wide trail of oil on the shop floor
sutulastock Getty Images/iStockphoto
487388293
Prankster mechanics draw reactions.Photo: sutulastock/iStockphotoscom
behind a machine as an apprentice mechanic drove that machine out of the shop for a test drive. When the rookie walked back into the shop and saw the trail of oil, it was like one of the old Sylvester and Tweetie Bird cartoons, where Sylvester stops so suddenly in his tracks his eyeballs fall out and bounce across the floor.
Or the time a field tech picking up parts for his next service call tossed a smoke bomb in the engine compartment of a rear-engined machine as a shop mechanic drove that machine past the door of the shop. We stood and watched in amusement as the machine got halfway across the lot before the mechanic noticed the thick smoke boiling out of the engine compartment and bailed out of the cab in one big leap.
The only thing funnier than a field service technician pranking shop technicians is the time a certain field service tech discovered three rotten eggs with cracked shells under the passenger seat of his service truck after a visit to the home shop on Friday afternoon. He figured it out on a Monday morning, after a three-day holiday weekend, when the truck sat dormant with the windows rolled up.
— Dan Anderson
