The cool thing about Jade is that
Jade has a different subset of experience,
right. And so she worked in the medical field, and she
worked in a vet's office. So things where people are,
like, super emotional and upset don't face her. And she's
just like, but your car's broken. This is how much it costs to fix
it. Here you that's that's actually we've had a couple of
criers work for.
If. The customer got upset, they got upset. Did you know David's
a closet crier? I can see that, but
I'm a closet crier. I get in the closet and cry.
Why did I open a shop? This is such a bad idea. What the hell
was I thinking? I think that that's mandatory, isn't it? Yes. The cry in the
closet. Yeah. I don't know. So we had a
conversation a while. Back, introduce
Ashley Jo and Jeremy Bloom from I don't know
where. Oregon. I know Oregon. That's it. Astoria, Oregon.
Astoria, Oregon. I thought it was Bord,
Oregon. Bored Oregon. Well, I'm from Boring,
so maybe that's. Where you're getting that's. What?
Itville?
Tennessee Wattville. It's whiteville. No, it is,
but you call it wobble whiteville.
God almighty. You need some redneck training.
We're talking about service advisors.
What about them? I'm trying
to put context to the story. We're talking about service advisors,
and he was asking, should you hire a service advisor that
has experience, or should you hire someone that doesn't?
Depends on what you're looking for, basically. Should you promote from within? Do
you try and make a service writer or do you try and find
somebody? Because they're kind of tough to find, but backstory. We've done all
three. Have any of them worked?
Loretta's been with us on and off. Yeah,
right. Loretta has been with us on and off for eight years. This is the
first time that she's been with us full time for very long. But in the
past, the people that we've hired that were service riders were like
they did not fit our company at all. They were like car
salesmen. Didn't have the small town feel, didn't
have any empathy. They were just kind of terrible. And then the
people that we who was it? Oh, Tim. We promoted Tim from within,
and he was actually pretty good at it, but he had some home stuff going
on, so that didn't work out. The thing is that
it's a very unique skill set, and so bringing
somebody from back of house, usually they
don't have the skill set that makes them good
at that because they're two different types of people. They're two different types of
skills. Now, they might be a great estimator and be able to do that. They
might be able to throw the estimate together, get the estimate right, and the whole
nine yards. But being able to communicate what a car needs to a client,
that's why service advisors were around in the first place. Right. Is because the
technicians weren't necessarily that good at it. So I hated all of
that and decided that I wasn't going to have a service advisor.
And so that's what we did. We got rid of that whole
concept of calling and presenting. We don't do
that at all. What do you do? We just send them the
estimate and. You just go from there. They get a
DVI. You set the stage up
front. Hey, I'm just going to let you know we're going to inspect your vehicle.
We look at the entire vehicle just so we get a game plan
the vehicle needs. We do it with every single vehicle that comes in the door.
You're not special. Okay, give the
keys. Then they get a text alert. Hey, your car has been checked in. We'll
let you know when we start the inspection process. Then they get another one saying,
hey, the car is being inspected. Put the cap on that.
The car is being inspected. We write up the
inspection, lots of pictures
and brief notes. Turns out his technicians
write dissertations on the notes and they're so
long they've written them and then have
them ready to copy and paste into the inspection to write
a book, essentially, about everything they need on this particular vehicle. Are
there footnotes? What's that? Are there footnotes? I'm
sure there are footnotes like the main. And then they
get so we recommend
service or fluid needs to be serviced. You keep it brief because
it turns out nobody reads the notes. They just look at the
picture and the picture says, it's red. That's it. I
really hope nobody listens to him. And from my experiences, they don't.
Right. They skip past his voice. They can do that all they want, but I'm
just telling you right now, aros
were within dollars of each other and I did
no calling and presenting. We don't call them
present. Really? Hang on, I have to say this.
I had to knock on wood because. I'm
my arrow so far this year is flat. That's not what I'm
talking about. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm just hoping that
neither one of us gets sued. So I have to prove that the notes on
my repair order keep me out of trouble. Better than the notes on your repair
order. I'm not you out of trouble
if you're doing a state inspection, fine, put them in there on the state
inspection. But it is asinine to
put a 45 word
note into this box here. The customer is not going to read
about the need for cleaning off the
oil that may cause a fire. I don't know what you're
putting in there because I guarantee you there is no amount
of notetaking that is going to completely absolve you of all
liability. Of course not. Well, then what's the point?
What is the point? Say, well, I'm not going to get sued for if it
catches on fire, but if it goes careening into a ditch. I
forgot to put that note in because I hadn't thought of that, and I hadn't
had a lawyer review it. So what am I going to do? You just
carry really good general liability insurance, dear. That's what you do.
Anyway, I'm right? Is that why you price shop it? I do
not price shop it. I've been with my insurance guy for forever, okay? He's not
very good either. He's a nice guy. He's a sweet guy.
He's a customer. So you kind of like you're stuck. Anyway, so I have a
question. When the customer calls and says, hey, I want to talk to somebody about
this quote, you just say, Look, I sent you a picture. Yes, that's exactly
what I don't say, like that. I don't say like
that. Did you look at the picture? Yes,
you're right. I don't know what I'm looking at. I don't know what I'm looking
at. I'm saying, okay, well, shit is broken. See this? What, you want to
park the circle that's broken? They're like,
okay, yeah, it's not supposed to be like that.
Anyway, it's 268 99 to fix it. And they're like, oh,
okay, well, go ahead and do it. No,
I need you to click it on the app. Okay.
Yeah, we'll wait for you. You can do it now if you want. Okay. Make
sure you sign the bottom. All right, thank you. Hey, by the
way, I'm going to need parts money. That's what we
do. That is what we do.
What? You act like it's weird. Here's the thing.
I have a track record. It
turns out that all of the
sales training is unnecessary. Maybe just at
my shop, but I don't know, maybe it's at every
shop, and all of it is just fluff.
Not Cecil's classes. They're great.
So when I ask you, like, what are you looking for? Is if you're looking
for somebody to sell, I need this close rate
because there's some shops that like right, right.
You don't get mad at me. I'm not disparaging you in any
way. Was I mean to him? I can't mad at
you. He's an idiot.
I just don't want to say something mean to you now, because all I
can think of is, god, this dude's an idiot. You can say that, but I've
got proof. I've got hard numbers. It works.
I don't have to call and sell anything. No, officer, he's trying
to sell me something I don't need. So dude, I sent you pictures and an
estimate. You can hit no
at any point. You can hit no. So what are we doing here?
I'm not upselling a thing like your boy over here, the
Canadian guy. I'm not upselling a thing. I don't upsell.
Oh, that was an interesting article, wasn't it?
