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Shop Talk Her Way is where former shop owner and coach JeanAnn Saint Grace opens up the books on what it really takes to run a profitable, sustainable, and well-balanced auto repair business.
With decades of experience in bookkeeping, operations, and leadership, JeanAnn brings an honest, no-fluff approach to shop management — all from a woman’s perspective. From financial systems and staffing to communication and culture, she shares insights that help shop owners (and especially women in the industry) take control, build better businesses, and enjoy the ride.
Whether you’re turning wrenches, balancing the books, or scaling to your next location, you’ll find encouragement, strategy, and a healthy dose of “you’ve got this” in every episode.
Shop Talk Her Way is an AutoFix Auto Shop Coaching production — helping shops thrive, her way.
Thanks to WorldPac and the WorldPac Training Institute (WTI) for sponsoring Shop Talk Her Way. Visit worldpac.com for the latest in auto parts distribution and wtitraining.com to explore training programs that can take your career to the next level.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:00:00]:
in a short period of time, it's like this breath of fresh air has kind of blown through the shop and everybody's reinvigorated and excited. This process pays off in the long run, but if you end up with a bad situation, you have to address it. This is Shop Talk Her Way with Jean Ann St. Grace. Have you ever kissed a frog? Thinking they might turn into a prince or a princess. Have you ever hired a unicorn and turned out to be a donkey? This is Jeananne St. Grace. Thank you for joining me for today's episode of Shop Talk Her Way.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:00:36]:
And today we're going to talk about firing, letting people go. So if you're a team member, maybe leaving a job that isn't working for you. But if there's something not working, it might be time to find a new place to work or a new team member. I know I generally talk to shop owners, but I also want to involve the technicians and shop and service advisors in these conversations because these are two-way things, right? It is not a one-way street. And sometimes it's hard to know when it's time to let someone go or to leave a place of work. It can be scary. It creates a lot of uncertainty. It can really be kind of upsetting, especially if you thought that this was the place that you'd always be, or this was a team member that would grow with you and your business and they would become part of a succession plan.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:01:35]:
It always turns into kind of a rigmarole. And I think sometimes a lot of us are afraid to say we made a bad decision. I don't like using the term mistake because everything's a learning process. So if you're a shop owner and you hire someone that's not working out, or if you're a team member and the, the employer's not working out for you, there's no shame, no harm, no nothing except finding a different situation. And regardless of whether you're the employer or the employee, sometimes opening the space up brings new opportunities. So, sometimes it's a step forward rather than a step back, especially if it's not working. So, somebody we're not gonna fire is WorldPac and WorldPac Training Institute. They are the very generous sponsor of Shop Talk Her Way, and I'm so grateful to them for not only sponsoring the podcast, but also being a tremendous partner for our industry to get you parts, get you parts on time, and also the tremendous opportunity for training that WorldPAC provides.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:02:49]:
So please check WorldPAC out if they're in your area. Check out the WorldPAC Training Institute and see there's training there for both techs, advisors, and owners. So please reach out to them, find ways to do business with them, thank them for supporting the podcast and for supporting the industry as much as they do. So back to this idea of we talked about hiring in the last episode. Now we need to talk about the other side of that, which may be firing, terminating, resigning, whatever that looks like. But I think one mistake that a lot of people make, like I said, whether it's on the shop owner side or on the employee side, is they stay too long in a bad situation. They think it might work out, somebody might change, something might break loose, and they hope, right? And all the time that they're hoping, things just continue to get worse. And like I said, there's no real judgment on something not working out.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:03:56]:
It's just that it just doesn't work. We have a lot of hope. We have a lot of optimism going into these situations. If we've done our hiring process right, or if we've vetted our new employer right, then we should have mitigated all of the questions. We should have figured out if this was a reasonable expectation that it was going to work out or not. And if we're finding that it's not working, what do we do? From a shop owner's perspective, this is where I recommend you lean into your one-on-ones. Get this team member in your office on a regular basis and see if there's something they need. See if there's something we're missing.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:04:37]:
See if there's a process we can change or if they need some extra help somewhere else. Let's do what we can to try to Save them. And I don't mean save in a, in a, you know, like they're, they're damaged or something and they need saving. I mean, let's try to make the workplace a better fit for them if it's possible to do. On the employee side, don't be afraid to go to your shop owner. Don't be afraid to ask them for a meeting and say, you know, this part of this isn't working for me. Is there anything that we can do about it? If it turns out that there's no salvaging this, then in my opinion, it's better to take care of it as quickly as you possibly can. If you hold on to someone too long, or if you stay in a job for too long, um, it just— the, the, the energy becomes thicker.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:05:34]:
