Category Archives: Typecasting

I currently own a 1997 Mercedes that I bought from an old lady ten years ago. The car has 110,000 kms on it, which is nothing for a car of this quality, or so one might assume. I figured we’d drive the car into the ground, which could take another 50 years at the rate we use it. But wait, it has now become next to impossible to find a mechanic willing and able to work on that “old” model of Mercedes. One mechanic advised me to scrap the car. Mechanics say this is an old car, but I suspect that the problem is that they have been trained to repair modern cars, which requires the reading of codes to diagnose problems, as opposed to the days when a mechanic had to actually think. The job of a mechanic used to require problem solving, which modern training seems to have rendered obsolete. Truly a metaphor for the modern age!