Anyway, so if you're looking to hire somebody
that wants to sell, that's a very specific skill set.
And that's what you want is I want this close rate
in this much work estimated on average in this close
rate, and I will find the cars. So I'm going to bring in 50
cars. Every car needs to have $4,000
estimated on average, and I expect a 60%
close rate or a 40% close, whatever the number happens to be. If that's
your business model, then you're going to hire a very specific type of person,
and that person's got to hit that close rate, and the aro is going to
be what it is. But as long as the numbers all work out, it's going
to be cecil. Says I should just hire a shop manager. I shouldn't hire
a service. That's what that's
the route. I mean, we don't call everybody's
a manager because they're all on salary, and technically they're all managers. They
are managing things, just not
people necessarily, but they have things they have to
manage
for the Department of labor. That much you're not so sure.
What was the discussion we had at lunch today?
What did I say that I didn't. Say that
I didn't want to name anyone. I don't know what he's talking about
anyway. So they're all managing
stuff anyway. I need a person
that can check in the vehicles and can,
without any hesitation ask for
money without having fixed the thing. Specific skill
set that is jade would. Be legit at
it. She would be really good at and be like, hey, so thanks for
the approvals because I love that green, green, one
red or one black, I guess it's black, isn't it? Yeah, green, green, green,
one black. I love that. And then you dump it all
into the ro, and it pops up $3,800. And then he
gets on the phone and he's like, hey, I appreciate the approvals. I'm going to
need $2,200 down to get started. You
want to go ahead and take care of that now? And that's it. And he
does it like he doesn't care where I would be like,
don't change your mind. Why are you service Advisor was going to
be so good. Just like,
here's what happened with the other Service Advisor. I kind of
feel like that's actually somewhat common with owners, though, from what I've seen,
is I'm good at dealing with customers. I'm not the best
service writer because I have a leading heart and I have too
much invested. I can't say, Here, here's your bill. Take it
or leave it. Yeah, 100% emotional. Too emotional,
exactly. Well, Quantum, he
feels bad. No, he doesn't. He does
callous. Like, he's not of course not Kurt or anything like that.
He is invested in it, but for him, it's
just a checkbox. Did I check it off? Yes or no? And
then he moves on with his day. There'll be another car. There'll be another
car. He does not put emotional weight on that
discussion. I see. Oh, we didn't get that sale. My business
is going to fail. Tomorrow, and
I'm going to have to go back to work somewhere. This is all Lucas.
Can I have a job? No, I'm broke, too.
Yeah. So you need to decide
if that's the person you want to just hey. I'm just
envisioning the conversation that's going to happen after Cecil listens
to this episode. I'm going to set him off. He's not going to like it.
But here's the thing. I have found that
presenting things, the customers don't understand anything
you're saying to them, like sway bar, leaks are worn out,
struts are leaking, tires are unevenly worn.
You're going to need an alignment. Looks like your oil cooler is looking too. So
to take care of all that, it's going to be $2,400, $68. Would you like
me to take care of that for you today?
I don't know what you're saying. That whole process
there, that whole process, I think it feels icky to
me. I've had to do it. I don't like doing it.
And I found, turns out entirely
unnecessary because this may have
been necessary ten years ago, 20 years ago,
30 years ago, for forever and backwards.
The consumer is different now. I can see that. I can
agree with that. It comes in waves for us. We'll have, like,
all summer. We didn't even hardly talk to anybody in the phone. We just
sent stuff. They approved it. It was great.
But now we've kind of switched back to people who want to come in and
talk about it. And I'm like, I don't want to talk to you. Inspection
and look at the picture. Call. And they want to have that conversation anyway, they
call us, and they're like, I don't know what this is. Tell me. And then
they're like, I still don't know what it is. Is a $3,800 bill, sir?
Yeah, you want to go ahead and take care of that? Now, here's the thing.
I think that right now we've seen some change, right? We've seen a
little bit of development in that area where people maybe they
feel a little more pressure, so they want to know a little bit more about
what's going on, and they want to know that they're doing the right thing for
their car. We've got clients, and this is really up to
them on how much engagement they have with us. We've got clients that
just want it texted and emailed to them, and they just deal with it. And
then we've got clients who want to talk to somebody, right? And I've got a
lot of clients who that is how our brand was built is that
I'm counseling them on what's going on with the car. And that's why I call
them service advisors, because it's our job to advocate and advise them,
right? For me, I spend a good bit of time
like, if I'm in the shop, I spend a good bit of time developing an
estimate in such a way that it's like, hey, this is Lucas's List. And so
it has L's on it with a little Apostrophe or something that
indicates, hey, this is us. And this is the things that
if it was my car, my wife's car, this is what we'd be doing. That's
a good idea. This is why I do this, right? So I'll take a few
minutes and I'll go over and these are the things that are important to me
as a professional. And it would be something, something I do on those vehicles
that are mine to make sure it stays safe and reliable. These are things I
just want you to know about. They may come up down the road. This is
not something I'm worried about right this minute, but this is my way of showing
you and educating you about your car. How is it when I envision
that I see an L with a heart around it? Oh, that's a good idea.
None of what he just gammared on about is scalable.
It's not scalable. It's got to have Lucas on it. And if Lucas isn't
there, didn't we. Decide early we aren't going to scale our businesses? You just said
the other day, scalable. In the sense that dude we just had in
here is doing 90% of the work that isn't like
actual wrenching. He's doing the diagnostic work, he's doing the service
advising, he's checking in the cars, he's calling the customers, he's selling the work
like, holy crap, how do you have time to do anything else
that's your entire day? Yeah. And he's like, oh, I stopped working at
five. I used to work all day long. It's like, well, yeah, I get it,
but if you need to take yourself out of the business and
say, I don't know, go on vacation or hey, we got to go record a
podcast in Utah, who's going to do this? Lucas's list
with Lucas, isn't there? It doesn't make any sense at that point. But the thing
is, I've got a team that's able to do that without me. Yeah, it's called
green, yellow, red. Hey, just letting you know if it's. In
yellow, if there's 25 reds. If it's 25 reds,
it's 25 reds. Last time I looked at your car, it was like,
shit, man, my car. My car is in great shape. What are you talking
about? Do you ever get the big dent in the back of it?
We have to go eat. But he doesn't realize we've got another 45 minutes to
go anyway. I'm going to get a podcast
episode out of this thing. It.
So what were you saying? I'm saying that
it's not scalable to do something that intimate
and so you have to do something a little bit different. You use the green,
yellow, red system because it's in there. Right. Makes sense to use
it. Why can your technician not say,
hey, here's the things that if this was my car, I'd be really focused
on. You put that in as the philosophy
in part of the inspection process. I like that.
