Getting your car serviced in South Florida should not be a death-defying act

After six months of living in the coronavirus hot spot of South Florida, you’re confident that you’ve taught yourself how to live safely during the pandemic.

But, in a state divided along political lines on mask-wearing, there’s no such thing as accomplishing a basic task like getting your car serviced without encountering unmasked nitwits and other specimens of Florida man and woman.

Maintenance and repairs were a costly pain in the you-knowwhere without a highly transmissible disease among us. Then, enter COVID-19.

You call ahead to make an early appointment to avoid crowds.

You ask about safety protocols to make sure the dealership is following CDC recommendations. The receptionist tells you:

“Don’t worry. We are very safe here. We already got cited for the code violation of someone not wearing a mask, a customer, and now we’re always on the lookout for violators.”

What is it they say about famous last words? They don’t take long to be proven wrong.

You drive to the appointment in a heightened state of stress, playing out in your head the familiar scenario of contact with several people and surfaces.

The worst of it, you think, is that at least two people will be touching the inside of your car and leaving whatever germs they carry, whatever droplets fall from their mouths.

You haven’t stayed COVIDfree for months to blow it on a car-service run, but you need the car checked out.

The masked attendant who greets you moves in too close to your open window for coronavirus-era comfort, but stands back when he sees the dread in your eyes, the only thing exposed under your “Life is Good” cap and above your mask.

You start to suspect that, despite assurances that there are safety measures in place, it’s business as usual.

And, it is so, for the most part.

TIGHT SPACE, NO MASK

You don’t want to go into the tiny office of your longtime service agent, but he waves you in from behind plexiglass.

The minute you walk in — after having to touch a door people also have touched before you — you notice that his officemate is wearing his mask around his chin.

When he looks at you, you tell him, pointing to your own mask: “It’s not a chin guard.”

“There’s no customers here,” he defends himself.

“No? What am I?” you ask. He grudgingly pulls the mask over his nose, goes back to his computer and starts whistling a tune.

The horror show is only beginning.

COVID ON THE TABLE

Now the topic of COVID is on the table, and while your agent is entering information in his computer, he tells you that his abuelita was just fine, but after she went to a routine doctor’s appointment the other day in one of the buses that ferry the elderly, the next day she was having trouble breathing.

She’s COVID-positive, has infected a child in the family and is hospitalized.

This service agent, who works with dozens of people daily, should be in quarantine for 14 days, not working. Had you known what he’s revealing now, you wouldn’t be sitting in this airless room with him and the dunce without the mask on properly.

But what can you do but sign the work order with your own pen and rush out of there to wash your hands?

The more than two-hour wait for the car is another ordeal.

The first employee you encounter inside the showroom waiting area isn’t wearing a mask.

“I’m eating,” he says, lifting his food as evidence.

Sure, there’s social distancing in the sitting area with some chairs marked out of service.

But his cozy corner makes the man across from you think it’s perfectly OK for him to remove his mask to talk on the phone.

You move farther away to a round table, where the showcase cars used to be, for more spacious social distancing.

No safety in denial A cleaning woman is making the rounds, so you ask if she could wipe down the table where you’re going to work, but she says she doesn’t see any dirt.

You tell her COVID droplets aren’t visible and notice that she’s wearing a very thin, almost seethrough homemade black mask.

The conversation that ensues will live on forever in your coronavirus chronicles, Florida edition.

She believes the pandemic’s sole purpose is to destroy the president. Her source: a Spanish music radio station. She says that there are all these remedies you can take to become immune, and although the FDA has cautioned against use of hydroxychloroquine, she calls it a miracle cure.

Only weak people get sick and die, she believes. She’s young and fit.

You try to educate her, but there’s nothing you can say to this evangelist of denial and conspiracy theories.

Coronavirus for dummies — and Republican leaders peddling denial in Florida | Opinion

You no longer care if she cleans your table, but now she insists that it’s her job.

Tight spaces, fake mask wearing, challenged social distancing and people saying (and in one man’s case, yelling) stupid things send stress levels soaring.

Somebody needs to come up with an alternative.

In this COVID world, we already have groceries delivered and restaurant meals brought to our door.

Now, there’s a great opportunity for some savvy entrepreneur to come pick up our cars and take them to be serviced.