My dad turns wrenches for a living, has been for 20 years. It's not an easy life, and the customers that complain, argue, or haggle over the cost of the repair sicken me. The ones that say "it's a simple job, it only takes 10 minutes" enrage me the most. Why the motherfuck did you take your car to a shop if you're going to bitch about the cost, or say it's a quick and easy job? Do it your own motherfucking self you piece of shit!


Yeah, there are lots of crooks out there, but there are even more who are just trying to make an honest living. I worked alongside my dad a few times when I was younger, I know how dirty, difficult, and unrewarding the work is, especially when you have a shit stain of a customer.

I applaud you guys for sticking it out, and the ones who left the business, I understand completely and don't blame you one bit.

tagged

Quoted: Quoted: Yeah, we had guys with the monster tool boxes stuffed with the lasest/greatest tools, they couldn't repair something if their life depended on it. Most of the tools were never used, they just liked to have more than the other guys. AB Sounds like somebodies jealous, whatsamatta the wife won't let you spend you any money? img.photobucket.com/albums/v414/madmathew/waaambulance.jpg

I don't get jealous of someones material items. I am mearly stating facts that I have witnessed in the 30+ years of being in the business. The "techs" that had the mega boxes, and the latest tools, from what I observed were hacks with no talent. Jealous?

AB

Hmmm tagged for tool porn...

A guy I used to work with had two giant toolboxes joined by a hinge.  At night, he'd fold the two boxes together so that the drawers faced each other, and had a clasp and lock to secure it.   He also had a drop-down break/lunch table, replete with a drop-down stool.  

I thought it was all neat as heck until I realized he used its massive size for hiding from the foreman.  This guy was an absolute genius at sleeping on the job while looking like he was working.  He slept half a shift one day on an electrical job; with his torso shoved way under the dash, looking for shorts.

Thanks for the compliments, it really made my day.  I been kinda depressed about work lately, and now I feel a lot better.  I am gonna try to do an inventory and clean up in the near future.  
For anyone who is interested, I started off in high school taking automotive technology.  I had three years of that and one year of electronics.  Every year the representative from UTI would come by and give a little speech and sales pitch.  I figured it was a good way to go, because college was not for me.  The rep came out to my house one night and explained everything and got me all signed up.  Later I went to a scholarship competition.  I won first place in the nation.  Too bad it only got me five grand in scholarship money.  Nowadays you get a free ride.  I went to the houston campus of UTI for the automotive program.  I pretty much dominated, winning almost every award offered.  While I was going to school at night, I was working at an independant during the day, providing me with valuable hands on training while learning theory in school.  Toward the end of my training I took a test to see if I could get in the Mercedes-Benz program.  If you took anybody else's test, Benz wouldn't let you take theirs.  But if you took the Benz test, you could still take someone else's, so it sounded logical to start at the top.  I passed, did some interviews, and got accepted.  I spent four months in Orlando for Mercedes training.  At the time, my dad's barber was also the service manager's barber, so a dialouge was opened.  I got hired on and have been there since.  I have achieved Master Diagnostic technician status, and am SLR certified.  It will be seven years in april.  I wonder more and more about what the future holds, but for now this is home.
 I hate engine work, and dirty jobs.  My specialty is electrical stuff.  I deal a lot with phones, navigation, Tele-aid, and strange electrical stuff.  I do a lot of accessory installations, often creating the labor times for our shop for the accessory installs.  I specialize in "making things work" when they aren't supposed to.  For example installing things the car isn't supposed to have.  When the sales dept screws up and sells a car that doesn't have what the customer wanted, they turn to me to make it happen.  
 Although I initially loved the flat rate system, I have grown to despise it.  I would simply like to have a paycheck I can count on every week, regardless of how much work comes in the door.  When Mr. Poor brings in the car he can't afford, I don't want it to be MY problem.  
 Thanks again for the compliments, and lemme know if there is anything else you are interested in and I will see what I can do.

saturnstyl - this is fascinating stuff.

Why have you been depressed about work? Is it the pay structure?

I'm actually curious how guys are paid (I don't need or care to know how much). The good, the bad and the ugly. Flat rate, time and materials, warranty issues, "it still doesn't work" complaints, "you fucked it up even more" type stuff, etc.

It's occured to me that different dealers are COMPLETELY different with regard to how they treat mechanics. I knew a guy who was a Toyota mechanic most of his working life, and he really enjoyed it. He didn't seem to have many of the same complaints I hear about getting screwed out of money, or endless paperwork hassles.