Well, that's what you do up front. Everybody understands, like, hey, what does yellow and
what does red mean? Don't just make it all red. It's like,
hey, can this weight they make it yellow.
If I have to come out and ask, I'm mad. Hey, can this
weight yeah, mark around it.
Trick question. Every single time it's a trick question.
They don't know it. They will now. They listen to the podcast in the
shop. Then they get mad at me of things. I
say, how are you mad at me?
Which one? Episode 32. I don't remember what the hell
I said. In episode 32. He says some pretty nasty things about your
people. Nasty? No, I love my people. You kidding me?
That's his way of showing love. It really is.
That's his words of endearment, right?
That's his love language is hate. I don't know how that
works, but it does. It's fairly effective. Do you guys
require a phone call to the customer? Yeah, we typically do. I
like, oh, no, we don't. We just send it. And if the
customer doesn't call by the next day, then we call them. I have
never had more I don't have a call anymore than when I do that.
If I just send it, people get. So because you're not telling
them up front. It's up and down, though. Sometimes people are like, yeah, I
saw it, I'll get back to you. I don't know,
but remember Adam Rath? Adam Rath's like, hey, listen,
if they've not approved in an hour, we're calling them like, hey,
what's going on? Hey, what's going on? Typically, if they're not
so it's not an hour for us. It's usually like two to 3
hours. If we don't see approvals coming in two to 3 hours, they don't have
the money for it. They don't have the money for it. That's legit. Yeah,
for sure. And so you see what you do? What shop management
system do you guys use? Tech metric? Oh, man, sorry, you
guys. Anyway, so we have the ability to. See we still love you.
Yeah, we'll just edit that out
just for next time you say, I'd rather not say and we move on. That's
what you do. You know what you should do every. Time
you ask it? You should have your finger on the button.
Shopware. What shop management do you say?
Shopware. That's a
good idea. So on
the subject of the DBI and all that, though, how often do you guys run
into issues with somebody brings their car in for an oil change, new customer
never seen before, they bring it in for an oil change. Okay, so we do
a full inspection on it, present all the problems to them.
And they're like, I brought this in for an oil change and you're telling me
I need $3,000 worth of work and they're pissed off about it and think you're
just trying to three to. 5%, depending on what
we're working on. Would you shut up and let somebody else talk?
No, you're wrong. Three to 5%. And the
three to 5% is only at one point in time, and that is when the
advisor did not tell them this was going to happen.
When the advisor doesn't tell you, hey, I'm going to look over the vehicle. Would
you like me to make you aware of any safety or reliability concerns we see
with automobile and anybody in their right mind? What are they going to
say? Yes. No, hang
on, hold on. On our digital inspection, we have
courtesy clean and vacuum that people can approve. We have the courtesy inspection and we
have quality check. In the last month, I would say at least 30 or
40% of people have declined all three of those, including the
quality check. Well, here's the thing. All of those
are automatically on my tickets. Automatically on the tickets. And
so when I tell them that, if they say no,
I don't want you to alert me to any safety concerns. What do I know
about this client now? Yeah,
I've got a wolf in the shop. I need to be careful with this one.
Right. We don't ask the lady with the airbag
story. That's the whole way I knew she's like, I
don't want to know if there's anything wrong with the safety systems in my car.
I don't care about any of that. Then why was she fixing the airbag? Because
she wanted the light off. We don't ask.
We just tell them, hey, if they don't want me to inspect,
I want you to inspect my vehicle. I'm sorry. We inspect every vehicle.
We do, too. Yeah. It's a liability thing, for sure. Plus a
CYA thing, of course. Well, here's the thing, though. Is that the only
reason because I'm still going to do it. The only reason I ask is because
I'm trying to find out what kind of client I'm working with. Yeah, but
I don't know. I still want to inspect the vehicle. You're still
going to do it? So it really doesn't matter that you asked. You're still going
to do it. I still want to present it to them or send it to
them so they can see the vehicle and they can just decline the work. And
if they call and said, sir, ma'am, you can just
decline all the work. We just need to let you
know what's going on with the vehicle. Yeah. I have a professional responsibility to alert
you to the condition of your automobile. That's my job. That's what I do.
Now, one of the things about
especially if you've got a newer vehicle and I pull
that car in, we'll run a lighter evaluation on a 21
22, right. If it's below 50,000 miles and it's a 21
22, we'll run a little bit lighter evaluation and it still checks everything.
All of the safety stuff, all of. The what do you mean by lighter? Well,
I mean, my typical peace of mind is over an hour. It's
because of the books you guys are writing and the way you guys are taking
pictures. It's goofy. I don't do it. I know you don't do it.
Yeah, I did try to talk to Eric got butthurt. I'm just saying, like,
change it up. It's weird, but the whole, like, I can't send the
DVI and the estimate separate thing, like, we got to get that hashed out. I
can't switch the set. I'm going to have to figure something out. It's going to
be an issue. Of all the things you call weird, that's weird. I
have to be able to send the DVI first. Can you guys send the
DVI first on its own? They check the
DVI, and then you follow up with the estimate. No. Well, you can
send it separately, and then if the estimate is written already, they'll see
that. We don't want that, though. You send it the DVI
before you have the estimate written. The minute
we have the DVI, we clean it up. We send it. Yeah. So that way
you can have them scared. So they're like, I see all these red. They
see it, but they begin to think about, hey, this is what I need to
do. They'll do a little bit of research on their own. They'll have some ideas,
and so then they come back, and they've already made the decision to approve it.
So then when they get the actual estimate, it's not that big of a deal
because it's like, I've already made up my mind. I really think I need to
do this. They've already put the money in their head. Right. Instead, when they look
at the estimate, when they open it and they see the estimate and that's what
they see with it, it's like, oh, my God, I don't have that kind of
money. Right? They didn't have the chance to have a non emotional response to
it. They open it up, and they see
the dollar amount. They don't look at all the reds. They just see
the dollar amount, and they're like, whoa, where are you coming at me with $3,000
for? Did you see all the reds? No, I saw $3,000.
Well, you have to send the DVI. They have to look at it first,
which is why we have it separated. Although we were
looking at he started floating or trial
running, mushing it all together, just into shopware. Not having the
two separate systems, I. Was trying to expedite it for the service.
We one of the things that we're running into is it's taking too long to
process. Right? And when we're in a bigger shouts. It'S your
notes and the way you take your goofy push. Dude, it can't be the
notes. The notes don't take me any time. It takes Eric time. Poor
Eric. He's the only one that does that. What does Terry do?
Terry writes common sense notes that are just pretty basic, kind of what your
guys put. Okay. That's why Eric got hurt,
because you're a douchebag picking on one person who's doing it. Okay.
