Episode 345: Society’s Problem

On this week’s episode of Grease The Wheels, Uncle jimmy starts in on a series that is addressing the technician shortage. Throughout the history of media that has included cars, mechanics (and their modern iteration of technicians) have been unduly vilified as grifters, cheats, and scumbags. While there are some bad actors in the field, the same can be said for literally other occupation on earth (most notably, the ones that actually deal with the customers and complete the transactions in our industry!) We challenge this notion in it’s entirety, as many of the technicians that we know and love, especially the ones that listen to this podcast, are some of the best people that we have ever met. So how do we go about changing this societal view on an entire profession - media. While this media might not be a good example! But between the small screen in a customers pocket that is showing them a perfect video MPI on their vehicle, to larger scale scripted media, we are working to change customers perspective of the fixed operations department, one interaction at a time. 

Also Uncle Jimmy quotes last week’s episode write up! 

This Episode of Grease the Wheels is brought to you in partnership with Surfwrench Digital! For more on Video MPI Training Visit https://www.surfwrench.com/video-mpi-training-landing/ to learn more. Video MPI Training built in the shop, by your Uncle Jimmy. Use code “GTW” for 50% off your training access!  

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome once again to Grease the Wheels, your automotive technician podcast coming to you from the hollowed hulls of the Rock and Roll Garage. Hey, this is your Uncle Jimmy parked behind the microphone here, spewing your podcast. Grease to Wheels. For all you wrench twisting bastards out there in Grease the Wheels Nation, thank you very much for listening. Uh also too, uh thank you to everybody out there who uh builds it, wrecks it, destroys it, fixes it, builds it back up again, wrecks it again, builds it again. Thank you very much for all that you do. If you're wearing a collar that is blue of color, yes, thank you very much for sweating and physically exerting yourself and mentally exerting yourself and uh just basically being an extra good citizen and doing what needs to be done for all of us. Thank you very much for what you do. Now, uh, after bringing you an extraordinarily goofy podcast last week, which uh I'm sure that a few of you probably didn't appreciate too much, and uh I'm with you on that one. Wasn't really super happy with how it turned out, but you know what, goofy podcast comes along every once in a while, and you know what? It's mine. It's my podcast, so I'll I'll be as goofy as I want to be. What I wanted to do today is dip back into what the podcast was originally uh dropped on this planet for, uh, and that is to address the technician shortage. Now, uh, what I want to do is I'm gonna do a series on this, okay, because uh much like uh being homeless, the technician shortage does not exist for one reason. Okay, well, you talk to homeless people, they'll tell you there's a each one of them has a different reason for being homeless, and there's millions of different reasons for homeless people to be homeless, and that's why it's such a difficult problem for anybody to tackle, because it's not one solution for one problem, it is multiple solutions for multiple problems, and it is the same thing for us as technicians and for society and for people in general, uh, as far as tech the technician shortage goes, there's there's a there's a thousand different reasons for it, really. Uh, I mean I'm gonna lay them out for you, but I want to start off uh categorizing them somewhat. Well, and the first stop on the asshole train for uh why there is a uh technician shortage is society itself. All the people out there who own cars and drive cars and kick the shit out of cars and fucked them up and and then bring them to you. And everyone out there who feels like they're familiar with what an automotive technician or an auto mechanic looks like, how they are, how they behave, what they're worth. And uh this is a an enormous problem that society has. It's a society, it's a it's a general overall problem with the people. Now, I want to just tell you right now that there's I don't think that there's a lot of things that can really be done to fix how people think about us. Okay. I have told uh several stories and probably repeat most of them right right now, but uh there are several stories that I personally have about being coming face to face with the problem that society has with automotive technicians, okay? Auto mechanics. I'm gonna say mechanics because when I refer to myself, I refer to myself as a mechanic. I don't like to build myself up as a uh you know a a technician. Uh I know a lot of you do, and it's fine. I I am not having a problem with that. If you want to refer to yourself as a technician, if you would like for other people to