Just The Tip: Top 25 Coolest Online Tools (Oh, and Lug Nuts Ruin Lives.)

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Buffer
• Google+
• LinkedIn
• Gmail

So apparently I’m one of those arrogant jerks who thinks everything is negotiable.

Year-long rental contracts. (Who stays anywhere for a year?)
Baking cookies for the PTA. (Kidding, I would never agree to that.)
Relationships. (It IS you, sweetheart.)

That is, until one fateful spring, three years ago, when I finally met my match.

Polished and demure on the outside, she was as tough and leathery as they get on the inside. And to top it off? She was German.

She liked to push my buttons just as much as I liked to push hers, and every time she’d get turned on, she wouldn’t just purr—bitch would roar. She and I were ride or die.  …Until one day, well, I was done riding. (But not dying. There’s no preventing that.)

It was time to move on.  Finished. Finito. Or as the sophisticated elite might say, “Done-zo.”

But she didn’t understand. And unfortunately, neither did Jeff.

You see, Jeff was her pimp. I knew about the arrangement from the beginning, but like everything else in life, I assumed this, too, would be negotiable.

So you can imagine my surprise when Jeff sat me down and told me the very thing I didn’t want to hear:

You can’t terminate the car lease early. Well, you caaaaaan, but only if you give us, mmhmmm *nonchalantly punches numbers in calculator, one hand behind head, legs up on desk* — $8,000.

It wasn’t the $8,000 as much as it was the principle. The German had already been in storage for two whole years as it were, untouched, undriven, with less miles than (most) teenage virgins.

So somewhere in between telling him he should be ashamed of himself, and firing off a hateful tweet on Twitter, I woefully returned The German back to her storage unit, where she’d remain for one more full year as I’d travel the globe, paying her monthly payments, wishing cars were collapsable gadgets you should disassemble Johnny 5 style, throw into a ziplock baggie, and put in your carry on. (I mean, it could even go in the same plastic container as your laptop through security.)

It was then that I remembered I should do the proper thing that normal people do: Disconnect the battery.

Yet, as I rolled up my sweater sleeves and went to accomplish this here battery removal task, I quickly discovered I was in for a treat: The battery removal task was going to require one of those…wrench items. And it struck me as hilarious because, while I like to consider myself a fairly educated person, somehow, SOMEHOW, the fact that a car battery doesn’t just hook up as easily as a USB cable slicked right by my brain. And just so we’re all on the same page here, folks of the internet, THAT IS NOT THE CASE.

That must be what hell is like. No fucking USBs.

Anyway, so I naturally did the next best thing: Took it as a personal challenge to unscrew the lug nuts (lug nuts?) using a pair of nose hair scissors.

Now this was a disappointment I was  ready for.

While I knew that nose hair scissors would probably harm me more than help me by way of accidentally palm piercing, I’m also a stubborn ox and enjoy going by the motto of, “At least I tried.”

As you may have guessed, “At least I tried” is as far as I got. (And yes, of course I tried my fingers.)

To this day, The German sits there, battery connected. What can I say? I was on my way to the airport. It was a choice between: Buy a new battery later, or miss my flight now.

But I’m pretty sure the moral of this story is two-fold:

1. Lug nuts ruin lives.
2. When you’ve got the right tools, life is easy. When you don’t? You end up pissed off, frustrated, confused, stressy, and blogging about car dealerships with grease on your dress.

With that, I present: The Official TMFproject 2014 Collection of the Coolest, Newest, Most Useful Tools On The Internet to Run Your Business.

Because let’s face it: If negotiating with car dealerships is tough, just wait until you try it with clients.

[listly id=”EK0″ layout=”gallery”]

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Buffer
• Google+
• LinkedIn
• Gmail