I own a Volvo. I’m a family guy, and I’m proud of it. But that’s not why I own a Volvo. I own a Volvo because my father has been a Volvo technician for six years longer than I’ve been alive. We always had Volvos when I was growing up because my father had easy access to cheap or free parts, and hey, he knew how to fix the things himself.
The reason this is relevant is that, like home theater, cars used to be simple. The shade tree mechanic could accomplish much, if not more than the “grease monkey” at the local service station. But these days cars are built to be serviced by specialized tools, computers, and techniques that no shade tree mechanic could ever hope to discover.
Unlike most people, when my technician (also known as “dad”) works on my car, I get to stand there and watch. You don’t get to do that because of insurance purposes. But hey, I slide in the side door with a BBQ sandwich and onion rings for the technician. That and a little family tree go a long way toward bending the rules.
With my inside perspective, I know that Volvo technicians attend university level courses several times a year just to keep their skills current. If you add up the credit hours of a technician as experienced as my father, they earn something like ten Ph.D’s over the course of their careers. Dad often jokes, “Your doctor spent eight years learning how to work on just two models—a mechanic has to learn four or five completely new ones every year, and your life depends on us learning them well.” But they don’t issue “Doctor of Interference Engine” degrees, so like a home theater installer, highly trained and experienced Volvo technicians have to put up with people thinking that their difficult and dirty job is something that any high school dropout could master with a few hours of on-the-job observation.
On a recent visit to repair my air mass meter (don’t ask me what an air mass meter is—my best guess would be that it has something to do with counting attendees at a Catholic church service held in a zeppelin), I asked my father about a bizarre looking tool that he has in his toolbox. I called it the “Cerebral Bore” because the tool looks like some spare part fallen off one of the "squids" from the Matrix films. (And the name “Cerebral Bore” came from a cool video game, so I’m all about that.) You look at this thing and it's impossible to imagine what it does. Or how it does it. Or how you're supposed to use it. My brain hurt just trying to imagine how to use it. So Cerebral Bore kind of made sense.
My father explained that it's a custom tool, available only to certified Volvo technicians. It comes in a brown cardboard box with no instructions of any kind. But... since my Volvo technician has access to Volvo technical training, he already knows that this tool is designed to do something that is effectively impossible to do if you don't have it: it mounts to a specific spot inside the engine compartment of a specific year-model of Volvo, then attaches to a ratchet with an extender, enabling the mechanic to adjust some vitally important setting deep inside the engine. And most importantly, this setting can only be adjusted reliably while the engine is running.
Without the Cerebral Bore, you can try working on your Volvo engine yourself, sure, but you'll have to fire up the engine, get it completely warmed up, check a setting on the plug-in computer (which you also need, and will require training to use), then shut the engine down and let it cool off. This prevents you from getting third-degree burns on your arms while reaching into a tiny space in the engine compartment so you can adjust whatever gizmo the Cerebral Bore adjusts. Then you fire up the engine and go through the whole process again. It generally it takes about 15-20 tweaks of this setting to get the engine running perfectly. Eat a sandwich, because it’s going to take you all night to do what a trained mechanic with the right tool can do in about 15 minutes.
But you can't buy the Cerebral Bore from Volvo. You can't buy it on the internet either, because every last one is serialized. Although mechanics pay for it, they are technically only leasing it from Volvo. Like buying software, the mechanics don't OWN it—they're paying for the right to use it. And the reason you can't buy that the Cerebral Bore from Volvo is that without extensive training on how to connect it to the engine AND how to use the tool, you will destroy your engine, guaranteed. And it's highly likely you'll injure yourself in the process.
Volvo could redesign the tool, or the car, to make it user serviceable. But doing so would increase the cost of the car dramatically. Or it would decrease the overall quality. Or perhaps the safety. Maybe all of these. That's simple economics. For these reasons, Volvo doesn't sell their cars to the general public. They sell cars to Volvo dealers who, you may or may not know, are not owned or operated by Volvo. It's the Volvo dealers who pay for the ads you see on TV and the general marketing of Volvo cars. In some cases the factory does run ads, but they are paid for by the franchise fees Volvo dealers pay.
A home theater is not an automobile. But they share a lot in common. Namely, there’s a history where it used to be a reasonable proposition for do-it-yourselfers to educate themselves and do a good job, even on a complex install. In fact, the handful of real hardcore enthusiasts could sometimes do a better job of feature tweaking than the baseline pros. Home theaters also share a present-day with cars: to specify, assemble, and service them effectively and efficiently, you need a lot of specialized training and tools.
As an insider in two different industries, I get the chance to see everything that goes into hanging up your shingle and calling yourself a pro. And I get to see the lack of respect and understanding for all that preparation and training that the low-price obsessed Ebay culture has for your hard work. So I lift my glass to toast those in every profession who spend untold hours preparing for the day when someone looks them in the eye and questions their ability and truthfulness, just because there’s no prestigious body handing out three-letter suffixes for your name.
Hard work is hard work. Expertise is expertise. And it’s a shame that the world hasn’t yet come to recognize that devotion to your profession is admirable in any field where the general public throws up their hands and turns to people who know the job better.
We can’t always change their perceptions. But we can always take pride in what we do and how we came to be the person that people call when they want that job done right. And if that still doesn’t change their minds, open a brown cardboard box and send them running by dangling the Cerebral Bore in their faces. That thing is scary. Really.
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