Paula won't shut up

I dreamed I was working again, at a different Honda dealership, this time in Oroville.

 <sigh> OK, fine, I thought. I'm here, let's get to work. 

I started performing a safety inspection on a gold 2001 Civic that had been brought to the shop as a trade-in. It didn't look too bad on the outside, a little dirty, but nothing visibly wrong with it. I took one bolt out on the side cover for the timing belt, so I could inspect the condition of the belt. 

As soon as I loosened the bolt, coolant started to pour out from the side of the engine. I took the bolt out all the way and, lo and behold, the water pump and the starter just fell out. Somehow, this one bolt was responsible for holding the entire engine together.

"Um..Something is terribly wrong here," I said to the service writer, a short, fat, dark haired mustachioed fellow that resembled Luigi, the other Mario brother.

"Don't bother with this one," said Paula, the service manager, who had been hovering nearby. "They aren't going to keep it," she confided with a wink and then turned and walked away.

Paula was a shapely black woman, late 30s to early 50s, with long straight hair, full lips and a set of thick black horn rimmed glasses. In real life, she plays a TV character named Maxine, head of the crime lab on CSI Vegas, but in my dream, she was using her real name, Paula Newsome.

Not knowing the ropes yet, I wanted to follow up with her and ask just how much "not bothering" I could get away with. I'd been familiar with the flat-rate system, and performing an unnecessary safety inspection on a car that was going to be wholesaled anyway seemed like a waste of time. If I skimmed though the process, I'd certainly be able to clock more hours.

I followed her around as she talked with other employees. I waited politely for a break in the conversation, but this lady wouldn't stop talking.

"We're from Canada, you know. This country is a whole different box of animal crackers, if you know what I mean.We do things differently up there," she just kept droning on about non work related stuff. 

I was trying to be respectful, but her non-stop chatter was making me impatient. Time was money, and I needed to maximize both.

----

I finally woke up and turned off my audio book, "Memories of the Afterlife" by Michael Newton. It was a PDF being read by an AI voice named David. David is one of the free voices, not the premium, more natural sounding ones. He sounds a little like the classic Stephen Hawking robot voice, but perhaps a tinge more human and smoothed out. 

Today is day three with an eye infection. It looks like a stye, but it has swollen up pretty big, making me nervous that I might be facing another couple of months of facial deformity. I had a chalazione a year ago and it took 4 months and a steroid shot to the eyelid to make it finally recede. 

I'm trying to do the whole "What the fuck is the Universe trying to teach me?" thing, but I really am annoyed with these Gestapo tactics. "Vee have vays of making you vake up!"