How big are your notes? I
don't know. They're pretty short for the most part. For the inspection? Yeah.
I make them write pretty detailed notes on the diagnostic
anymore, though. And it's funny because now we look back on things, like,
two years ago, and we're like, the fuck are we looking at here? There's
no information here. Well, that's what we run into, is like,
hey, if it comes back or if it goes to another shop,
I want them to be able to look that and say, yeah, so we write.
It for other shops. That's exactly right. But that's different now. That's not an
inspection. If they're paying me for diag,
I. Want to book we have inspections for the diagnostics,
so, like, there'll be a drive test inspection. There's inspections for
tear downs and stuff, so that stuff's all saved as a separate inspection in
our system. And I do typically write books for that anymore, because, like she said,
I'll go back and I'll look at something, comes back a couple of years later,
and I look at it. I'm like, I don't even know why we replaced that.
There's no notes. We replaced this. I have no idea
why. Right, exactly. Dude, that's tough. We were smaller.
It was easier because there weren't so many people to try and keep straight.
I know. I still remember, though.
I still remember all of it. Yeah, I remember every it's like a
scar. It's like a broken heart. Every car.
I remember this lady came in. She was mad about this, and when we fixed
this, and then we replaced that, and then that went haywire.
Because you put emotional connection to every vehicle. It's not that. No, they just
I'm just telling you. It's like a stab
every single time a car comes in the door. I need the money.
But I'm just telling you, I hate working on cars anyway, so
shopware had integrated their DVI. They always had the
DVI, but it used to be, like, their notes section, and then you kind of
had an outline, hey, check these seven things,
right? And then you would just make notes in the notes section about the seven
things, and then that was the DVI. And then
they decided that, hey, we want to put
instead of the checklist, we want to actually put findings under
the checklist, which was everybody that would come into
Shopware would immediately ask for that. They're like, Why can't I have that
there? It's like, okay,
whatever. And so they did. They made it like
that. And it looks really good on the customer side.
It looks really slick. It makes sense. It flows
nice. It's a nice presentation. Which, again, eliminates the
need for the phone call. But the problem now
is, like, hey, I need them to look at the DVI, and then I need
to be able to send an estimate after they see the DVI.
They need to be able to see the DVI. I'm
99.99% sure that's one of the coming
things, right? The ability to turn off the estimate on
and off. Right. So that could be turned off. They can't see that while you're
building it, and then you can turn it on. That'll
fix everything. Yeah. I hope that it's not
like, toggled separately so you can toggle it all in one spot.
I hope they don't do that. And it's an on off button, like
Hide don't Hide, or Hide and Reveal. Anyway,
so I've got a question. Yes. We had a
long, tough conversation a while back about a situation
in your shop. Tell us a story.
So at what point was I out with that person? He's no longer
with us. So that's where you were at the point of tears and
not to know what to do because you didn't know if you should
keep him, if you should send him, if you should try and fix it. Well,
I should have let him go then. The phone call should have been enough of
a clue that it was time to just let him go, but I didn't.
Well, tell the whole story. Tell
how we got here. Okay, well, let me start at the beginning then. All right,
so a year ago last month, this guy came to us as a Eurotech, which
is super hard to find in my area. There are none, right?
And we made him a job offer. He used it to get a better wage
at his current place. Fine, whatever. We
were pissed about it, but we were like, Whatever. In July,
he rolls into the parking lot with his toolbox, and he's like, I'm here to
work. And at the time, we were fully staffed, so we're like,
all right, I guess we'll make this work. You can just do diag because I
don't have a lift for you. So we brought him on, and I think it
was a week or two later. Was it a week or two later when he's
like, hey, I need to take some time off to get sober?
He had apparently been drinking at work. He told us that that was
acceptable at his previous job. And so he took a couple of weeks off,
came back, and was with us from
early August until right after Bimmers. When he walked
out again, he told me that I didn't know anything,
and I didn't know anything because I wasn't in the shop anymore and I needed
to go out into the shop and work on cars, and then he would respect
me. And then after Thanksgiving, he
asked for his job back, said that his wife left him, and he was just
in a really bad place, and he really missed us. And my bleeding
heart was like, all right, you can come back.
So early December, he came back, and then I think that we had our phone
call in March. Or was it like February? I think it was March.
And David, are you looking at him. Going, why
you let this go on? I'm laying no. He
told me no the second time. But by the time
bad things were in the shop, I knew shop morale was sucky. I didn't know
why. We live in a super gray area. People get seasonal depression. They talk about
it all the time. I didn't know that he was the cause of
the really bad morale. I didn't know until the person that I brought
to Vision that moved out here from Maine put it on paper in his
resignation. And shortly
before that, another technician quit. And he's like, I can't
work with this guy.
He had some stuff going on. So we weren't sure if it was just,
like a maturity thing or if it was, like, actually how old was
he? The one that quit because of it? No.
The one that had already quit. Not the resignation letter.
I think he's 24. Okay, so Young kind of got
stuff going on at home. He had already worked for us once
before, and when he quit, it was comical. I don't want to call
him out or anything, so I'm not going to do anything identifying. But we
weren't sure if it was, like, overreaction and maturity or if it was something
really going on. But then we got this letter from the guy that we took
to Vision, and we were like, all right, this is
a real bad situation. The one that
no longer works for us. He had told the service rider
in the office to get in a car and to back it out into a
spot in the parking lot. I'm like jumping around. Sorry, there's a
lot. And he didn't adequately explain to her
that the brake pedal was not in the car, and she didn't have the foresight
to look down and see that there was no physical brake pedal. So she turned
the car and hit another car in the parking lot, which caused an insurance
claim. They asked him for a drug test, which he failed,
and then he passed clean in two weeks. But then he failed the
retest because they came to talk to me about renewal, and they were surprised
that he still worked there. And so we had to retest him, and he failed
that one. And instead of waiting to see what came back, which
eventually came back clean, the second time, he blew my phone up. Blew
his phone up and resigned. And
I had already told him he couldn't come back. He was
emailing me. He was like, texting me at, like, ten at night, eleven at
night, five in the morning, talking crap about all the employees, talking
about how they didn't deserve to be there, talking about how we'd be so much
better off without all of them. After he
quit, I contacted these, like,
six people, I think, that left in the time period that he was
there. You lost six people
over this one tech? No. How much
time? A year? No, not a year? No.
Between August and March, 6 people? Six
technicians? Not all technicians. What? Not all
technicians. Some of them were office. Oh, yeah, some of them were office people. You
just lost six people? Yeah, some of them weren't there very.
Long, but still six people. Right.
