Wow, this one is too good to pass up! I'll apologize right now in case I end up making this run on too long. About twenty-so years ago, I was a strugling college student, and needed a part time job to make ends meet. The student employment office told me the local Sears was looking for help and I should go apply. I was a business major, but they found out in the interview that I messed with cars, so they hired me and put me back in the automotive department. This Sears was like the smallest one in the state, holed up in three adjacent old downtown buildings with a two bay shop. Mostly, we did tires, batteries, shocks, mufflers and oil changes. At that time, MacPherson struts were coming into place, and we did those too, except we picked the new struts up off the shelf and drove the car down to a Bear Frame shop and let them do it. Of my time there, two incidents stand out most.
First- One day another college kid and I were manning the shop and I had gone for lunch. I came back to find that my cohort was finishing up an oil change on a cherry '69 Olds 4-4-2 convertible. We did actually try to be conscientious, and he asked me to back this beauty out of the shop since I was relatively clean and he wasn't. I started her up and was easing out on the clutch to back this wonderful ride out, all the time thinking that it was too bad that the owner was too cheap to take his pride and joy to a real mechanic. Backing out was a somewhat slow process as you had to bounce the front end over a good sized hump between the lift posts and carefully creep across the sidewalk as we were downtown and pedestrians were all over the place. About the time I had the nose of the car out the door, my partner started screaming and waving his arms wildly. He wanted me to bring it back in NOW. Seems he installed the wrong filter and the Rocket was pumping out crude like the Exxon Valdez! We wheeled it back in, shut it off, installed a new filter (the right one this time) and refilled it, and gave it back to the customer without breathing a word of what happened. I don't THINK it ran enough to cause damage, but we never got to that point.
Second- I think this was like the day before Thanksgiving or Christmas. The regular mechanic was on vacation, and command of the shop was turned over to one of my college cohorts and myself. The sales clerks thought we could work at or near the pace of a NASCAR pit crew, so they typically stacked up work three deep at the door. We were running short of day and we still had a muffler install to do on a Chevelle. For those who don't remember, this was back in the day of the Sears "Muzzler" muffler, a $19.99 all-day, every-day special. Basically they had about 5 or 6 different mufflers based on the cannister size and inlet/outlet diameter. "Custom" fit was achieved by using one or more of a seemingly endless supply of adaptors and clamps. (No extra charge!) On the Chevelles, the extension pipe went back in line with the car, then jogged at a '45 for 6 inches or so, then '45 back to go straight into the muffler. Everything was welded together. The trick was to get a 45 degree adapter and cut the extension pipe in the middle of the 6 inch jog using a sawzall with a pipe clamp. (They actually had a book that laid all of this out for us.) Since we were behind, the department manager (a great guy, but clearly no mechanic) came out to "help". I still can see the vision of him in slacks, white shirt, tie and a cigarette in his mouth, grabbing the sawzall to go cut that pipe. He went to cut the entire jog off and I tried to convince him that wasn't the right place to cut. He persisted and I gave in since he was the boss. I cringed watching him drop the entire mess clinching the cigarette in his mouth the whole time. I got the muffler and appropriate adapter and clamps and handed them to him. He laid the muffler up and now realized that the muffler wouldn't lay in at a 45 degree angle to the car. After a few swear words, a couple more adapters, some imprompteau frabrication, a couple more cigarettes and a half dozen clamps, our unsuspecting customer was on his way for $19.99 + tax.
Not only did I have a great time working there, I earned some college credits and got a good education- namely, don't take your car to Sears if you care about it in the least little bit!
. Especially the senior citizens as listed above. 
