In my dream, I had left two critical bolts loose on a differential replacement I had been doing at work. I woke up in a panic. The owner had purchased this vehicle with the payoff from her last car which had been totaled in an accident that had left her traumatized to the point of requiring medication. The noise she heard, I did not.
The lead mechanic ordered the differential for it and because it was my repair order, it was my job. That morning I returned to the dealership and immediately put the SUV back on the lift to check the torque on the two bolts in my dream. They were tight, it was just a dream. I told the shop’s driver to take it for a long road test, and let me know if he hears anything. 45 minutes later, he came back and said it was great. Massive relief. I released the car to be picked up. Towards the end of the day, the customer picked the vehicle up and didn’t get ½ a mile before it catastrophically broke down. Through tears, the owner spoke to the service writer, who was immediately angry with me. He said to take her rental and pick her up.
The fear in her eyes and the state of her emotions rattled me. The rear axle that I replaced had locked up, causing the rear wheels to skid until the driveshaft ripped out of the transmission, beating the undercarriage of the SUV. She was able to drive to the shoulder where I found her. I got her into the rental and back to the dealership. I immediately approached the manager and offered to quit so that he didn’t have to fire me. To his credit, he didn’t respond reactively. When he wanted to understand better what happened, I excused myself and went to the locker room. I locked myself in the bathroom to cry. A repair I had done failed and could have cost my customer her life. I was crushed, this couldn’t be my career.
Post investigation, it was discovered that the manufacturer stopped shipping the rear differentials filled with oil but never sent out a bulletin or tagged the differentials as empty. I followed the procedure for topping the fluid off and measured the level as I had done a dozen or more times before. I must have gotten a false reading. When they opened the rear there was only the ¼ of a quart I put in. Although I returned to work, I never came back.
What was my dream telling me? Was it a coincidence? I had never had a dream about a repair before or since. I had wanted to get out of the autmotive business before, but now I had no choice. Someone was going to get hurt. This was my first big failure and I let my incapacity to process it turn me into something I wouldn’t wish on anybody.
“He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man”
-Dr. Samuel Johnson 1709-1784