refer you to you as a technician, that's cool. I prefer the term mechanic personally because that's how I kind of crept into this field as a mechanic, as somebody who got in there and got fucking dirty and tore stuff apart and sometimes put it back together again. Yes. Despite what you some of you think. Despite what some of you think. Yes, I was able to actually uh put stuff back together. I've built a few cars and that sort of thing. Um, but I don't need to I don't need to defend myself here, not to you guys. Um, and I don't feel like I need to defend myself to society. Society can think and feel any fucking way they want. And as far as I'm concerned, if they don't, you know, have any uh even a modicum of respect for what we do, how we do it and why we do it and who we do it for, if they don't have any respect for that, then they can all kiss my fucking ass, really. I'm I'm I'm not gonna I'm not gonna sugarcoat it. If people don't like me because of what I do, that is some of the stupidest fucking shit that I've ever heard in my life. And yet it it is real, it is palpable, it is an actual thing. People don't like automechanics, they don't like automotive technicians, they don't like us. And it I think what it is, and I and I mean I'm guessing here, okay, because I'm not a psychologist or a psychiatrist or any kind of a brain doctor of any type, but um to me, I feel like they don't like us because they don't know us, and people fear the unknown, okay? They don't know us. Most people don't know us. We'll kind of keep to ourselves, I think a lot. And in some cases, we're not gonna share with you what we do and how we do it and how you know how we earn our living. We're not gonna share that with most people, and then I get it. I I absolutely completely get it. Now, a lot of these stories you will have heard before. Uh, they've been they've been they're out there on on different podcasts that I've done. But let me just bring them to you again, okay? Because uh I've been doing a podcast now. We're going, we're getting close to the eighth year, so there's seven years of this going on, 3 almost 50 episodes or so, and I'm sure that none of you have listened to all of them, at least I hope not. You know, unless of course you're working, which I know a lot of you really are. You're listening to this, and either you're driving somewhere or you're you know you're balls deep in some car for somebody that you know in the in your bay, and maybe you got me coming through your AirPods, or maybe I'm on your Bluetooth speaker. I'm not sure what your situation is. And it's perfectly fine. You can listen or you can not listen. Uh, I wouldn't I wouldn't say to anybody, oh, you definitely have to listen to this. I would fucking tell people probably not to listen to it. In fact, I I I have actually said that out loud because people say, Oh, I listened to your podcast, and they go, Really? You got nothing better to do. But uh, some of the stories that come through through the microphone and out to you guys, uh, some sometimes they get repeated. And and in this particular case, a lot of these stories have been out there before. I just wanted to kind of warn you. But uh one of the first stories uh that I have, at one point in time, I was talking to a girl that is the daughter of a friend of my sister's, okay? Perfectly reasonable girl. And at the time, I think she was probably 13 or 14 years old, maybe. Okay. So she did not have a driver's license. Uh she did not have a car, and that was really honestly years off for her. And uh I, you know, at the time I was I was an auto mechanic, and uh I somehow got on the subject. And I mean, we were just casually shooting a breeze uh in in mixed company, and I said something to the effect of, oh, you you know, you're probably gonna get your driver's license to get a car someday, right? And she was yeah. And then she said totally unsolicited. I didn't ask her anything, I didn't prompt her with anything. She says, she says, I know that if I get a car and I take it in to get it repaired, then I'm gonna get ripped off. And I was kind of like floored. I mean, this and then this doesn't trust me when I tell you folks, this doesn't happen very often. Most of the time, I can anticipate a response of some sort from people. I can anticipate what somebody's gonna say, and even if I can't, I'm not usually caught too flat-footed verbally anyway, okay? But this really did catch me off guard. And then I don't recall ever even actually saying anything to this girl. She's a perfectly reasonably intelligent at the time, 14, 15-year-old girl, who already knew that in the future, when she owned a car, she was gonna get ripped off by the mechanics that she was gonna have work on it for her. Um like, and honestly, uh, I have never worked on her car ever, uh, and probably won't, uh, which is kind of ironic because at one point my mother, and this is how long ago this was, my mother actually uh stopped driving because she was uh in the throes of uh