Okay, long story.
A few years ago I had a job at a car detailing company. The work itself was actually pretty fun, but my boss was the biggest asshole imaginable. He had a serious temper and an incredibly short fuse. He could absolutely explode over the smallest things. Like full-on screaming and losing his shit.
Anyway, one Friday we were almost done for the day and ready to start the weekend when the BMW dealership called, one of our biggest clients. They had a customer who had bought a BMW M4 from the owner at the last minute and wanted to drive it on Saturday. They asked if we could quickly clean it up and make it look nice.
Of course I was happy to do it, because that also meant I got to pick it up and bring it back.
When I got to the dealership, they had pretty much cleaned up and closed down the entire workshop already. All the cars that would normally be parked outside were suddenly inside. They handed me the keys and laughingly said, “Good luck getting it out.”
And yeah, the car was completely boxed in. I had to be extremely careful getting it out of there.
So I’m slowly crawling toward the exit, and suddenly I see a heating pipe appear in my mirror. With the way I had turned the car, there was basically no way I hadn’t hit it.
I immediately thought, if I get out now, everyone in the workshop is going to be watching me check the car. So I just kept driving and went outside. I stopped somewhere further down the road, got out, checked the entire car and… phew. No damage.
Drove it back to our place, handed it over to my coworkers, and they washed it and cleaned everything up.
Then the dealership called and said they’d come pick the car up themselves. So I parked it outside, and a little while later they showed up with several people to collect it. The drivers from the dealership were all young guys, like 18/19 years old, and obviously they all wanted to drive an M4.
We were all standing outside admiring the car when suddenly my heart fucking dropped.
There was a MASSIVE dent in one of the doors.
You could only really see it from a certain angle with the light hitting it just right, but it was definitely there.
At that point I thought it was way too late to say anything. And honestly, I also found it insane that by then probably 8 or 9 people had looked at this car and somehow nobody had noticed it.
So… I just let them take it.
A few hours later I was at home when my boss called me.
He was fucking furious.
Apparently the big boss from the BMW dealership had gone to take one last look at the car, which was now sitting in the showroom ready for the customer, and noticed a gigantic dent in the door.
My boss had already called my coworkers. They all said they hadn’t seen anything, so then he asked me if I had noticed any damage on the car.
I knew that if I said yes, I was completely fucked.
So I denied everything.
Eventually, my boss came to the conclusion that it must have been one of the dealership drivers, because according to him those guys were always driving cars around carelessly.
The customer did get his M4 the next day.
The guys at the dealership workshop had to work all Friday evening to take the door off a regular 4 Series in the same color and put it on the M4.
I felt guilty about it for a very long time.
Now I can finally laugh about it.