All of them identified him as the cause, a big part of why they
left, specifically him. So
I reached out to a couple of the interns that we had over the summer
that didn't end up staying on, and I said, hey, I want to let you
know I'm sorry. I didn't know what was going on. Nobody
told me directly, and I didn't see it. I wasn't in the shop enough to
see the things that were going on. Sure. That takes some serious guts to do
that. So kudos for doing that. And that had to hurt, right? Yeah,
that had to suck.
We sit in here and we listen to that panel yesterday, and we hear how
frustrated the technicians get with owners. But I don't think that many
technicians realize this is not uncommon. It's not
uncommon. No. This happens to shop owners quite a bit. It's happened to
me in the shop. Who's the shop
manager? Who's doing the
front work? Who's doing the back work? You're a technician technically, right?
Yeah, technically. I do a lot of diagnostics. He's working more in a foreman
role than he does diagnostics, but he supports
the technicians more than expedites. Make sure they have the right parts. Make sure they
don't get I can't get anything done. Every time I walk through the shop, it's,
hey, come here. Hey, come here. Okay,
so you're in the back making sure the technicians are
and then you were in the front
and not in the front anymore? I'm in the front, yeah. Okay.
I actually didn't realize until after he left that I was actively
avoiding going into the shop. Yeah. I was,
like, a week or two after he was gone, and we've had how many
people came back? Two people came back. One might come back
after he left. And I didn't realize that I had been
avoiding going into the shop. Going into the shop, being at the shop, I was
pretty miserable for the last couple of months, but physically, going into the
shop and being around him, I was actively avoiding it.
In my case, I went through the same thing with the tag, and I've told
the story plenty of times. I'm not going to go back all through it, but
I went through the. Start from the beginning,
he threatened to put a hole in this, and every single time I annoyed him,
he was going to squeeze water all over me. He's going to need a bigger
bottle. Get a spray bottle. That's a good idea. Like a doll.
No cat.
But it was very much the same thing. Right. I
didn't want to go into the shop. I put my blinders on. I was trying
my best to avoid it. I thought, oh, he's a good production tech. He's getting
stuff done. A lot of what he did came back, and I
always came up with a reason that it was coming back. I never,
ever just said, look, he's just got to go. And it was really
because I think at the end of the day, the reason I held off on
it is because he was so toxic. I knew what it was going to be.
I knew he was going to flip out. I knew he was going to go
haywire. There was no doubt in my
mind. My coach was telling me, this dude's going to go
crazy. You might even want to call the sheriff's department before you fire this guy.
Right. And he did. He scared you.
No, firing scare me. It was there. Why even bring that up?
Call him and say, hey, you can't be here anymore. My point
is that it was a situation that I just wanted to
avoid. The shop wasn't actively,
in my eyes, burning down around me. It was
right. I didn't realize I was killing the culture and everything else because we were
getting workout and things were happening, but I always had a reason.
Part of it is I feel bad. Right. I hated firing people. That was really
the only person I had ever fired was this guy at that
point. And I realized that's probably the worst
experience I'll ever have, firing somebody. I don't care. I got it the rest
way, whatever. But I think that I did something
very similar. I didn't want to go in the back of the shop, and so
I disconnected from that, and it caused me to not realize
how bad it had gotten and how bad his work was and what he
was doing. Right. And it was an addiction thing, too. But listen,
this is super. He was addicted to alcohol,
was an alcoholic. Was he drunk at the shop? No, he was never drunk at
the shop. Was your guy drunk at your shop? We found out after
the afterwards that he would go out and drink at lunch. Which aligns were
they, like, red flags that you looking back, you're like,
yeah, he was drunk that day. Oh, yeah, for sure.
We got emotionally close to him. We felt bad after his
family left, we invited him over to Thanksgiving. I brought him into my home,
so it was hard to just like, all
right, we can't do this anymore.
There's a reason that programs
which offer therapy and counseling and
rehab and addiction help have
such strict rules about how they handle it, because that is a
big way to get into a situation where they can't help them anymore, is
because they are emotionally blinded by that person. That person can become
extremely manipulative. That person can become extremely controlling.
That person can say hurtful things that make you think it's almost like
narcissism, right? All of a sudden, you see this whole different side of this person
that you thought liked you and this and that. And a lot of it is
just the addiction. It's not necessarily who they are, but it can
cause you to make poor decisions when dealing with them. And you've got to be
careful getting close for that reason to somebody like. That, it
makes me feel really bad when I look back on it. And I
didn't know that he was harassing the employees the way that he was. He was
apparently messaging them after hours, harassing them as well,
like, all night. He was apparently like he'd walk by from
the stories that I've gotten from people, he'd walk by and make sideways comments while
they were doing something like a timing belt. So then we had
one guy, that man, he struggled with a subaru timing belt, and we could not
figure out why because it's just such an easy job. And we were trying to
figure out he ended up putting the tensioner in and not taking the pin out.
So it screwed everything up, right? And we were watching the video,
and we didn't realize what was happening when we were watching it.
But he would go over there and talk to this person like, every 20 minutes.
He'd swing by for a few seconds. We assumed that he was giving him
help. Afterwards, when one of our employees came back,
she was like, no, that's not what was happening at all. He would go
over there and make comments and make him feel bad, make him feel like he
shouldn't be there and couldn't do the job. And I feel super responsible because
I'm there to take care of them. These people are like my family, and I
didn't even know it was happening. Yeah, this place of
person is a monster. Holy crap. I don't think
he intentionally was a monster. I think that at some
point, we never are.
Look, I have been a monster before, right? And
you become bitter. It hurts. Things don't go the
way that you think that they go. Life's not happening like you think it
should happen. Things get hard to look in the mirror, and I
understand that. But when you're addicted to something, that's hard to
do, right? When you're addicted to something. And the problem is
that it's like if you're an alcoholic, right,
you feel bad if you don't drink, so you want to go have a
drink while you're not drinking, everything's okay, but
then you go have a drink. And all of a sudden, you start running your
mouth a little bit, and then you start to talk to yourself, and you start
telling yourself stories, and all of a sudden, that story turns into something else. And
it's like, well, that person did this. Well, and that person did that. And
you will start telling yourself stories. And all of a sudden, that logic
and that reasoning portion of your brain is no longer logic and
reasoning. It's allowing this story
you're telling yourself to get out of control. And so if
addiction goes too far, it just turns into that in a big way, and
everything in your life can become that story. Everything in your life
can be, this person did this. There are people who have
had spouses that have ended up murdering them
because they had told themselves such a story. And a lot of it, I think,
comes back to addiction. Right? Okay, so
perfect. In the mountains here,
he sends us. A picture, to my horror, of
his arm handcuffed. And I'm like, great. So that says
PNW Automotive down your shirt. So that's great, really, thanks for
representing. And he's like, I got a DUI, but I'm going to get
out of it because I just had open containers in the back. I wasn't actually
drinking. And we're like, It's not how that works.
