Sometimes I hear people complain about having to pay locksmiths $60 or $70 or $80 for the half a minute it takes to unlock a car. I get that. It can be embarrassing and expensive to have to call for a lockout service. And then we often do make fast work of it (though it’s very rare I get a car door open in under a minute, as I generally try to manipulate the lock before resorting to other methods of getting in).

Last night a guy called me after supper and asked me what it would cost to come to the bar he was at and unlock his car. I looked at my watch and quoted him what seemed to me like a reasonable after-hours rate of $75. He hung up on me. (It was only after the call that I realized his speech had been a little slurred, and then I started considering the ethics of enabling someone to drive home drunk.)

I thought about that call again when, several hours later, another guy roused me from a deep sleep to come to a gas station in Bellevue and make a working copy of his broken car key. I said it would be $100. He was happy with the figure, as others had quoted him prices upwards of $200.

For many jobs, the majority of the money I charge is just showing-up money. Once I arrive, the work itself is usually pretty easy for me. I expect to be compensated for showing up on a moment’s notice with a van full of tools and a head full of pertinent knowledge. During the day I’m rarely willing to go on a service call that’s going to bring in less than $60, and late at night I want at least $100 to drag myself out of bed.

But to say that opening a car only requires 30 seconds of work is like saying that scary things go away when you close your eyes. A locksmith doesn’t just appear out of nowhere like a genie, and then vanish back into his lamp when the job is done. There’s all kinds of stuff behind the scenes that the customer never sees: shelling out money for tools, endless licensing fees, insurance, advertising, vehicle maintenance, and gasoline; being abruptly pulled away from some other activity to bolt out the door and help a stranger out of a jam; the slight feeling of unease that pollutes said activity — in truth, every activity — because of the possibility that a call might suddenly disrupt it; spending time in a service vehicle driving to and from the job; and getting home from the last job of the night to do the daily accounting, order new key blanks, design marketing materials, correspond with clients and venders, and read up on new security trends. That thirty seconds of work is supported by countless hours of preparation, years’ of accumulated knowledge, and a potentially long drive in a very rattly van.

So I’ll close with the old anecdote about the factory manager who has to call in a technician because his large piece of production equipment stops working. The elderly technician shows up, takes a couple turns around the room-sized machine, stops at a certain spot, and then gives the machine a sharp kick. The machine coughs and then sputters back to life. The technician turns to the manager and says, “That’ll be $800.”

“What?!” the manager blurts out. “That’s ridiculous! All you did was kick it. I need to see a fully itemized invoice before I can pay you a cent!”

Two days later an invoice arrives in the mail. Here’s what it says:

MACHINE REPAIR

Kicking the machine………………………………$5
Knowing where to kick the machine………….$795