Luckily the various talents are somewhat randomly scattered among the population but unlucky for some they mistake their calling. You probably did the man a favor by sending the untalented wannabe mechanic on to a more satisfying career elsewhere @Asemaster. But yes, it is difficult to can an honest man with a good attitude.
The dealership "system" sucks because almost every dealer flat doesn't care if the service department exists and would actually prefer that it be gone immediately.
Gee, I thought dealers sold high volumes at low margins to make the $$ back on service?
@asemaster
Please answer my question . . . when you fired him, did you tell him he was being fired for being a thief, because he stole time?
I wouldn’t agree with you that he stole time. That would imply that he was being willfully dishonest, when he was capable of being more efficient. It sounds like he simply wasn’t capable of doing a better job
I would agree that he was inefficient, and apparently incompetent
I’m confused how you can say you were heartbroken to let him go, yet you considered him a thief, because he was stealing time
It sounds like he wasn’t dishonest, just inefficient and incompetent
Definitely not the same as being a thief and dishonest, in my opinion
Sorry, but I can only partially agree with you on this topic
I’ve known inefficient guys, incompetent guys, and dishonest guys. it’s not all the same thing. Perhaps they all deserve to be fired, but not necessarily for the same reason. The first two are definitely related, and there’s overlap. But the third is definitely a separate category
I will agree that all 3 are costing the shop money
@db4690 Letting him go was a long time coming. He wasn’t a young kid, he was in his 50’s, spent many of his working years as a dealer flat-rater and was looking for a place to finish out his working years before retirement. His reason for coming to the indy side was that flat rate was no longer providing him with a decent income. Partly because flat rate times were being cut then as they are now. Partly because he was slow.
Not long after he started here I could tell it wouldn’t work. He was just slow. I made it a point to print out any procedures and torque specs he needed for a job. I pulled out any special tools or pullers he would need for a job. I asked him about his physical health. I asked about his home life and how things were going there. At one point I sat down with him and talked about his work pace. I explained that I don’t think he would ever make any more money, here or anywhere else, with the production he provided. He was here for 2 years before I just couldn’t make it work anymore. It’s not fair to the business as a whole to have one consistent underperformer. When I let him go I explained that it was because I found someone who could do his job faster and more profitably than he could.
When you come to work at an hourly shop, the business owes you 8 hours of pay for 8 hours of work. You, in turn, are expected to provide the business 8 billable hours of labor time. In a small shop, where everyone pitches in with oil changes, tire repairs, and nuisances like that, I’m happy with 6 hours billed. Consistently doing 4 hours a day when the schedule is full just won’t work.
Some guys spend an hour and a half on texting and email all day. Some guys take every car on a 20 minute test drive, burning an hour and a half a day. These guys are outright stealing time. Billable labor time is the most valuable item a shop has to sell, and at the end of the day what isn’t sold disappears. Wasted, mispent, squandered, or lost to inefficiency and incompetency, at the end of the day it’s all the same. It’s gone, it’s out of the business’s pocket, never to be recovered again.
@asemaster, don’t get me wrong. No one more than me thinks that certification may mean nothing.
My point is that if someone exerts the time to get fully certified and note I also mentioned mandatory state testing with a lengthy brutal test which requires analytical thinking.
That does not mean those lame tests with questions like what does a master cylinder do; choose A, B, C, or D.
Combine all of that with experience and odds are most can do the job. A shop owner or service manager can certainly weed out the ones who are crooked or just don’t get it.
The option is to continue with the status quo; bad feelings, backstabbing, politics, and corner cutting.
You mention women at the service counter. Personally, I’m of the opinion it won’t work in most cases even if that makes me appear to be a sexist pig. The reason being that I personally know of 1 woman SM, actually worked under another female SM, and worked with 3 women who handled the service counter.
Not one of those five could change a wiper blade or more importantly; could simply not do the job in anywhere near a correct manner. None of the five are in the field anymore.
Granted, the sample size may be small but that’s been my experience in that area.
@asemaster I was an executive chef in the restaraunt business for many years. Many times peoples hours were determined by business. You made the choices you needed to make, but finding a good employee can be hard. I had some slow learners, with good hearts, and was able to mold them into good employees. I am sure it sounds a little harsh, but I would demote them, like to dishwasher, and call on them in demanding times, and let them hone their skills and work their way up. Dang I must have been a prick to work for, been indie in computers and only supervising myself for 20 years.