Quoted: saturnstyl - this is fascinating stuff. Why have you been depressed about work? Is it the pay structure? I'm actually curious how guys are paid (I don't need or care to know how much). The good, the bad and the ugly. Flat rate, time and materials, warranty issues, "it still doesn't work" complaints, "you fucked it up even more" type stuff, etc. It's occured to me that different dealers are COMPLETELY different with regard to how they treat mechanics. I knew a guy who was a Toyota mechanic most of his working life, and he really enjoyed it. He didn't seem to have many of the same complaints I hear about getting screwed out of money, or endless paperwork hassles.

Well, back in the "glory days" when I first started at benz, the money flowed like water.  You needed something?  You GOT it.  RIGHT NOW.  We had some management changes, and now when you need something, you might get it...... eventually.
 Warranty pay cuts have been absolutely insane.  You can only hope to break even anymore.  We rely on customer pay jobs to balance everything out.  Everyone used to make a lot more money, but when the cuts came benz stopped paying for a lot of things they used to.
 Our dealer charges warranty X 1.5 for customer pay work.  Meaning that if warranty pay for doing the job is 1 hour, a customer pays an hour and a half for the same job.  On the flip side, a customer pay job is more often on an older car, that will be dirty and have siezed/stripped fasteners and stuff like that to contend with, while warranty jobs are usually cleaner on newer cars.  For years the customer pay was 1.3 times warranty, but the warranty cutbacks were so severe we were forced to bump it to 1.5

 We used to not have to worry when we were in over our heads.  If you lost your ass on a job, the shop would just pay you.  We could warranty things that would never fly now.  We always at least broke even at worst.  Now, you get paid what warranty pays.  If you get screwed, oh well, tough shit, that comes with the job.  That really motivates people to spend extra time and do quality work huh?

 If a job doesn't turn out right, you have about a 90% chance of having to do it again for free.  Many times this could be as severe as rediagnosis, repair of another area, and then having to deal with it AGAIN if this doesn't work out.  Its all sunshine and happiness on paper, but in reality the cars are just so complex that often a 100% accurate diagnosis just cannot be done.  When you have control units that are lying about information they send or recieve, often you are forced to simply install one of the two to see what happens.  Now couple this with a problem you simply cannot reproduce, and it could become a nightmare.  I know one of a customers biggest complaints is "Could not duplicate" and no repairs were done for the problem they brought the car in for, but many times the problems are intermittent.  The customer didn't or couldn't properly explain what they are experiencing, or worse yet the 99% of them don't read the fucking manuals to realize that its NOT a problem, its normal operation.  If you bring your car in because the defroster switches off before all the ice is melted, I CANNOT DO A DAMN THING TO REPAIR IT.  We simply document the problem, its up the manufacturer to decide to fix it and implement a solution.  Its on a timer, it switches off automatically.  I can't turn a screw to make it stay on longer.  Yet because I worked on the car, I am the dumbass grease monkey who can't fix anything.  

 Another huge problem we have been dealing with for years, is that when I started at the dealer, we had VETERAN service advisors.  These guys could sell a refrigerator to an eskimo.  They could handle ANYTHING you threw at them.  Pissed off, irrational customer?  "Go fuck yourself" because we don't need their business enough to put up with that.  We had droves of loyal customers, who were treated fairly and wanted to come back.  We lost all of our veteran advisors.  We can't attract decent people to the position, because we don't pay them enough.  Its an extremely fast paced job, under serious pressure most of the time.  Many of our current crew simply cannot sell the work, they can't deal with adverse situations, and they won't learn anything about the cars.  We are asked the same questions constantly, and keep giving the same answers, so when will they remember????  We angered and lost many loyal customers over foul ups that could have been easily avoided or fixed.

 My biggest concern is simply that there is not enough work to go around right now.  We hired two new techs that we DON'T need.  They just want every bay filled.  It isn't fair to those of us who are already here.  Those two extra guys are taking jobs from everyone else now, making that much less to go around.  We have run out of work every day around noon, for two weeks.  If there aren't any cars coming in the door, I have no opportunity to make money.  Not making money gets me depressed quickly.  

 There are a variety of things I deal with every day.  Work being so slow right now is the worst.  Thats why I wish I had a job that just paid a salary, so regardless of whether or not I had anything to do I could take home a decent check.  
I have been wondering lately what else I could do, or where else would I go, but the answer is elusive.  

Quoted: saturnstyl - this is fascinating stuff. Why have you been depressed about work? Is it the pay structure? I'm actually curious how guys are paid (I don't need or care to know how much). The good, the bad and the ugly. Flat rate, time and materials, warranty issues, "it still doesn't work" complaints, "you fucked it up even more" type stuff, etc. It's occured to me that different dealers are COMPLETELY different with regard to how they treat mechanics. I knew a guy who was a Toyota mechanic most of his working life, and he really enjoyed it. He didn't seem to have many of the same complaints I hear about getting screwed out of money, or endless paperwork hassles.