The, the harder it makes it harder to stay. It makes everything harder and more stressful. And as I've talked about before, you know, we're really in the safety business. We are really in the business of keeping people safe. And if anyone is distracted or unhappy or stressed, that makes us doing our jobs that much harder. If we're— if our focus is split, if we're not performing up to standards, then it's just more stress, right? You're just making it worse. So whether you want to call it ripping off the Band-Aid, cutting your losses, however you want to look at it, holding on to a situation that doesn't work for you in the long term is a bad thing. If you're a shop owner and you have, you know, a bad apple, so to speak, I mean, they're out there and I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, but sometimes it's just a really bad fit.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:06:31]:
There's a really bad culture forming out of it. It's hurting your other employees. Then maybe it's time. Well, I would say it is time. We shouldn't even let it get that far. If we've done everything we can to counsel, to smooth, to ease, to do whatever, you know, if we've done our due diligence and it's still not just not working, it's time. And it's hard, right? It is hard to think that you're going to sever a connection with somebody and send them off into the world thinking, you know, will they get another job? Are they going to be okay financially? I'm putting them in a bad position. But if you have done everything on your part, then we're talking about consequences, right? We're talking about if there hasn't been changes, if things aren't improving, if it's just not working, these are the consequences of that situation.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:07:25]:
And on the other side of it, you know, the stress level, and this is for everybody, honestly, the stress of either having someone in your culture that doesn't fit or being an employee in a company that doesn't fit you, it's just a lot of stress and that's survival mode. And you'll hear me say over and over again how bad humans behave in survival mode. It is— you're not thinking properly, you're— everything's turned on high, everything feels worse, and it's just not worth it. And we don't want to be walking into our place of business feeling like they don't want to be there. And, and because that filters through your team, like as a leader, that's going to filter through your team. As a team member, it's going to filter through your team. So nobody's going to be happy. And whether anybody voices it or not, they're going to be feeling it.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:08:19]:
It feels that heavy feeling. I mean, can you all raise your hand and say, I've been in a, in a work environment that was not fun and happy and just nobody wants to be there and it drags everything down. It's going to drag down production. It's going to drag down your customer service. Your customers are They're going to feel it. And we don't want our customers feeling like they're walking into a place that's heavy. They're already, you know how customers are, they're already freaked out. What is this going to cost? How am I going to get here? How am I going to get there? We don't need to add our stressors to their stressors.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:08:51]:
We should be a place where they come in, they feel safe, they feel cared for, they feel like we have a solution for them. They shouldn't walk in feeling like on high alert of, uh-oh, something's wrong. So, you know, how do we do this? Sometimes it is ripping the bandaid off. Sometimes there's a situation where we just have to walk out in the shop, pull them in, say we're done. There's the option of giving them, you know, a couple of weeks to go find a new job. If they have vacation time, you can encourage them to use that to go out and do interviews. If, You want to give them a severance package and just get them out of the shop. You can do that too.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:09:35]:
Like there's ways to do that. And every employer, every shop owner needs to just examine their heart of hearts and say, what is the right thing to do here? Because there's different layers, right? You might have somebody who is a good employee and is just for some reason struggling in the environment and they need to go. Maybe that's a severance package. If we've got somebody who's, you know, completely toxic to the environment, causing problems, Maybe they need to go today and maybe we just give them an opportunity to find employment elsewhere. If you're an employee, I think it's still a good idea to give 2 weeks' notice. I still think it's a good idea to try to ease that process. And again, maybe you have some paid vacation, maybe you have some time banked, go ahead and use it. Say, I can work through the end of this week, but I'd like to use my vacation next week to go find a new job.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:10:37]:
