Car issues

I took my car in for an oil change today. I normally try to go a certain Midas near my house, but they're closed on the weekends and I haven't had a chance to be there during the week so I took my chances on a different place in Denton. So here's where the story starts- they drive it in, and mess with it for a bit while I'm reading (Rolling Stone- surprising selection for an auto place) the guy comes in and says he wants to show me some stuff...great, you know how often that's good news. He starts in about how the radiator is dirty and it needs a coolant flush and this and that...

Here's the thing. I don't know shit about the insides of cars. He could've told me the inner secondary cossex was fragumilated and I would've nodded just the same. Like he took off this cap and goes, "see how dirty this is" and I'm saying to myself "No shit it's dirty, this whole engine is black and greasy and the car's pushing on 200k, of course it's dirty! Why does this particular smudge of dirt matter?" And this is kinda frustrating. I always feel roped into things when I get my car maintained because I don't know what's actually important or not and what's normal or not.

And it's really hard to know to trust some random guys opinion, and think that he's not just screwing you over. Honestly the reason I like the Midas is because the first time I took my car in they DIDN'T try to sell me something else. He in fact mentioned how good shape the car was in considering the age and mileage.

The end of the story is that I did end up paying for an engine flush (whatever the hell that is...if they even did anything) and the coolant does look kinda dirty, but I'm gonna take it into Midas to see about that, since I trust them not to screw me over.

The moral is that I'm going to try to learn the basic workings of cars, maybe this summer, so at least I don't always feel like I'm being taken for a ride (pun intended) whenever they say something's wrong.

Sorry for the long rant of a post, just annoyed at the whole experience and spending way more money than I expected to.