I'm not saturnstyl, but I can explain the pay system, at least how it works at Ford, Lincoln and Mercury dealers.

The vast majority of us are paid flat rate - meaning, if we aren't working, we aren't making any money.  The dealership charges an hourly rate to the customer; depending on the area of the country, the vehicle brand, and a few other things, this'll average somewhere around $80-100/hour.  Technicians are paid a percentage of this, again depending on the dealership, what management thinks about us, and the amount of work done, this varies wildly but on the Ford side at least, this usually doesn't exceed 18-20%.

This does have it's pros and cons.  If it's busy and you're getting a bunch of gravy work, it's like being on cloud nine; work a 10 hour day, go home with 15 or 20 or more.  Our front end guys at one time were averaging 80-90 hours a week.  Of course, around the holidays when business slows down, people aren't spending money on their cars.  And then there's always the possibility of landing a job that bites you in the ass - flat rate doesn't care if you finish the job in one hour or ten, you still get paid whatever the job was quoted at.  The warranty labor times suck, they're typically about a third or less of what the same job would pay when done under customer pay.

The cons unfortunately outweigh the pros, especially when warranty is factored in.  Ford has a department, the Service Labor Time Standards (SLTS) board, that they use to figure out how many hours to pay on warranty repairs.  They take new vehicles every year and under controlled, laboratory-type conditions, (supposedly) perform warranty repairs exactly as per the workshop manual.  They then publish these times, send them out on DVDs and make them available on the company website to pay dealerships and their technicians using those op codes and times they figured.  

These time standards though are complete and total bullshit.  I've yet to work in a shop that operated under the aforementioned "controlled, laboratory-type conditions."  I've yet to work in a shop where all the essential service tools are readily available and neatly organized; more commonly, they're thrown in a room somewhere in the back of the parts department, or looted and plundered by less-than-ethical techs.  Additionally, these time standards are supposed to be video taped so technicians in the field can view them and confirm that the repairs in question are being performed within the allotted warranty time.  Strangely, Ford has never released any of these videos, even though they confirm that they are made.

Now, in 1999, Ford and Jac Nasser, in an attempt to trim some fat off the company, instituted the "Re-engineering of SLTS."  Labor times were reduced something like 33% all across the board for no real good reason at all.  When questioned, the primary reason Ford came up with was "the use of air tools during disassembly."  Hello, air tools have been around since the '50s or so.  A lot of driveability labor ops for diagnosis and testing were reduced, and I still haven't figured out how to hook an air ratchet or impact gun to my IDS or PDS.

In regards to misdiagnosis or rechecks, that depends on the dealer's policies.  Around here, if I blow the diagnosis, then it's up to me to diagnose it for free and resend the quote.  Rechecks are done kinda in the same form, depending on the circumstances behind the recheck.  For instance, let's say I get a car with a check engine light concern.  I diagnose it, we'll say it's got lean codes, P0171/0174, find out the mass air sensor is faulty, sell it to 'em and send them down the road.  A few days later, the light comes back on, but a different sensor failed, a HEGO, DPFE, ECT, whatever, something other than the MAF.  That really isn't a recheck, since no one can predict what's gonna fail and when - although if it were me, I wouldn't charge them again for a diagnosis fee, unless I get in there and find out there may be a wiring problem or something and diagnosis is gonna take a lot more than what I originally thought.

Now, let's take that same car, same codes, same repair.  Send them down the road and the light comes back on with the same code.  Now I've fucked up the diagnosis, that's a recheck, and I'm probably gonna have to eat that one.

Well put Quintin.  I can agree with pretty much everything!

Flat raters bitching about warranty not giving them enough time to do the job, but telling irate customers to

Fuck OFF

when a customer is unhappy (maybe because he thought he got charged too much?)

How ironic.

Quoted: Flat raters bitching about warranty not giving them enough time to do the job, but telling irate customers to Fuck OFF when a customer is unhappy (maybe because he thought he got charged too much?) How ironic.

You hourly?

Quoted: Flat raters bitching about warranty not giving them enough time to do the job, but telling irate customers to Fuck OFF when a customer is unhappy (maybe because he thought he got charged too much?) How ironic.

Did you miss the "irrational" part?
NO, you aren't getting a brand new set of brakes at thirty thousand miles, unless you PAY for them.
NO, you are not getting a new set of tires for your AMG car because you think they wore out too soon.  Believe it or not, there ARE disadvantages to owning 500HP cars.  They wear out tires quickly.
We give away stuff that you wouldn't believe.  At one point they said our goodwill was two thousand dollars per week, per advisor.  Sometimes you have to be realistic and tell a customer no.  When they become belligerant, and upset the other clients, its time for them to leave.  