Alzheimer's, and the car that she had was actually given to this particular girl that we're talking about now. Uh and and so, and that was, you know, I mean, it's it's a it's a generous thing, yes, I get it. And and honestly, it's just something that that the people in my family do, or at least uh myself and my mother anyway, uh I've given people cars. I just something I do, but uh I just you know you have them laying around and there they are and they need a car, and it's like here you go, just take this one and try not to wreck it too fast because that's irritating as shit. But he but this girl received my mother's car as as a I believe it was a graduation gift because it I think it was in June or something like that. Then of course she was already armed with the information that if she takes it in to get it fixed, she was gonna get fucking ripped off. And I'm and I was left really, I don't want to say speechless, but I didn't really have any kind of comeback. Um, she's she's just sweetheart of a kid, you know, and I'm not gonna just blast her and I'm gonna say, what the fuck, you know? You know, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna beat her about the head and neck area with the what the fuck? Why would you think that? Why would you even say that? I'm just I was left puzzled really mostly uh uh mostly about where the fuck that comes from. Where do you learn that? And I mean, I'm I'm thinking maybe her mother had kind of you know said something to her, said, Oh, I don't want to take the car in because I'm gonna get fucked over on it. And and maybe she did, I don't even know. And here's the thing, okay? Her and her mother and all of the girls in her family, because her whole family was girls, and uh, they didn't know anything about cars at all. So to just kind of assume that you're gonna get fucked over, that's not a good thing. I don't think that's a good thing. And and I would like for that to go away because that's really one of the big problems with a technician shortage is the actual image in people's minds of what a technician is, what a technician does, and uh the trustworthiness of us, of all of us together as a group of technicians, as a group of mechanics, as a group of people who are supposed to try to take care of your problems and and solve, you know, solve this sort of situation or that sort of situation. And they just think we're gonna bend them over. And and I and honestly, I don't really feel like it's true. I I just don't. I mean, yeah, it costs money to get your car fixed, and nobody has nobody out there really is gonna do it for free. I mean it. Nobody's gonna do it for free, nobody's gonna want to do it for free anyway. Sometimes we end up doing it for free for stupid fucking reasons, kind of ridiculous, but so that is a pervasive feeling throughout society, okay? And as I've said before, and I I firmly believe this, and I mean, I you know, I don't have any official facts uh or data or figures on this, but I would say that in all of society, you know, I mean, in in in this country anyway, in the United States, we have uh, you know, 300 million people living here, 200 million of them have cars. Uh, there's probably 300 million cars out there because there's some people who have two. Like I'm blowing the averages away by having 12, but uh not all of them are roadworthy. A good chunk of them are, but uh uh but what you have is you have 200 million people roughly just throwing a number out there, and out of that 198 million of them don't know one motherfucking thing about their car, they don't know anything about it. So the fear of the unknown starts right with the automobile, it starts with the machine, okay? And then and the machine is very complex, and and that's part of the problem as well. And we'll talk about that later in in this series, okay? Uh, but that's not what we're talking about right here. Because the car is extraordinarily complicated compared to its ancestors, what came before it, you know, in the evolutionary chain of automobiles, they they did used to be easier to fix. And so at one point in time, and I remember this point in time because I'm an old bastard, people could actually, you know, take out the tools that they got handed down from their parents, or maybe they bought them for them as a high school graduation present, or maybe you know, they just have tools, and they were actually able to successfully repair their own cars. I mean, if you threw a fan belt, you know, let's say you got a you know, mid-70s GM car throws a fan belt, you know you're gonna need a half inch, maybe a nine sixteenths, and uh you might need a uh a pry bar or maybe just a piece of wood or something. You go to the store, maybe you have a piece of the belt, or maybe the whole belt and it's just all fucked up, and you get the they look it up and they give you a fan belt and you go home and you put it on and you tighten it up and you're back on the road again. It wasn't that difficult. It was not that difficult. It was not