Also, why is that in your car? Also, can you make better decisions?
And for the last four months, all
we've heard about is how he's going to get out of it. He's pushing out
the court date, hoping that the police isn't going to show up, the officer
isn't going to show up, and he's banking everything on that. He is
so solid set that he is not going to have any
repercussions. Convince the police officer was a problem. Exactly.
That everybody else 100% that he was set up, that they
came after him, and it wasn't fair, and it's not right, and it's not okay
what they did to him. Exactly. Going to go in there, and he's going to
prove that this is them that did this to him.
Right. Do you guys do debriefs when someone leaves
normally? I try to.
You lost six people in a very short amount of time. Did you do a
debrief with any of them? I think I did on two of them. Two or
three of them? Yeah. But I couldn't get no
one of the females. I couldn't get her to come back in. Maybe.
Let me explain. Are you talking to all the current employees
after the one that left leaves?
No, actually, we've never done that before.
So if you sit down with them, you find out
lots of stuff that you didn't know was going on,
and all of a sudden they're gone. And they're like, yeah, I hated that person.
They were miserable to work with. I mean, we've heard that in the
team meetings. We've heard that since then,
but we didn't sit down with them with the intention of, well, not
finding out what was going on. The problem with together is that they don't say
things in a group setting that they will tell you one on one. They
don't ever. You have to sit down with
everybody that hey, after what's his name?
We'll call him Bob. Hey. When you know,
hey, Bob's left. Anything we need
to talk about? Is everything okay? Questions,
concerns, comments? Let's talk about this. Everything's
good? I hated Bob. Okay, great.
I don't know. Yeah, we probably should do that. I mean, even though
everybody's talked to us quite a bit, they've all talked to us, like in a
group. Yeah. You might want to sit down with them, especially
after something like that. You might want to just do one on one for a
little while and just talk to them just to make sure they get some
stuff out. I feel like a lot of it like you were saying, Lucas. I
know for myself personally, everything that
went wrong, I had some kind of excuse for it, some rationalism
every single time that wasn't his fault, because we.
Thought a lot between the two of us, because I'm on the front side
going, all right. And I didn't look at his comeback rate until
after he left. In the last month that he worked for us, was it
24 cars came back? 24 cars
were comebacks. That makes our reputation look like crap. But it
was 24 out of 40 cars that he worked on. Oh, wow. So it was
like, that's disastrous. But every time that I would talk to him about it, he'd
be like, well, this reason or that reason or the other reason. And
he didn't know what the number was then, to be fair, he just knew that
they were coming back. The thing is that
what I learned from my experience is a firm stance, right.
And so I went through a situation a while back where we had
a technician who worked for us, super great guy, I
mean, fantastic human being. Had a lot of stuff
going on and
lots of issues. And the thing was that
we had a firm stance, and it was, we're going to talk about this. Tell
me what's happening. Tell me how it happened. Number
one, mistake. Okay? We all make mistakes. Help
me understand. Let's talk about it. How are we going to prevent
this? In that case, information was falsified. No if,
ands, or buts about it. Information was falsified. You clicked a button that said you
torqued the lug studs. You didn't even put the lug nuts on it.
Yeah. There are certain things, though, you've got to make one and
done. I agree. That would have been a,
hey, I'm going to let this one go, but this
ever happens again, you're gone. And then within the
span of the next mistakes that came back
were one and then another. And
those two mistakes came back at the exact same time. And I sat him down
and I said one of them was a safety. And I said, I
cannot do this. I will not do this. Help me understand.
In 99.99% of all cases, I would be
terminating you right now. I'm willing to develop a program and a
system, but we're going to have to do something different here.
And everything you do is going to be quadruple checked by somebody else.
We're going to make sure this doesn't happen again.
He left the bolts out of the brake caliper.
Bolts weren't even in it. And so
I said, this is not okay. This is absolutely,
100% not okay. He says, well, I can't make enough hours, and that's why
no, you're not making enough hours because we're not giving you
work because we don't trust you. Okay. I backed it
down, was trying to give you easier and easier jobs. That clearly
did not fix things. So here's what we're going to do. And the very next
day, he came in and turned in his resignation, and 18
cars came back directly after that. Every car he had worked on came back. That's
how it always happens. Technician leaves, and all of a sudden you get piled up.
A lot of them. Yeah, I will say the technician that just left me,
we haven't gotten anything back. Yeah, but that was five. That was a
different situation. He left because his boss was a complete
jackass to him, and he was making fun of him. He was picking
on him nonstop. He questioned for his own good,
of course. Yeah. He's on a
podcast talking about his personal decisions and his personal
life. He cuts the lawn at the shop. He's cutting
my mom's lawn right now. Fantastic human being.
Nick, you just got to drop the anchor and come on back.
I might even give you a raise. Nick, I just want to point this out.
I am to the point in my life, I've never
been one that worries about heaven or hell or anything like that. That's never been
concern of mine. But I am
somewhat worried that just sitting next to this man is probably
going to get me struck by lightning at some point. Have you ever
seen the episode of south park where cartman gets struck by lightning?
You watch a lot of south park. I love south park.
You do remind me of cartman. I can't watch south park with my kids, obviously,
for obvious reasons. Oh, yeah, for sure. But I have been showing them old simpsons
episodes, like seasons one through
eight, a few episodes from ten, but
one through eight, gold. Every single one, I just laugh and laugh.
My kids don't get the jokes. Like, what are we
watching? Well, it's just a cartoon, and it's kind of funny, and
there's some childish humor in there, but they don't get, like, the pop
reference 90s pop reference or the
older references from the old twilight
zone episode. They have no idea. And I'm laughing. Maybe
we should start watching the simpsons. You guys never watched the simpsons?
Well, I mean, we have. Yeah, just not together. It's been like
decades. And you've seen all the memes,
like how the simpsons predicted things that
don't watch the simpsons. That's not what no, I mean, yes, they do that,
but you got to watch the
commentaries, because they will explain
that, okay, there's three jokes in this seven
second sequence. There's three jokes in there, but I thought we could squeeze
in one more joke in there,
and they just build the absurdity. It's like, well, that's kind of funny, but
that's absurd, that's funny. And then another layer, and then another layer,
and that kind of love and
that's art right there. They're just trying to squeeze that extra
stupid joke in there just to make it that much
funnier. They don't do it anymore. The new ones are just awful. You can't
after season ten. So not only do you have time to watch
cartoons, you watch people talk about the cartoons.
Maybe we should stop calling people. We'd have more time to watch
cartoon. I moved
from central illinois to st. Louis for a job.
