Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Clay Colwell on Facebook today:

I just saw a guy holding a sign saying “HAND JOBS $10”. He was outside a car wash, so I’m sure it was for hand-wash service, but ya never know.

We’ve visited the world of deliberately provocative hand job before, on 3/22/16 in “Annals of dubious commercial names”, referring to a spa named Hand Job (referring to manicures) on Castro St. in San Francisco. But the expression is widespread at car washes to refer provocatively to hand-washing. In both cases playing on vulgar slang hand job ‘masurbation of a man’.

There are hand job car washes in both the UK and the US. Here’s The Hand Job Car Wash & Detailing in Dumfries, Scotland:

Then there was a 2014 flap over the “Best Hand Job in Bolton” (Greater Manchester), reported in the Mirror under the head:

Car wash in hot water over ‘Best Hand Job’ sign as council sees red over cheeky slogan

The proprietor: “I got the idea from an American car wash advertisement on the Internet and thought it might get people’s attention if I put it on a sign outside.” Blame it on the Yanks!

Similarly, The Hand Job Car Wash in Doncaster (South Yorkshire) and The Car Wash (Best Hand Job in Town) in Gateshead (Tyne and Wear) and no doubt a number of others.

An American sampler: the Hand Job Hand Wash in Hobart IN, the Hand Job Car Wash in Pasadena CA, and the Hand Job Auto Detailing in Ocala FL. And again, no doubt a number of others.

The title of this posting. A mash-up of “Workin’ at the Car Wash Blues” —

a 1974 single written and recorded by Jim Croce. It was the third single released from his album I Got a Name. (Wikipedia link)

— and the adjective blue, in the senses (from NOAD2):

informal (of a movie, joke, or story) with sexual or pornographic content: the blue movies are hugely profitable; (of language) marked by cursing, swearing, and blasphemy

Bonus sexual job. Noted in Urban Dictionary, car job ‘blow job or hand job performed in a car’. Automobiles might even be the archetypical locale for hand jobs.

This entry was posted on October 17, 2016 at 5:04 pm and is filed under Double entendres, Language of advertising, Language of sex, Slang. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.