If an auto shop employee offered to take care of an issue with your vehicle, would you let them?
It is frequently the case that clerks and store employees at businesses offering car parts, tools and vehicle maintenance supplies will volunteer to assist customers they perceive—rightly or not—to be a little less familiar with the finer points of vehicle maintenance.
While some shops are equipped to test car batteries and replace them, it can really be a case-by-case basis for any additional or more intricate vehicle maintenance. One customer of an O’Reilly Auto Parts says she pulled up to the store recently, and had the state of her headlights called out by an employee who then offered to clean them for her.
However, in a video posted to TikTok by user Juliana (@juliana.us) that has drawn over 311,000 views on the platform, she says he might have actually made them worse in trying to clean them.
“The guy yesterday at O’Reilly’s was like, ‘Your headlights look really bad,’ and I told him that I had tried to clean them before and he was like, ‘Oh I got you,’” Juliana says in the video. “How the f*ck did he make them worse? What is this?”
The video shows her exiting her vehicle to give viewers an eyeful of what the auto care shop employee did to her car’s headlights. They appear to have been sanded down a degree to clear the fogginess of the plastics in the headlights.
Over time and with lots of exposure to ultraviolet rays from the sun, headlights can become foggy due to degrading of the plastics used in their manufacture. In addition to becoming foggy, these layers of plastics can also become yellow-tinged.
It is generally best to keep headlights clean to experience their best functionality, as the fogginess can inhibit their ability to clearly light a road at night, which is potentially a safety issue.
Typically, many retailers similar to O’Reilly Auto Parts will carry kits and products to clear headlights, which may require multiple steps.
Some viewers suggested that the employee who offered to help the poster might have missed one of these steps, either intentionally to have her come back for them or to buy a kit to do them herself.
@juliana.us WHAT IS MY LUCK ?!?
♬ original sound – Juliana ♡
“He did step 1 of headlight restoration and forgot 2 through 4,” one commenter wrote.
“It’s so she comes back for steps 2-4,” another said.
“Lmao by boy skipped a couple of steps after he started it,” a third added.
Others suggested their favorite products to clean their headlights and ensure their lights were shining as bright as possible.
“I wet sanded mine in stages, cleaned them with alcohol, and re-cleared them,” one commented “Only on my custom ones. I bought replacements for my other truck.”
“Toothpaste always worked for me!” another commenter wrote.
“Cerakote headlight restoration is a game changer,” a further user said.
The Daily Dot has reached out to Juliana via email as well as a comment on the video, in addition to O’Reilly Auto Parts via email regarding the video.
The internet is chaotic—but we’ll break it down for you in one daily email. Sign up for the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter here to get the best (and worst) of the internet straight into your inbox.