They offered me a position in st. Louis, and I took it. And
so I filled up my
GeoMetro with my TV, a recliner,
and some junk right in the back, and I rented an
apartment, and I had my little 19 inch TV, and I
had my DV, or I think it was a PlayStation two or whatever. I
had that hooked up to it. And I didn't have money for
cable or anything like that, so I watched
episode after episode, the simpsons, seasons
one through eight on DVD with the commentary. Because you've already seen
the episode, you knew all the jokes, but now I want to hear the commentary
just over and over. And you played a few the three or four video
games you had, and that was it. I ought to be young again.
That was so much simpler. I look back going, it was
spaghetti or tuna melts every night, because that's what chad's money for.
No, I would make spaghetti
that would feed me for a week. Am I boring you with my story? My
heart wrenching story about the simpsons and the commentary DVD
stuff? Honey, if you thought that that was what was going to
bore me about the things you talk about, you'd be losing your
mind. I had this guy come in. This guy looks like a
nice guy. I don't know, what was his name exactly? You're a jackass for not
asking. Anyway, he comes in and he's like, oh,
yeah, we're here recording a podcast. Like, oh, I know you guys. You're that
guy that calls everybody dear.
Why? It's a problem.
It's a real problem, because
if you pay enough attention when he says dear.
It's not he's like, It's a term of endearment. It is a term of endearment.
He says it dear. It's
always in this way, like he's getting ready to tell you how fucking stupid you
are. No.
Yes. Say dear to them. He's right. Can't help it. He's
right. He's right. By my tone and
usage of random words. I didn't facial expressions.
Listen, he's right. That's not what
he was trying to do. It's just he was trying
to convey without saying I'm much smarter than
you, that he was much smarter.
One of my technicians, he's like, I was saying, like,
oh, so and so is mad at me. He hates me, wants to hit me
if he sees me sometime, which is common, apparently. And
he's like, did you call him dear? I go,
Is that a thing? And he goes, yeah. Nobody's told you? I'm like,
no. He goes, yeah, it's super condescending. You shouldn't call
people dear. And I go, I'm not
trying to be condescending. He was like, Well, I know that now that I
know you, you call me dear. I'm like, I don't care.
But if they don't know who you it comes off as super
condescending. And I'm like, really?
I can't help it, though. It comes out I'm not trying to be
condescending. You're just trying to prove you're smarter.
That's when you do that. Trying to prove that I'm smarter.
Yeah. It's not even that. I opened a shop. Level
one stupidity right there. I opened, not
bought. So step one, I already made a mistake. And
then I decided I was going to put that shop in an area with
30 other shops and then have no street visibility.
Stupidity number two, like, I can keep stacking stupid things. I've
done. The problem is over and over and. Over, these stupid things have made
you so smart, the rest of us just. Can'T even I just made a lot
of mistakes, that's all. A lot of mistakes. Speaking
of mistakes, are we going to do debriefs when we get back? Yes,
we're going to do debriefs when we get back. Sure are.
Well, that sounded like it sucked. Yeah, a little bit.
Terrible. Awful.
It's easy for me to say something because I've been out of the situation, but
he was telling me about a situation with another
couple. Husband works in the back, wife works in the front.
Very similar situation where things have all of
a sudden gone sideways and the business is on the verge of
closing. I'm hearing him tell
me, and I go, this doesn't make
any sense at some point, and I get it. You get into the
weeds and you start to make excuses like you're saying,
but at some point, I would have lost one person.
And when I lose somebody, I take it very personally, like, I did something wrong
here. I blame myself for losing that tech because I did. I did
lay into him way. Too hard. But yet at some point, it got funny
and it was cathartic for me to make fun of him, but whatever. Oh, Lord,
he deserved it. He made bad choices. Anyway,
I still love him. I want him to come back, just not with the baggage
he had. Anyway. We all have
that tick emphasis. On bag, by the way. Lucas
anyway,
by the way, we're working on his truck. It's at the shop.
Anyway,
I would have lost that first person, and I would have taken it very personally,
and I would have asked everybody, and at some point, somebody would have told me.
It's like, hey, it's Bob. What do you mean
it's Bob? He's awful to work with. Like, you're going to lose more people. Like,
I'm thinking of quitting on the second
one, it would have been flamethrower to the shop on the second
person because I'm not going to. Hiring is the most god
awful experience anybody, any shop owner, any
manager has to go through hiring is miserable.
It is awful. Writing the ad is awful. Putting it out there is
awful. Interviewing and then
am I making the right decision? I don't want to bring the wrong person in.
And you're like, I need to get somebody in here. And that whole
process is just exhausting and taxing,
and I am not going to lose people. Not like that. On the second
person. Flamethrower to the shop. Somebody's telling me what the hell is going on here?
I shouldn't have lost two people. What's going on? Somebody would have
festive that guy right there. I feel like he's calling me
dear. Yeah, just a little bit. Listen,
dear. No,
here's the thing, is that if you do any
research on narcissism, right, narcissism is a pretty big thing. If you
do a little bit of research on it, you find out that when human beings
are confronted with a narcissist, one of the things they do is they
begin to blame themselves for what that person's doing,
right? And that person can convince them by the things they say.
Because most human beings don't say mean things to one another, right? They don't
say things to be hurtful. They don't place blame. They just say,
hey, here's the situation. Here's what's going on. That's what we do as human
beings. And so the natural human
reaction when dealing with a truly narcissistic
person is that I am going to try and figure out what I'm doing
wrong because I'm the common denominator. But you
don't realize they're actually the common denominator.
And so I think it's somewhat
understandable the decision that you guys made, because
an addict is a narcissist. That's all there is to it.
There's no way around that. And I'm sure some mental health expert will come and
bash me for saying. That from at least behaving in a
narcissistic fashion, right. From my experiences as an
addict, right? And so the problem is that when you're dealing with someone
like that. They're going to say that it's your fault. They're going
to blame you. They're going to tell you why it's not their fault. They're going
to put all of this out there in such a way. And I'm serious. Go
watch a YouTube video about what is a narcissist and watch their
behaviors and tell me that it's not the tech that you had.