beyond the ability of anybody out there, really. I mean, almost really literally anybody could have put a fan belt on an older GM car. I fucking double dog dare you now to find any car, GM or otherwise, where you could put a fucking serpentine dry belt on it without like some special wrench and maybe a bunch of swearing and possibly even getting the wrong fucking part and making that just into the most traumatic situation you could possibly have. I mean, I've put belts on cars and some of the some of the cars I see that I need to put belts on now, I can't even see the fucking thing. It's a good thing that serpentine dry belts last a hell of a lot longer than V-belts because I wouldn't want to have to replace them. I mean, uh, you know, I've got an older truck, I've replaced the the serpentine dry belt on it probably twice now. It's got about a buck twenty on it. I had to change the uh water pump at one point, so I changed the belt at the same time. Just sounded smart. And this one was a little bit easier than most are. Actually, I changed the tensioner at one point in time too because it started chewing in through the timing chain cover. But uh, you know, that's uh that's just something that that truck did. I don't I don't know exactly why. It's just it's something it did. So I did change that belt. Uh this is it's on its fourth belt right now. But most people, like I said, I'd say out of 200 million people, 198 million plus don't know a fucking thing about their car. They don't know anything about their car, and they don't want to know anything about their car. And it the anxiety that they feel about not knowing what's going on with their car is projected on us and our service advisors and our shops, our owners, uh, you know, whoever is running our shops, whoever's out front talking to these people, they project this anxiety and this stress about not knowing what the fuck is going on with their car. Because when we come back and we start telling them what's going on with it, they're just gonna be lost. They're not gonna know what to say, they're not gonna know what to do. And in that situation, somebody who isn't smart enough to figure out, you know, that they need this or they need that or that this is going bad or that's going bad, they're just gonna say, instead of saying, wow, you know, maybe re maybe possibly researching that problem, because I mean the internet is fabulous for that, right? You can, you know, if somebody tells you you need a, you know, a genecogozoic valve for a fucking car and you go online and you find out that it's bullshit, you have done your research, you're uh one of the fucking 0.1% people who are smart enough to figure out what the fuck's going on before you say yay or nay to have a repair done. Most people just they it they're not they hate the player, not the game. And it's and they shouldn't hate either one, really. I mean, if you feel like you're gonna get ripped off and that you know cars cost too much, fuck them. Don't drive them. Walk where you've got to go, motherfucker. Fucking walk or ride a bike. You'll figure out that you need a car sooner or later, and then maybe you'll change your fucking attitude. You know, seriously, you're the fucking problem. We're not the fucking problem. We're here to solve the fucking problems. You just don't want us to because you want to hang on to your money or you don't trust us, you think we're bad actors, you think we're trying to sell you stuff you don't need. The list goes on and on of fucking things that you think about automotive technicians, and most of them are fucking wrong. They're wrong. People I work with, that the technicians in the shop that I work with are honest, upright citizens who work hard and are trying to do the right thing all the time. We work for an extraordinarily reputable company who does an extraordinary job trying to present the value that we bring to our customers every fucking day. And yet people stand there and and oh I don't I don't want that, I don't want that, I don't need that, they fucking argue with us about the problems that we find. They they argue with us over the maintenance that they should perform on their car, they argue with us. They they don't want to do them. Look, you don't know how fucking brakes work. Why are you telling me you don't want rotors? I told you you need pads and fucking rotors. You fucking need pads and fucking rotors. I would prefer not, honestly, I would prefer not to have to do brakes. I feel happy when somebody comes in and their brakes are good and I don't have to fucking do them. Because I, for some reason, I'm like Pig Pen in the peanuts cartoons when I do brakes, man, it is the most disgusting, dirty, filthy thing in the world because you have hammered your brakes right down to nearly nothing, and there is brake dust all over every fucking thing. I'm gonna touch it, I'm gonna get it on my fucking clothes, I'm gonna get it on my shoes. If I have to take a piss, I'm gonna get it on my cock and balls. It's