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The old timer at the parts house retired last week and it hit me
Last week I went to pick up a thermal fuse for a dryer and the new kid had to look up the part number on his phone. Three years ago, that same guy would have just reached behind the counter without even looking. He remembered every model number from the 90s and would tell you which ones always blew the door switch. I miss walking in and just saying 'it's the Whirlpool with the blue dial' and having the right part already on the counter. Anyone else have a local shop where the person just knew everything?
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the_laura1mo ago
That kind of institutional memory is basically irreplaceable. The new system works, but you lose all the little fixes and workarounds that never made it into the manual. Feels like we traded wisdom for a search bar.
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joseph_green131mo ago
My local hardware store had a guy named Ray who could tell you the thread pitch on a 1978 lawnmower bolt by sight. When he left, it took three of us and twenty minutes on Google to figure out the same thing last spring. The new kids are nice, but they don't have those decades of weird fixes in their head. You don't realize how much you relied on that until it's gone and you're just staring at a parts diagram on a screen.
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shanes669d ago
That Whirlpool with the blue dial thing hit close to home for me. I used to roll my eyes at old timers who refused to use the computer, figured they were just being stubborn. But then our local bearing supply guy retired last fall and the new system can't even cross-reference a "that one weird seal from the 80s" without some cryptic number. Last month I spent an hour on three different forums trying to track down a pilot assembly for an old Rheem water heater. The old guy would have just laughed and pulled it off a dusty shelf in the back, probably had one sitting there since 1991. Realized I was the one being stubborn, not him.
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