And if you find yourself if anybody listening finds themselves in that
situation, they go right now, because that was
the biggest mistake I ever made. My business is I kept somebody that was like
that, and if I had let them go, I'd be much further along
my journey of being successful than I am right now. I hurt a lot of
people, a lot of friends, a lot of family by letting that person stay in
the business. And that sucks because I know how emotional you feel
about it, because you feel personally responsible for the damage that person did
to other people, and you felt like you should have been there to protect them
and stop it. And you can't do that all the time. But the reality is
we have to make ourselves aware of that. And to all the
technicians who are out here fussing saying technicians aren't treated
well, this is a perfect example of what happens to shop
owners every single day in this country, is that somebody like
this walks in and acts this way to a shop owner, and over
time, the shop owner will become jaded about technicians. They will become
jaded about people they bring into the shop because they've experienced this,
so now they don't trust anybody. And it's something
that we all have to be responsible for fixing. Are you going to be
quicker to fire someone now, do you
think? Probably. I'd like to say so,
yeah. Pay more attention to it. Don't just overlook things and just
assume, well, that person probably just quit because they had their own thing going on,
or that person's gone, because who knows why? Dig into it a little
bit deeper and see. I think if I have concerns, then I'll talk to the
team that they're working with. One of the things that I didn't know he was
doing was he was telling our new hire to watch his
back because the service writer was ordering the wrong parts to
sabotage him. But the funny part is that the wrong parts we'd order
were the ones that he sourced himself.
But if I had just asked people in the shop
what was going on, I would have known. Yeah. I think
that if I ever find myself avoiding the shop, that's going to probably be a
red flag for me, because I like being in the shop. Yeah.
I don't know. I'd like to say I am
100% guilty of not putting more rigid
parameters around what's acceptable and what's not
acceptable. I excuse a lot of bad behavior
and we were talking at lunch, and I
go, Maybe I'm just not cut out for it
because we talk to a lot of really successful shop owners
and those bastards will not hesitate
to fire someone tomorrow if they are not meeting
their expectations performance wise, they're
gone. It's my family or yours. And I like my family more than yours.
Goodbye. And then out the door they go. That level of
ruthlessness, I think, is what I called it.
And I don't say that disparagingly. It's a
ruthless mindset to say that this will succeed
come hell or high water, and I'm not going to let you stand in the
way of it. And then that's it. I don't know that I got
that in me. You've heard me tell somebody in our industry
before that, hey, I'm almost envious of how ruthless
you can be. Right? I know it sounds crazy, but
it's like, I could not do that if I tried. That emotional
detachment. Yeah. I could not do it if I tried. What were you going to
say? I got sidetracked with the
emotional detachment thing. It'll come back to you. It was going to be a great
point, too. It's going to make the entire podcast it's going to be the
snippet that I share. Make this sucker blow up.
These two are on. It'll blow up no matter what. Yeah.
The last one did really well. It's his pretty face. Really? Look at this
face. Face for podcast? Yeah, face for Radio.
You guys didn't listen to it, I could tell because you would have known that
it was not on video. It was just audio because of jerks. Forget
it. I'm cutting this whole thing down. Delete
all right. Thanks for sharing that. We definitely listened to it. We've
listened to the podcast a few times. It sucks hearing your own voice. I don't
like hearing my voice. You get over it, trust
me. Listen, David what's
interesting about David david's complete the opposite. He skips everybody else talking
and he. Just listens to so the reason why I do that the reason why
I do that I thought he was he's not joking.
The reason I do that you're the only
say, like, a lot of stupid things. I'm not just joking. They're
just jokes. I've had to tell several people, don't take
anything I say seriously. I'm just kidding. We
don't. I'm glad. Yeah, I know, right?
But you get these comments and he'll sit I don't get them.
He gets them and he's like, oh, yeah, that dude hates you.
What did I do? You said something about Land Rovers one
time. He's not even joking. We all have,
though. You're going to get more hate
mail. You're going to get us more hate mail. That's what's getting ready to happen.
Dude's going to be upset because we talked about it all this weekend and. I
didn't this whole weekend, we have dropped stupid comments
on Land Rovers at. Every single so now
when my service writer listens to it, she's going to be so upset.
I think that's the one is. Does she own Land Rovers? Oh, yeah,
she loves them. Yeah, I do, too. 100%. No, but
she loves them because she likes to drive them, not because they bring us business.
Well, he thought we were discouraging technicians from working on
it's. Like what they break. Why would I discourage you from work? You want to
fix cars. Land Rover is perfect place to start. And then,
Minnie, what's one level above that? Jaguars are the
worst. I think they're worse than Land Rovers. Flaming piles of garbage. We
have two in our lot right now. Jaguars? Yeah. What years
is it like the Ford Jaguar or is it Jaguar? Jaguars. No, we have four
because we have two F paces right now, too. Oh, no.
Sorry about your luck. When you get back to the shop. Next,
they're all. Know. I've
never heard a shop owner be so
thrilled about the potential of having a shop fire when the
shop's full of Jaguars. Well,
I hate it for you. Throw a few Volvo in there.
Volvo. I like Volvo. Really? Yeah. I think they're so
cool. Quirky swedish cars. All right, listen,
dear.
That cuppy deep. I'm never going to do it again. I'm
just kidding. The high school educator in my
community was a Volvo master tech, and I said,
there is no greater skill set
required for being a teacher than a Volvo
master technique. What do you mean? I was like, if you can tolerate those things,
there is no way 16 year old kids ruin your people get. So
upset at Volvo's. I don't understand.
Yeah, the wire harness does melt or, like, flake away. I get that.
Disintegrate. They disintegrate, so that's a thing. But they do it on all
of them. So it's like, well, okay, we got these weird, like, lights
or whatever, but if you go really old,
they're all the same car, just longer versions of each other. They're
just, like slightly longer. Slightly longer. All the exact
same. The saddle tanks in the XC. Ninety s right. The
power steering. So when they decided they were going to stay in
business and Ford bottom, and then they started,
like, intermixing Ford and stuff like that. But the XC 90,
those were turds. Yeah, and I could see. But then that
becomes a Land Rover conversation where, like, is this your first Volvo XC
90? Is this your first Land Rover? I know.
Okay, don't stress. There's always just get a drip
pan. And if it stops leaking, please don't drive it. Have
it.
But you tell them with the XC 90s,
they have so many issues, and they stack up on top of each other.
So if this is their first XC 90, I don't care how good of a
deal you got. I'm sorry. This is going to turn into
a $10,000 adventure. I
had a really good client of mine and somebody that we've become
friends and we have a mutual
understanding that I charge more than what he wants to pay. He's super frugal,
but cool guy, right? Like, it's good.
And he had a Volvo, and it was the power steering idler deal
where the gear would actually go bad and you have to
disassemble everything. It's like a whole timing assembly. And so
I gave him a price, and it was like $12,000. And he got mad at
me and he was not going to be my friend anymore. He took it to
Volvo and he said, fuck that piece of shit. He's like, they
wanted 20,000. Yeah, I know. I told you, dude. What year was it? I
can't remember. I'll go back and was it one of the newer, newer ones? Yeah,
it was fairly new. Like nine, maybe? Yeah.
All right. You guys probably want to go eat. My tummy is
grumbly. It's all David's fault. I'm sorry.