B D Battery

Down in New Motor Market at shop number 7, that’s where B D Battery is. It’s a heavy kind of job. We spend the day moving lead-acid batteries around. They are heavy and sometimes the terminal grease gets on everything. The market is always noisy with engines revving and people shouting for parts. We’ve got batteries for cars, bikes, and those big ones for home inverters too. People come in when their car won’t start in the morning and they look pretty stressed. We just test the old one and see if it’s dead or just needs a charge. There’s a lot of water and acid checks. The floor is concrete and stays cool even when it’s baking outside. We don’t have a big sign or anything, just the stacks of black boxes near the door. It’s been this way for years. Most of our customers are mechanics from the other shops in the market who need a battery for a customer’s vehicle. We drink a lot of water because of the heat and the fumes. It’s not a clean job, your hands are always black by lunch. But it’s steady. We know the regulars and we know which batteries last and which ones don't. That’s just how it goes here in the motor market. There’s a small tap at the back where we wash our hands before having our lunch, but the stains never really go away.