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Frat Car Wash Fund Raiser

by Tom
(Ft. Myers, FL USA)

In college we needed to raise money to pay for a fraternity field trip. We were visiting the Jack Daniels Distillery in Lynchburg, Tennessee on a legitimate trip to learn about their distillation process. Our college was in Memphis and we had about 25 of us taking this 3 day trip.

Our treasury didn't have enough funds so we decided to have a car wash. Nothing original about that. It's what happened that people doing fundraising should be aware of.

Being a business fraternity, we set up a well thought through "assembly line" to handle each car. One fellow checked in the car and took the money. A second moved the car into the car wash line. Three others did the actual washing and one frat brother at the next stage rinsed the car off with a hose.

Then we had someone move the car to the drying station so three others could quickly dry the car for return to the owner.

The problem occurred when a car was being moved to the drying area. It turns out the car had a manual transmission and our frat brother had never driven a car with this type of transmission. He didn't even know it had a stick shift.

He jumped in the car, started it up while it was in gear and the car lurched forward and hit the car in front of it. Fortunately the damage was minimal and we didn't have to dip into our earnings to pay for any repairs.

But the moral of the story is to be 100% certain the people you have moving the cars being washed know how to drive cars with both type of transmissions. It will save you at a minimum some embarrassment and potentially a major expense to repair cars you only wanted to wash.