My version of the mechanic story

Do you know the story of ‘THE’ mechanic?

Well, it’s the mechanic that everybody goes to when the
other mechanics can’t solve the problem. Before a
mechanic takes a look at a car, he’ll say, “However
easy or difficult the solution is, it’s going to be
$500 before parts.”

And here’s a story that wasn’t satisfied. He sent his
car and the mechanic took a look at it, listened to the
engine a bit and give the car a good kick – problem
solved. The car was doing alright after that.

Now, the customer has a $5OO bill. He asked for an
itemized bill instead.

The mechanic took the bill back, turned around and
wrote something on that bill. Then he handed it back.

The bill says …

- Labor – $50
- Knowing where to kick – $450

This kinda happened to me recently. And I am the
mechanic.

I used to work in a software house writing web
application in Perl. I worked there for about a year.
And I still stay in touch with them until now.

So, yesterday one of my friends in there called me
asking to help them out with a programming problem.
They have been trying to solve it for almost TWO MONTHS

I said that I’ll take a look at it.

So I did … I was facing the same problems they were
… at first. But in a few hours, I figured it out.

THEY WERE MISSING ONE LINE OF CODE!

Yep, just one line, and that solved it all. I couldn’t
believe that they spent almost TWO MONTHS missing the
one single line.

So I called my friend back … and I gave him the
mechanic story.

Kinda made my day.

Do you have a similar story?