Technician VS. Mechanic

I suppose, in my opinion, a technician is a person who changes a whiz-bang module sensor valve on a Toyota Sarcoma after scanning for a code. Mechanic, on the other hand, is a guy who can take an old Dodge camper he got for free and remove the 360 engine with a crescent, bat and saw and put that same worn out engine in another rusty old Mopar and drive to work for the next five years. Could they do each other’s job, maybe. Would they want to switch roles, not a chance. I consider myself in the second category for sure. I cut my teeth as a car guy on things like 409s, GTOs, Torinos, and other cars with big motors and big torque. The emphasis back then was to make these things stay in tune, or go faster, or whatnot. It was greasy, it was hot, but it was fun. The reward was always in the way the vehicle performed, whether that be shocks, brakes, tune, whatever. Today’s technician is more often then not doing something electronic related on a foreign or less often domestic vehicle. Not a bad thing for the average Tech, but my personal frustration with cars today in general is what they have become. Rolling computers with an engine stuck inside. Backup cameras touch screens, heated steering wheels, and all types of other things that BREAK. Serial busses that control windows with binary signals and a whole host of other things that are infinatley more complicated to fix and also infinatley more useless as well. The likelyhood of me working on that stuff is about as much as a modern “tech” changing the transmission bands on a 727 transmission. In today’s instant gratification society the average customer has no idea whats going with their car, and just want it fixed and don’t care what the problem is and have little or no courtesy whatsover toward the tech. Throw this in with the majority cars on the road being small engine, front wheel drive imports, and it would keep me out of today’s “tech” arena. My two cents worth on the topic.