Adamant Eve

Eve Joring: A girl in a man’s job

“I’m happily single,” Eve proclaims.

February 14 is customarily a red-letter day for many singles out to share their hearts with that significant other—over an intimate dinner, perhaps, with gentle talk and soft music.

But for Eve L. Joring, her date was a powerful, well-oiled machine. No, not a sex machine; literally, an automobile machine, lubed by real motor oil.

And her Facebook page on Feb. 16, 2013 spilled out all the sordid details: “Day One, safety measures, cleanliness. Day Two, conducting change oil. Day Three, dismantle throttle body. Day Four, dismantle brake pads and rotor disc.”

Yes, she aggressively stripped down that muscle car down to its nuts and bolts, which she screwed back again, of course, after the messy deed was done.

And that was how Eve, then 22, consummated her three-month on-the-job training as a technician-trainee for a Chevrolet dealership in Cebu—literally getting down and dirty on her first day.

A girl in a man’s job

For three back-breaking months, Eve did the job of men, pulling down transmissions, fixing suspension components of heavy SUVs, and removing and replacing tires and brakes. The works.

You can say that her relationship with the machines was cariño brutal. “I had to carry stuff heavier than I was, then work as fast as my male workmates,” she recalled.

“My fingernails and face were always blackened with grease and oil. It’s unglamorous, and you feel ugly,” Eve, a looker when she gets cleaned up, laughed.

Doing men’s work wasn’t new to Eve. She shared that when she was young, her hobby was to tinker with anything broken in the house, and did these even if she lived with six brothers.

Lifting the heavy stuff in the machine shop was easy, she said. She got bruised and scratched, yes, but those injuries took care of themselves and eventually healed.

The real challenge lay in diagnosing—or “fault tracing”—a vehicle’s mechanical and electrical troubles. Those things just wouldn’t go away if they weren’t fixed by hand.

Her sweat and perseverance paid off

“It took me up to five days to diagnose and analyze a problem,” she said.

Her sweat and perseverance paid off, and she became one of the dealership’s full-time technicians in three years.

Eve credits a large part of her inner strength to her aunt, who inspired her with such words of wisdom: “Poverty is not an obstacle if you know in your heart that you can accomplish what you set out to do, and you persevere in achieving it.”

Married to the job

Eve’s love affair with the automobile is far from over, though. For three years, she loved it for its body. She has taken it to another level. She now has “children” to attend to.

After becoming the dealership’s assistant quality controller for a year, Eve is now the job controller, dispatching tasks among the servicing staff in the morning, closing transactions in the afternoon, then attending to the paperwork before closing shop.

Indeed, her “kids”—the crew and the cars alike—keep her busy all day.

It’s now easy to understand why Eve can’t engage in “extra-marital affairs” with men. This “marriage” with her work simply takes up all her productive time.

She even declared, “I am happily single.” And devoted to her first love, one might add, a love she was introduced to in August 2012 when she wrapped her slender hands around a scholarship application form for Automotive Servicing NC II at the Tesda Provincial Training Center in Carmen, Cebu.

After “wooing” her love in school for exactly 524 training hours, it finally said “yes” when Chevrolet employed her in July 2013.

And the rest is (still) her story.

Lifting the heavy stuff adds to the challenge

“My fingernails and face were always blackened with grease and oil.”

Eve’s romance with the automobile blooms every day.