All my jobs had some pretty E36 M3ty aspects like working outside year round, coming home tired, hurt and filthy or stuck in dangerous or bizarre situations but most of the people I worked for were good people and I learned how to handle pretty much anything. If I had to pick a loser it would be my first adventure in towing/auto body. During my failed attempt at college I was working for a guy with a stock car since I was really trying to get into racing at the time. He was great to work for but on a shoe string budget and couldn't pay me. It was also hard to find a job flexible enough to work around my schedule. He had a buddy in lovely southern Queens NY. In the early 90s it wasn't quite the E36 M3show that the South Bronx or parts of Brooklyn were but it was still a rough place. He put me on working in the shop late at night when I could and driving a wrecker for pocket money. Being new to the business and usually being there alone I didn't realize there were some shady business practices and I was being told just enough to do what he wanted done while still being able to deny knowing what was going on if I had to in court. The piecing together of his crap was normal enough and chasing wrecks was still somewhat legal and profitable but the rest of it was a crash course in what tax evasion, insurance fraud and any number of other scams look like. There were other fun lessons like bribery is illegal but being really bad at poker when some "friends" come by is less so. I also got to see that when the feds want you you're never as smart as you hope you are. In the end he went away to camp making big rocks into little rocks. Of course there were down sides to like when I got sent to Brownsville to pick up a job with no keys. Not terribly unusual except that he left out that it was not a collision job, but a repo for a friend. Nothing like being chased through unfamiliar territory with a Chevy 1500 wrecker towing an LS400. Good times. I was only there for a winter but it felt like it took years off my life.