I never fired anyone with a good heart, but certainly used the phrase don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out for people that would not work with me.
@asemaster I,understand the problem with employees who can not get a job done in a reasonable amount of time. At the university where I taught, we had a 3 term calculus sequence. When l taught the second course in the sequence, I had some students in the class who had a colleague for the first course who never got through the material for the course. I thought it unfair to make the students take the first course over with someone else, so I used my own time, got these students together twice a week outside of class and gave them a crash course,on what they needed to succeed in the second course. I can understand where a slow employee in an auto shop can upset the balance.
In all my years I’ve only had to fire two people, and in both cases they really left me no choice. One of them I ran into many years later, I as the college’s corporate training center director and she as an independent contractor, not working for me but for maintenance. We interacted as if we were old friends who hadn’t seen one another in years. There were absolutely no hard feelings in either direction. She’s a good person who admittedly simply got tired of her job and walked off the job. We got to know one another well at the college, and she’s simply a person who can’t stay with any kind of a commitment for a long period of time. A good and very attractive lady who simply prefers to live her life totally as a free agent.
Unfortunately, I cannot speak as highly of the other. I’d fire him all over again if a similar situation were emerge.
I have had to lay good people off, however, and I had a very hard time doing that. But in hard times you sometimes need to make hard decisions.
@asemaster
“Some guys take every car on a 20 minute test drive, burning an hour and a half a day. These guys are outright stealing time”
Let me tell you how it goes at the shop I work at, a fleet shop, as I’ve mentioned before
Vehicles get a scheduled service every 6 months. Every vehicle I get, I spend a few minutes driving. I make sure to get on the freeway, get up to speed, step on the brakes a few times, and get off on the next exit, and head back to the shop. Maybe 10 minutes total I’m gone
During that at most 1 minute on the freeway, I can tell if the rotors are warped, and I know if the rims need to be balanced
Anyways, many/most of my colleagues don’t do that. And they very often miss the fact that the brakes are warped and rims need to be balanced. Then they change their oil, air filter, wiper blades, etc., and turn in the repair order
That does not happen to me, because from my freeway road trip, I know that I’ve got to balance the rims, machine the rotors and replace the pads
I would not call those 10 minutes “stealing time” . . . I consider it time well spent, because I found potentially serious problems my colleagues were either unwilling or unable to find
And when I discover these things, I look up on the computer who did the last scheduled service on the vehicle, just to satisfy my curiosity. I’ll bet you lunch those rotors were warped last time also, but the guy servicing it didn’t know that, because he didn’t drive on the freeway. As we all know, many rotors will seem fine at 35mph, but will definitely not be okay at 65 or 70mph
But I will agree that 20 minutes is excessive, generally speaking
@ok4450 Yeah, I agree that the certifications themselves don’t often indicate the mechanical aptitude of the mechanic, but if a guy is at least willing to take part in a system that offers testing and certification and is nationally recognized, chances are he takes his job and this industry a little more seriously than the next guy.
@db4690 I agree with your test drives, in fact we also test drive a car before most services, for the same reasons. But I’ve worked with guys who felt it necessary to also test drive the car for 15 minutes after replacing an alternator or a multi-function switch. One guy went on a test drive after a repair and came back with 3 gallons of paint from Lowes for his weekend project, while flagged on the car. Stealing time. Those labor hours are the most valuable thing the shop has. Wasting time is no different that stealing parts off the shelf or taking money right out of the till.
@Barkydog I try to make sure every one has a chance and has what they need to be successful here. Unfortunately this is a pretty small operation and there’s really nowhere to demote a guy like that to. He was in his 50’s and if he hadn’t been molded into an efficient worker by then I doubt I could have done any better. Ultimately despite his good heart and intentions it was best for the business to let him go.
Is slow productivity the same as stealing? I tend to not see it that way.
One has an employee that can be trusted. The other does not.
I do agree that both cost the business money, and hence hard decisions need to be made to do what’s best for the business.
Great discussion on this thread. I’ve really enjoyed it.
A poor performer, whether by dereliction or incompetence, leaves co workers picking up the slack. That leads to a growing resentment among other workers. I encouraged one somewhat unproductive wannabe mechanic to move on by appointing him “permanent latrine orderly.” Anything beyond the service done for the $39.99 oil change maintenance left the man bewildered.
