$1,488 For a Cup of Hot Chocolate?–I’ll Buy That

Call me crazy. But I was actually almost looking forward to having my car serviced at a dealership repair shop despite how much the work might end up costing me.

People warn that you should never go get repairs at the same dealership where you also purchased your car. It’s cheaper to have it done at a gas station or an auto repair shop, they maintain. When you go to a dealership for service, it’s almost a self-fulfilling prophecy of asking to be ripped off, so they say.

Not to sound like a total shill for this dealership, but I go there because besides the first-class workmanship, they vacuum and wash your vehicle for free after the car repair work is done.

That’s the good reason but not the real reason why I always give this dealership an A+ customer rating. The real reason is it offers free hot chocolate, which in my opinion is the best I’ve ever had since I started consuming hot chocolate as a little kid and have never stopped even when it’s hot as blazes outside. If it wasn’t for their hot chocolate, yes, I might consider switching to have my car worked on at the gas/full-service station much closer to where I live. That’s where I used to go before I discovered by chance the super-delicious free hot chocolate being offered by this dealership.

Especially on freezing winter days, there’s nothing that warms my body and soul more than watching the hot chocolate splash into my cup from the beverage machine. The hot chocolate offers a great drinking companion while I wait for my car repair to finish, which sometimes can take in the worst cases at least 3-4 hours. Not to sound stupid, but that’s all the merrier because that means I can enjoy even more free cups of hot chocolate.

Of course, it might be bad for my health to overdose on too much hot chocolate. But after all, don’t I deserve a reward for patiently waiting for what might seem forever to have my car rehabilitated? The longer I wait, the more hot chocolate for me. I’ll drink to that.

On this particular day when I brought my car in for service, the wait was eternal. Which presented a risk that I might o.d. on the hot chocolate. The serious side effects that are supposed to derive from overdoing it on the hot chocolate include so much sugar, fat, and carbohydrates in the drink that it might cause heart palpitations or worse, where the service attendant might find me slumped over on one of their comfortable couches. Or it could cause me to become grossly overweight if I don’t stop drinking it. That’s not to mention dental problems caused by all the sugar.

You might ask, how do you know when you’ve had too much hot chocolate? The best answer would be when you’ve emptied the machine of hot chocolate. If that happens, to paraphrase a line from the “Soup Nazi” episode on the “Seinfeld” TV show, “no more hot chocolate for you.”

So that day, finally, my friendly service department guy headed to where I was sitting in the waiting room. He came bearing good news and bad news.

The bad news was to tell me how much the repair work would cost. That’s almost as scary a moment as when the doctor finally comes in, to where you’ve been waiting anxiously, to reveal, as that 1967 song by the First Edition rock band goes, the condition of your condition.

Offering a sympathetic face, the service rep said the bill came to $1,520. Although he was generously giving me a discount with my coupon that would reduce the amount to $1,488.

The good news, however, was that I’d have to wait a little longer to retrieve my car as it was being washed and vacuumed. Which meant more time, I told the service guy, for a last cup of hot chocolate.

I have a larger tale-away about this hot chocolate I’m getting for free, which of course is not really free. What it means is to quote the Beatles John Lennon, “life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” In my case, this great hot chocolate is what happened.

The least I could do for this dealership’s customer service was to offer the service rep a toast with my drink. Because when it comes to their great hot chocolate, as Scripture would say, my cup runneth over.

 

Eric Green is a notorious humor writer with his published free-lance articles appearing in Points in Case, Humor Times, the Washington Post, and elsewhere. His latest short story, “A Marriage Made in Heaven,” was published by the Hudson Valley Writers Guild.