the special one

I feel your pain!
All I'm going to say is I used to take local school kids on for work experience. As time went by the standard just got lower, and lower, and, well, I don't do it anymore.
The classic was one lad who was booked to be here for two weeks. Turned up for the first couple of days and shuffled about a bit then vanished. I didn't see him for the next five working days when he turned up again and asked if I minded if he took a couple of days off. I told him I didn't mind at all (well, words to that effect anyway) and I never, ever saw him again.

We have one in our place like that ............ he's the boss !!!

I've told this story before but, to me, it's worth repeating. We had a lad doing two days a week with us and the other three at local college. Too much to tell now but he was totally hopeless (to the point of being dangerous) so I  told them I was dropping him. A lady came out from the college and asked what I would want then. I replied a good boy or girl with a few decent GCSE's in maths, English and a science subject as a minimum. She replied (and looked quite shocked!) that if she had a child with those sort of qualifications she wouldn't put them into the motor trade.
Now I saw that as a basic minimum but with her attitude what sort of dross are we going to get?
And who is going to fix cars in the future?
Let's face it, all of us who are any good in this trade (which sadly isn't all of us by any means) are hugely undervalued financially and get no respect because we're "only mechanics".
You might laugh at me for this but I've been full time in the motor trade for 25 years now, before that it was a hobby which then became a paying hobby but my full time job was in a bank. Back then I earned twice as much (in real terms as they say) as I do now for about half the hours and had to know about a quarter as much. Make sense out of that if you can but I took voluntary redundancy and here I am.
On the other hand I'm happier now than I was then so there's a value right there!

thats being unfair to mince!

We had a Josh . One freezing cold morning he came in the office and asked ' Why is it so warm in here when it is so cold outside ? ' I just pointed at the heater .
I then told him it was so cold outside because somebody hadn't closed the gates at the end of the yard . He went and closed them .

Oh how I miss our Josh . He's an apprentice at a Citroen dealership now .

Few years ago ours rang up on Friday and said I won't be this week!!!!!

Not an apprentice , BUT ..
I have been out on a recovery . A Focus with clutch that went bang in middle of a busy set of traffic lights . Police got there before me and pushed the car back into the cycle lane . I had to reverse into said cycle lane to winch the car onto the truck .
It was during this operation that not just one but two cyclists rode into the truck . The cycleists had around a half mile clear view on their approach .
One of them tried squeezing down between the side of the truck and a wall . The other tried getting round the other side . I had to adjust my mirrors before I set off .

A couple of months ago I answered the phone ....it went like this.
Me                Hello
caller            I picked my car up from MOT twenty minutes ago and the radio doesn't work now.
Me                Have you tried turning it on ?
caller             How do I do that ?
Me                You push the button marked on.
caller             Ok hang on I will try that.......(long pause).........oh great thanks.

This was a University student !! So maybe I was wrong to expect some form of intelligence?

Had the same scenario myself. Today in fact had one customer ask why we never stamped her service book on the mot test and in the afternoon had another lady with a coolant leak which was the usual ac condensation through the drain. The general public are getting way thicker than ever before.