By Peggy Sturdivant

It was the first summer that he wasn’t playing league baseball since starting grade school. It being the summer between his freshman and sophomore year in college, his parents were adamant: time to get a summer job.

We’ll call him Max.

Since this is the summer of 2013 and not 1973, his approach to looking for work started online through Craigslist. The bicycle delivery job didn’t pan out so he applied “pretty much everywhere.” Then he saw a posting for an open interview call at a car wash that we’ll call the Hippo.

Max made sure he was early and was pretty much hired on the spot. So began the summer job at the car wash: the job that will always be his first.

This hasn’t been a typical Seattle summer for many businesses given the prolonged sunshine. The car wash business has been booming. The Hippo averaged 700-800 cars daily (and nary a day without some form of vehicle operator error). Max took to the working life well, often arriving for his shift already hungry and trying to talk his workmates into taking their lunch breaks early. He didn’t have to learn how to knot a tie as part of his work uniform; the ties are just clip-on so they won’t endanger the employee if they get caught in the machinery.

Among many things Max also learned in his first summer off the mound and onto the blacktop near the Ballard Bridge was how many drivers don’t know how to put their car into neutral. “I’ve never even driven a Prius,” Max said, “but I know how to put it into neutral. To the left for like two seconds.”

Strangely the second most surprising thing for Max was how often cars crash into one another: either at the car wash or attempting to make the last left before divided lanes going southbound toward the bridge. For unknown reasons many customers apply the brakes while wash- and rinse-cycling through what’s called the tunnel. Braking in neutral causes their car to slip off the rails of what is essentially a six-gear track. This often causes the car behind to smash into them. Very few customers believe they’ve caused the accident; assuming mechanical problems.

The business has recently changed to automated pay stations, which enables customers to pull to a machine and pre-pay. Or at least it enables customers who can negotiate the transaction. So helping at the machine is one main job. The next is waving in the cars and giving the back of the cars a preliminary brushing. The other person is usually operating the mechanism that theoretically glides the car through the car wash tunnel. Another person acts as cashier handling coupons and special offers. “Customers only really talk to us when they’re angry,” Max said. “They never think any of the crashes are their fault.”

As if the logistics of getting over 700 cars through the tunnel in the proper direction isn’t enough potential drama there was also the case of the driver who decided to pull into the outgoing end, and then tried to reverse. The errant driver then proceeded to pummel a BMW. Needless to say he also hadn’t paid in advance. After any sort of car-on-car damage another duty of the employee is to make sure the incident doesn’t become a hit and run.

In addition Max found there was plenty of daily entertainment working above Ballard’s busiest arterial. A motorcycle cop often pulls over as many as 15 northbound cars for speeding per hour. Pedestrians sometimes try to cross all four lanes of traffic. One day a woman wandered the lot for hours dressing and undressing. Even after being escorted off by the cops, she returned to ask the employees to help her comb the trash for her son’s birth certificate, which she claimed she’d accidentally discarded there.

Since many folks are also cleaning out their cars with the self-service vacuums, there is also an interesting inventory of discarded items. “People throw away very strange stuff,” Max admitted. “Yesterday somebody left four goldfish in a bucket. We started feeding them. I think the manager is going to get a fish bowl for the office.”

Customers are also allowed to use free towels, which are then washed on-site. “Gnarly,” Max said, “Putting your hand in there to grab the towels you have no idea what’s on them.”

The only dull day was the one when it rained. Meanwhile Max always enjoyed the camaraderie of his fellow employees; clearly still a team player. He particularly enjoyed working with an older man: a three-year car wash veteran who never lost his composure despite the daily, multiple examples of driver stupidity. On occasion the workers even get tips from drivers who hand them some bills before entering the tunnel, “When they do that, we wash their hubcaps,” Max reported.

At the beginning of the summer he’d never tracked on cars before, now he knows the makes and models of most cars from brushing their behinds as they glide into the tunnel. Relegated to the back seat as his parents drove him back to college the roads Max was already looking forward to fall semester. But he said he’d happily return to work the car wash again on holidays, or even next summer if an internship doesn’t work out. “It would give the other guys a break,” he said, knowing for most of them it’s not a summer job.

Max turned in the clip-on tie and left town just before an infamous annual event: Free Carwash Day. “I’m kind of glad to miss it,” Max said. “But on the other hand you get time-and-a half for the extra hours and the tips are supposed to be amazing.” But he was already many miles away from the summer of the tunnel.

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