"I misplaced your dipstick."

I've needed an oil change for the last 500 miles or so, and I finally got one today. I was fairly oblivious as the guy did his work, and then he said, "OK, go ahead and start up your engine now." I did, and a few seconds later, my car shook and the engine died.

"What the hell was that?" asked the guy changing the oil in the car next to mine. He came over and started looking under my hood. Within seconds, four oil-change guys were looking under my hood, sticking their hands deep inside the dirty black machinery that I don't understand.

"Go ahead and take your keys out of the ignition and throw them on the dashboard," the oldest one told me. I did, and they continued to poke around. After a couple minutes, the guy who was originally changing my oil came to my window.

"OK, sir, what happened is I misplaced your dipstick," he told me.

"Alright," I said.

"Yeah, we'll have it out in a second, it should be fine," he said, and went back to work.

After a couple more minutes, the oldest one asked me to step out of the car. I did, and he got in. He started the car for a split second, making an ugly grinding noise. The guys under the hood poked around, and then he started the car for a split second again. He did it one more time, and then got out of the car and told me I could get back in. After some more mucking about, there were exclamations of relief from the guys under my hood. The dipstick had been recovered.

"We got it," the first guy told me, "Everything looks good."

"OK," I said.

"Yeah, everything looks fine," another guy said. "If you have any problem with it at all, or if you just want to have somebody look at it, just bring it back here. Ask for me, I'm a store manager." I looked at his shirt and made a mental note to talk to Dave if anything should go wrong.

"Alright, cool," I said.

"Are you also a student," the first guy asked as he rang me up.

"Yeah," I lied, "but I don't have my student ID." I figured I deserved some kind of discount after they "misplaced" my dipstick, but I would have tried to get the student discount, anyway.

"No problem," he said, "We'll take care of that for you."

It seems kind of stupid that a guy who changes oil for a living could "misplace" my dipstick. I kind of wish they would have told me exactly what happened, but I probably wouldn't have understood it. I'm clueless about cars. At least this time they didn't try to sell me a bunch of shit I didn't need.