It's not an admission of weakness.

A very unfortunate thing happened today. A friend was going to bring her car to Thak for some repairs, but in the meantime, her husband decided he would just rip it apart himself. Now the car is completely messed up, and will probably cost a lot more to fix than if he'd just gone along with her bringing it here, and getting the (relatively simple) job done right the first time.

I see this a remarkable amount. A friend says, "Oh wow! Your husband is a mechanic? My car is messed up. When can he check it out?" only to be told by their husband that there is NO WAY they're going to bring that car here, he'll handle it himself. At which point, of course, he makes a giant mess of it at least 80% of the time. (The other 20% of the time, the threat of paying someone to do the job was just what was needed to light a fire under some guy who could do the job but was just procrastinating.)

Here's the thing. I have to tell you, it's not an admission of weakness to take your car to a mechanic if you need to. Thak has gone to school for this. He's about to have a degree in it! He holds as much national licensing as the people who work on your car at the dealership (actually, he has more than a lot of them). He's a professional in his trade. It's not like by taking the car to him, it's admitting that Anna's husband is more of a man than someone else. This is his job, one which he's studied for, and taken years to learn. He doesn't know your job. He knows this one.

Look at it this way. When Thak needs something non-mechanical done, he goes to the professional who has trained in that area, and gets it done. If he's sick or hurt, he sees a doctor (or a PA, more commonly). If we have plumbing issues in our house, we call a plumber. For our kid's education, we consult her teachers. The fact is, everyone has an area of expertise, and it's nothing negative if you go to those people when you need something done that they've spent years of their life learning how to do.