Yesterday I blew a tire on the way to work.  Luckily I was really close, and was not on the crazy steep Willingdon hill at the time.  

I pulled over and just stared at it a while.  I am turning thirty this year, but I did not know how to change a tire.  I mean, I knew how to do it in theory, but the actual task was too scary to do on my own.  I was afraid I would put the jack in the wrong place and the car would fall on me and I’d lose a limb in addition to a tire.   I was really close to work, so I walked the rest of the way and enlisted some help.

I’ve got a pretty awesome crew of work friends at eBay.  I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of work friends.  They are people that you spend so much of your life with at work, but rarely (if ever) see in the “real” world.  I had a few close work friends at my last job, but I never really kept in touch with them after I left.  We leave the occasional comment on each other’s facebook pages, that type of thing, but that’s it.  Being laid off from eBay means losing another group of work friends. (For those of you that don’t know, eBay is closing down the vancouver center and all 700 of us are out of a job soon.) I’m sure we’ll keep in touch, but it won’t be the same.  We won’t spend five days a week eating lunch together, sharing work gossip, and developing a batch of inside jokes to get us through our workday.  The incident I’m about to write about made me really appreciate my work friends.  They really came through for me when I needed help. 

I got to work and enlisted a couple of my eBay homies to come show me how to change the tire.  Mick helped me jack up the tire.  I was pretty useless at this part.  In the process, Mick managed to split the crotch of his pants open.  So we were now down one tire and one pair of pants.  Tonya helped me with the lug nuts and the three of us got the tire changed.  

Since we were really close to Costco, we decided that we could get the tire fixed there, as well as get Mick some pants with a fully functional crotch.  It was a really good plan, except none of us had a Costco membership.  We enlisted another work buddy, Colin.  Mick phoned him and said something like ”Colin, we have a pants emergency, come quick”, and he did.

The Costco guy took a look at my tires and explained that all of them were worn down past the point of being legal, and I needed 4 new tires.  We all inspected the wear, and had to agree.  The damage would be about $700.00, and Costco doesn’t take MasterCard, and I didn’t have another way to pay.  Colin pulled out his Costco Am-ex and saved the day.  Did I mention my work friends are awesome?

One problem was in the process of being fixed, but Mick still had no crotch in his pants.  At Costco he found a pair of Calvin Klein khakis at a very Costco price, and I found an ungodly amount of candy.

Here’s a picture of my car getting worked on, and the jeans that sacrificed their life for my tire.

After a cheap Costco lunch we made it back to work.  And with the help of my friends, and the aforementioned candy, I got through the rest of the day.