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What It's Like To Be... with Dan Heath

A Car Mechanic

What It's Like To Be... with Dan Heath

Dan Heath

Curiosity, Careers, Storytelling, Business, Human Interest, Jobs, Society & Culture

4.9820 Ratings

🗓️ 12 August 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Cracking automotive mysteries one diagnostic code at a time, mastering the art of quoting complicated repairs, and playing the "what kind of noise is it?" guessing game with Justin Snodgrass, a car mechanic who owns his own shop. Why should $19.99 oil changes make you suspicious? And why might your local car mechanic decline to work on new cars? IF YOU LIKE THIS EPISODE: Check out what it's like to be a forensic accountant, a welder, or a software engineer. WANT MORE EPISODE SUGGESTIONS...

Transcript

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0:00.0

Justin Snodgrass owns an auto repair shop in Castle Rock, Colorado.

0:05.0

Earlier in his career he worked as a technician at a car dealership,

0:09.0

and one day a woman came in with a Cadillac that had a weird issue.

0:13.0

The complaint was,

0:15.0

passenger seat will recline by itself.

0:18.0

I went, that's kind of strange. I've never seen that before, but okay.

0:24.1

Justin said he loves these kinds of mysteries. So he took the car out with a colleague, but they

0:30.6

couldn't trigger the problem. This is not uncommon in the car repair business. I have to trust the

0:36.9

customer that they're not lying to me.

0:38.6

I mean, that seems pretty extreme.

0:40.3

You wouldn't waste your time dropping a car off when something doesn't really happen.

0:44.8

So they went back to the woman to get more information.

0:47.7

They were trying to figure out when does this happen exactly.

0:51.1

And so the wife said, well, it's when my husband's in the seat and he's a fairly large

0:56.9

guy.

0:58.4

So I'm like, okay, so I took that information, went back to the seat, sat there, and I was

1:03.5

trying to figure out how to replicate being larger.

1:06.5

So I ended up putting my hands against the roof of the car and pushing really hard.

1:11.6

And so I pushed on the bottom of seat and sure enough all of a sudden,

1:14.6

right, started reclining.

1:15.6

Oh wow.

1:16.6

And I'm like, what is going on?

...

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