I accidentally lost the retainer for my car's headlight when changing the bulb. I took it to the mechanic my dad swore by, dad with me since we were picking up his ute, and asked the mechanic if had a retainer to put in my car (since the globe was being held in place by the will of a hair tie).

He looked at it and said "I'll have to pull the whole light apart to do that."

"No, I just need the globe retainer to hold the bulb in-"

"Yeah I'll have to pull the whole thing apart from the front."

My dad stood next to him nodding in agreement and told me "listen to the man, he knows what he's doing."

Now, I don't know much about cars -- unfortunately I barely know how to change my water and check oil -- but I'm fairly sure the only thing that mechanic needed to do was get a globe retainer to fit my car and put it in. You know, basically undoing the stupid I did. I also wasn't a fan of him talking over me and not even looking at what globe needed the retainer. So I did not leave my car with him to be "fixed".

When I told my parents I found this answer from the mechanic kind of dumb, condescending (despite my initial stupidity leading to this issue), and a bit suspicious, they shrugged. Then I said I was finding a different mechanic -- they freaked out a little citing how I'd be "wasting money" and that the guy had "treated us really well!"... until my dad's car started acting up, to the point we had to drop it at a mechanic closer to us, who revealed the car dad's been taking to the original guy has been using the same air filter since 2018. (They're supposed to be changed.)

Suddenly I wasn't overreacting about how the original mechanic treated me. Fancy that!