Quoted: Flat raters bitching about warranty not giving them enough time to do the job, but telling irate customers to Fuck OFF when a customer is unhappy (maybe because he thought he got charged too much?) How ironic.

Where did either of those guys post anything about themselves telling a customer to fuck off?"...For the most part tech have limited contact with the cutomer anyway.

btw....I'm paid hourly...btdt on flat rate...will not do it again.
My time is money, if they don't  want to pay me for my time [downtime included] I ain't gonna stand there and lose money. IOW..You want me there 8 hours...pay me 8 hours.

btw...I lost a job because of a irrational customer...no, I didn't misdiag, do a poor repair..etc.....She just wanted a free repair.

Wow, the flat rate thing is why I would never work on cars. Much happier on heavy equipment. I get paid hourly and usually the customer is thrilled to see me because the job is shutdown because a piece of equipment is down. If they have issues with the bill they deal with my boss and not me.

Since I work for a Cat dealership, alot of the work is warranty so customers don't get too upset.

This thread has inspired me to post pics of my tools though.
That will be another thread though.

Handbuilt by "imagineer" on the Hobart forums.



"Two years, about $140 in hardware and consumables and a bunch of scrap aluminum. Except for the casters, drawer slides and gas shocks (to raise the lid), every component was scratch built from aluminum.

Some added features:
There’s a single key lock mounted in the lid that will lock the lid and all 17 drawers.

There’s a hidden button under the front top frame rail to the left of the center post that extends the spring loaded foot lever at the bottom. Step on the foot lever and the lid opens about 4” where the gas shocks take over and raise it the rest of the way.

The inside of the drawers and the tray under the lid have been painted with a thick coat of Duplicolor Truck Bed Liner.

Still to do…The entire exterior of the case will be ground smooth and sanded up to 220 grit paper. Then everything will be vertically brushed with a stainless steel “shoe brush” to give the exterior a consistent finish (the drawer fronts have already been done)."



t

Quoted: Quoted: Flat raters bitching about warranty not giving them enough time to do the job, but telling irate customers to Fuck OFF when a customer is unhappy (maybe because he thought he got charged too much?) How ironic. You hourly?

Over 3 decades I've worked under just about every kind of pay plan imaginable. You flat rate?

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Flat raters bitching about warranty not giving them enough time to do the job, but telling irate customers to Fuck OFF when a customer is unhappy (maybe because he thought he got charged too much?) How ironic. You hourly? Over 3 decades I've worked under just about every kind of pay plan imaginable. You flat rate?

Unfortunately.  I can't remember the last time I've worked a job that was straight hourly, I think the last one was when I was the rat at Chuck'E Cheese in high school.  

I keep looking for a nice, mom and pop hourly indy shop to go to work for.

Quoted: I can't remember the last time I've worked a job that was straight hourly, I think the last one was when I was the rat at Chuck'E Cheese in high school.

pics?



t

Quoted: Quoted: I can't remember the last time I've worked a job that was straight hourly, I think the last one was when I was the rat at Chuck'E Cheese in high school. pics? t

NO!  

Bubba, that job is about the closest a teenager can come to combat other than enlisting in the military...<shudder>  Bunches and bunches of screaming kids hyped up on soda and pizza...

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: I can't remember the last time I've worked a job that was straight hourly, I think the last one was when I was the rat at Chuck'E Cheese in high school. pics? t NO!   Bubba, that job is about the closest a teenager can come to combat other than enlisting in the military...<shudder>  Bunches and bunches of screaming kids hyped up on soda and pizza...

YIKES!

any cool scars?



t

Quoted: YIKES! any cool scars? t

Only mental ones.  

I don't want to piss in anyones corn flakes, but 8K for a box??????? Do you have a $5000 gun safe for $2000 in guns?


I could have a new small CNC mill for the price of that box!!!! Add the top section and I could have the 4th axis, tail stock, and a complete tooling kit for it! I can't even comprehend that much money for some thing that mearly holds my tools. I am not knocking it because I would love to have a nice box like that. I am just stunned!


My friend and I have 5 lathes, 4 mills (one CNC table top), surface grinder, 2 Ram EDM's, shaper,  heat treating oven, casting facilities for aluminum, magnesium, and brass, and a huge amount of tooling. We probably have about 100 lbs of drill bits and another 250 lbs of endmills and various cutters.

That tool box and all its contents is probably more expensive than my entire machine shop, and I can make a wild amount of different stuff. Some day I hope to be able to afford a box like that!