Corporate greed and public ignorance about auto service are killing the flat-rate mechanic. GM now pays .3 for a driveability complain under warranty. So that $40/hour top-flight technician gets paid $13 and change to find a car in the lot, drive it, hook up scan tools and meters and diagnose poor running condition.
Why would you not assign the menial tasks to an entry level person making 1/2 of what your top flight mechanic makes? It makes no sense to have your most skilled labor doing menial tasks. Other industries learned this decades ago when the shift to lean resources started. I wouldn’t have one of my most valued resources wasting time buying parts for prototypes for example. The skilled labor only does the actual diagnosis- where their skills are required. Having that person locating cars in the lot etc is wasteful and a sure way to send them packing and your business with it…
@asemaster
Thanks for the additional information
I had no idea you were paying your mechanics “salary” until you mentioned it
Unless you were giving that guy in his 50s only hard core diagnosis, it should have been possible for him to actually earn those 8hrs a day, especially if you printed out instructions and laid out the special tools for him
Yes, now I agree that it’s just a sad situation. The poor guy just couldn’t do it, at least not in an efficient manner
But that other guy that decided to go on a test drive to buy paint for himself, that’s not right. He was abusing the system, to put it nicely. It’s not fair if one mechanic is busting his chops replacing a set of struts, while the other mechanic is heading off to Sherwin Williams to buy some paint for his house, on company time
The entire business model is different when comparing chain stores, independent, and new car dealers.
My feeling is that a mechanic should be able to at least break even at the end of every day; work 8 hours; get paid for 8 hours. With new car dealers, warranty involvement, and dealers who believe the mechanic should get the shaft in the name of public relations which will hopefully cause that customer to return and buy another car takes precedent.
It’s quite common for even the best of dealer mechanics to work 8 and flag nowhere near that.
I’m not sure of the model but I think there’s an ECM reflash for some late model Chryslers. The entire job pays .7 hours flat rate; or 42 minutes.
The procedure states the mechanic is to take the vehicle out after a reflash and drive the car for 50 minutes. See the problem with the pay numbers?
@ok4450
I’m in agreement with you
As you state, the warranty labor times, and the paperwork, authorization, etc. which are required will often make it impossible to get those 8 hours a day
And naturally, if a mechanic is working at a dealership, a huge percentage of his work will be warranty
And the dealership is always right, not the mechanic. If the warranty labor time is .7hrs, then he’ll get that and no more, no matter the time spent. On the other hand, there have been instances, where the dealership paid LESS than warranty time. I’m talking about big jobs, such as timing case cover replacement, engine replacement, etc.
For example, the job pays 12 hours, and the mechanic got it done in 6 hours, or less, because he worked efficiently, had done the jobs several times already . . . during which he didn’t break even . . . and knew how to proceed
The dealership would say they can’t pay 12 hours, because he didn’t spend nearly enough time on the repair. They couldn’t justify it, supposedly.
The dealership can have their cake and eat it too
But the dealership mechanic can’t
Let’s not forget those free multi-point inspections. Free to the customer, anyways. And the mechanic gets paid nothing, unless he manages to get some upsells
The wise customers would take those inspection sheets, along with the repair estimates, and head straight to another, much cheaper shop, for a second opinion
The dealership would say they can't pay 12 hours, because he didn't spend nearly enough time on the repair. They couldn't justify it, supposedly.
Question: How many hours would the dealership charge the customer in this case?
@insightful
That was about warranty labor times
Oh, yeah, thanks.
Edit: Just curious, would the dealership get the full 12 hours reimbursed from corporate?
I recall the Mitchell and Motors manuals listing their flat rate and also warranty time and often realized how difficult it would be to match the factory time on a good day. Of course there were some jobs like clutch replacements and engine replacements on Ford and GM light duty trucks that I could have matched or possibly beat on a few rare occasions but any of the normal problems that occur in such jobs would have thrown me over the factory allotted time.
In a large, busy dealership shop where a mechanic could become the ‘go to’ man for certain common jobs he might become so familiar and practiced at it that he could beat the flat rate and make a good living. But then there is the internal politics of the shop to deal with and SMs can use work assignments to keep mechanics beholding to them and struggling to get by.