Um, you know, whatever that looks like, but, but always be respectful, right? Try— and this is on both sides— there, there's no reason for conflict in this situation. There's no reason, you know, for anybody to go away mad. This is just business. It didn't work out. It's time for everyone to part company and go their separate ways, right? And it's okay. And again, on both sides, I think it's good to reflect. It's good to look back and say, were there red flags? Did I see something that I knew was happening, but I overlooked because I wanted the job or I wanted the team member, I needed them, like there was some kind of urgency or need that needed to be filled. You know, maybe it was, you know, that the next house payment's coming and I just need a job.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:11:33]:
Or maybe it's like we've got cars stacked up in the bays and we need a tech or an advisor. You know, whatever that looks like, let's look back and reflect on where the process broke down. You know, I told you guys my hiring challenges, you know, looking back and being like, I saw the red flag, but I overlooked it because I was in need or I was desperate. I mean, there's times when we, we hire or take a job out of desperation. And I'm going to be perfectly honest with you, those are usually the ones that don't work because we've overlooked all the red flags and gone in with maybe our, our optimism goggles were a little too high and we overlooked the big red flags. So It's not— I don't want to talk about regret. I'm not talking about judgment. I'm talking about like an honest reflection and look at what did we do, not do properly.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:12:33]:
You know, I've told you guys, I made the mistake of, you know, not being able to check references and not going farther, not asking for more. Um, you know, sensing something in their attitude that we overlooked, um, having holes in their resume and not prodding that corner of the resume and being like, why Why is this break here? Like, what was going on in here? You know, places where I failed to do my due diligence. I have a really great client who they— the process that I talked about in the hiring, they go all the way through that. They also, when they have a prospect come in and do a working interview, they buy lunch and have the team sit and talk to the prospect. And then they get feedback from the team and they go kind of around the room and be like, okay, what are your thoughts? What are you guys thinking? And they've had both things like, oh, this is a great fit, this isn't a great fit. They even had one that seemed like a great fit and everybody thought this is a great opportunity, this is a great person to add to our team. And as that person got into the team, he was kind of on his best behavior for a couple of weeks and then he started— not nitpicking the team, but started creating drama within the team, started to kind of pit people against each other in the shop. And a lot of it was pitting the team members against the owners.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:14:12]:
And so he was lacing this whole culture that they were building with this us versus them thing and, and causing all this turmoil and They even found out later that there was like a group texting thing going on where this person was, um, you know, running his mouth and inciting, you know, sowing seeds of, of, um, you know, harm into these conversations. And it was creating challenges within the team. You know, everybody was kind of backbiting each other, everyone was kind of fighting. There was a lot of, you know, kind of disrespectful behavior going on. And once they figured out what was going on, they let that person go and sent them on their way. And honestly, to this day, that's been almost a year ago. They're still— this person is still trying to infiltrate their team and, and cause problems. And so I'm going to call that extraordinarily toxic behavior.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:15:23]:
And when we looked back on it, they had a personality test and some things kind of came a little clearer out of that personality test. We looked at it a little deeper and it was like, oh, now that we see this and know this, we need to watch out for this when this comes out in this test and, and to probe a little deeper. He fooled everybody. So what could we have done? Maybe look at those test results a little bit better, maybe poke and prod a little bit more. But, you know, there's going to be some that slip through. And the minute they figured out what was going on, they got him out of there. Um, but there was long-lasting repercussions, and ultimately they've really had to cull their team to, to get all those bad seeds that were planted by this person out of their culture. And as a success story, they just recently made a hire of somebody who is so happy to be there.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:16:23]:
He's a team player. He is cheerleading for the other team members. He's helping the other techs kind of come out of their shells and really start to grow already, like in a short period of time. It's like this breath of fresh air has kind of blown through the shop and everybody's reinvigorated and excited. And so this process pays off in the long run. But if you end up with a bad situation, you have to address it because it's just going to hurt and continue to hurt until you do everything. And a lot of times we will talk— this is a terrible thing kind of to think about, but sometimes there's a cancer in your shop and we've got to cut it out. Maybe there's a bad apple, that old story that a bad apple ruins the ruins the barrel.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:17:14]:
You got to get the bad apple out of there and you can't be afraid of the repercussions. If it means your production is going to go down for a couple, you know, it could be weeks, it could be months until you find your next team member. You know, these are the things that, that we need to think about and not hold on to people that are constantly creating challenges for us. I had another client that I worked with and he He, at the kind of the, towards the end of our coaching time together, he had completely turned over his team in the last 6 months. And he'd been very intentional in hiring. He didn't hire anyone that he had any questions or doubts about. He made certain that they were a good fit and took his time. And at the end of that, he was like, I have the best team I've ever had.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:18:07]:
We're making money. Everything is driving, everything is moving, and we're all doing well.. And I've never been so happy to walk in my shop in my life. So, those are the testaments to getting the challenges and the problems out of your environment, out of your shop, and vice versa for a technician that's in a toxic work environment. They've gotta get, you need to get out of there. There's other ways to make money and you have to believe in yourself and in your skills and go find a place that fits for you. I'm gonna tell you, life is too short to be in a bad environment. And I've been in toxic work environments.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:18:46]:
I, I worked for a company and, um, the leader was, um, not a good person. Let's just— I'm just gonna say that he wasn't a good person. There were all kinds of like weird things going on. I don't want to be too specific, but there was some very strange things going on. And, um, I held on to this job so long because I really believed in the company and I really believed in what we were doing that I hoped that maybe these things would pass, but they weren't. And my hair started to fall out, and I was like, I don't, I don't understand. I was in my 20s, and like, I would, you know, there was clumps of hair coming out, uh, off of my head. And the thing that fixed that was getting a new job.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:19:31]:
So, you know, these things will show up, and there's, there's instinct, intuition, whatever you want to call it. The signs will be there that this isn't a good fit for you. So don't be afraid to stop Don't be afraid to let it go. And I'm sure, you know, if you go on to different, um, places, you know, as far as like forums, Facebook groups, whatever, you will hear the best thing that I ever did was leave here. The best thing I ever did was let this team member go because that was the catalyst for the next evolution of the business, or this was the next evolution of my skill set. And I found a place that I really liked. Suffering is not a virtue. You don't need to suffer.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:20:17]:
You don't need to wallow around in this kind of messy, toxic situation and have it eat at you. You might find that the values are a mismatch or that, you know, there's, there's, you know, one thing over here and there's in actuality something over here. So don't be afraid to make a change. Sometimes those changes are the things that catapult you into greatness. I know this is going to be a little bit shorter episode, but it's a hard topic, right? It's not something we ever want to think about. I think we really want to, you know, kind of think that everything's going to be okay, that everybody can get along, that we're not, um, You know, we've— we're tolerant, we're giving people chances, but sometimes giving them too many chances ends up hurting what we're trying to save. So don't be afraid to make a change. Don't be afraid to do something that makes your life in this, in essence, easier, better.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:21:25]:
Like I said, there might be a slowdown in your production. Just adjust your schedule until you get that person back in there. People will understand. People will understand. Your customers will understand, hey, you know, we're shorthanded and we just need to move things out just a little bit. But, but be intentional with that hiring so that we find ourselves in this situation a lot less often. There's a lot of costs to making a bad hire, to having to let someone go. There's all those startup costs, you know, health insurance, retirement plans, all those things that we put into place.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:22:03]:
And even harder is I think sometimes we're just afraid to say we made a bad decision and admit that maybe we should have done a little things a little bit differently. So don't, don't get stuck in, I made a decision and now I have to stick with it. You made a decision, it's not working. It's time to pivot. It's time to find a new pathway. And if you are a shop owner who have somebody that's a really good person and they're just not a good fit for the job that they're in, Sometimes you can move them, you know, maybe they're a tech that would make a better service advisor. Maybe they're a service advisor that would make a better tech. Sometimes you just need to give them an opportunity to move on with their lives.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:22:45]:
So thank you so much for joining me today. I apologize for the short episode, but there's not a lot to say about this. This is a hard one and it's, it's pretty basic and it's pretty cut and dry when you really get down to it. But above everything else, you need to have your shop your way. And if you have a bad apple, we've got to get them out of there. I want to thank WorldPAC again for being our sponsor and WorldPAC Training Institute and giving us this opportunity and also being there to support our industry. And I look forward to seeing you on the next step, next episode of Shop Talk Her Way. If you have a chance, please like and subscribe.
JeanAnn SaintGrace [00:23:23]:
Please share with friends. Please share with people who you think might benefit. But above everything else, Go out there, love your team, love your life, and have an awesome day. Thank you.