fucking disgusting. I don't want to have to fuck with your brakes. So if I tell you you need brakes, god damn it, you need fucking brakes. And if I tell you you need rotors, you fucking need them. But then they'll stand there and go, I don't want rotors. I don't want rotors. I don't want's not the right word, pal. Do you go to a hamburger joint and say, you know, just give me the bun. Fuck the meat. I don't want the meat. Oh, that's exactly what it is. You know, do you you you don't understand how the fucking system works, you don't understand why it works. In a lot of cases, in a real lot of cases, when we do pads and rotors, we have just reset your brakes back to a hundred percent. And if you don't do the fucking rotors, if you want, I'll just put pads on it. And our fucking our fucking service advisors are great at selling just the fucking pads. I think sometimes they sell just the fucking pads because they know it pisses me off. And I can't get anybody to agree with that one. But yeah, you know, it's what seems like. I mean, I had three cars uh last the last pay period where I quoted pads and rotors, and they just sold the pads. It's like, do you guys know how to do your job? Do you know what you're up to? Our fucking service advisors, I swear, I they just suck. They're not they're not any good at what they do. I gotta tell you, I'm I mean, I'm I want to I'm trying really hard not to go off on a rant here, okay, because I need these guys. But as terrible as I think they are and as bad at selling as they are, I still need them because they're not gonna replace them because oh, that's too much work. But if they saw how poorly they do their jobs, they would fucking just be like, what the fuck? I'll tell you, and this is this is something that I'm gonna I'm gonna address further down the line in this series, but uh there was an awful lot of work that got declined in the last pay period. And in a pay period where I personally set a goal of turning 120 hours, 60 hours every week for a two-week pay period, I made 53 hours for the entire pay period. I was there for a hundred hours, but I only had fifty-three hours. So uh my question is whose failure is that? Is that mine? Well, it's not mine. I mean, I'm not lazy. You're not ever gonna hear anybody call your uncle Jimmy lazy. Comes in and he breaks his ass doing what he's supposed to do, doing what he's gotta do, fixing what he's supposed to fix, doing his job. But if other people aren't gonna do their job, then it's it's all for nothing. And that's part of the problem, too. But and it plays into uh this whole thing with with society. People come in and and they're gonna fight you. They're gonna fight you. You know, that you tell them you need something, oh, you need a water pump, it's leaking. Oh, I don't want a water pump. It's like do you understand how machines work at all? I mean, yeah, you're treating your car like an it's an appliance, like it's an air fryer or a fucking toaster or a blender, you know, and then eventually you're just gonna throw it away and get a new one. But a car is so much deadlier than a blender. I mean, you sure you could kill somebody with a blender, right? You could conceivably kill somebody with an air fryer. I mean, you know, if you stuck vital parts of their body in there and cooked them, uh, or if you maybe just picked it up and smashed them over the head with it, you know. But an automobile is a very intricate and dangerous piece of equipment. And for you to just stand there and play to your worst fears, your worst anxieties, and not perform some of the services and maintenance and repairs that are needed on it, that's just dumb. That's just fucking dumb. But hey, you know what? As far as society is concerned, we're the fucking problem. The technicians are the fucking problem. And you know what? We are fucking not. We are not the problem. Now, uh one of the other one of the other stories I want to tell you was about uh and then this one I this happens to me occasionally, but this one really stood out to me. Uh, and I I expressed this story before. I was at the uh I was at the airport and it was early because I like to just make sure I'm not gonna miss my flight, which you know I've I've done that anyway, but uh I got to the airport a little bit early, and I was chilling at a Friday's, it was right next to the gate that I needed to be at, so I was like, okay, cool. And I'm sitting there, and then this guy, this guy rolls up on me, okay? Now, he's looking like every 90s John Hughes film anti-hero. He's looking like he looks like the antagonist in every movie, every teen movie you've ever seen. You know, he's blonde haired and he's got he probably had blue eyes. I don't know, I didn't look that close. And he's you know 6'1, and you know, he's he's wearing a uh blazer and a button down shirt and he's got nice shoes on, and he rolls up next to me. I've already been there for a few minutes, and he looks over at me and I'm you know, I'm just sitting there and he says, Hey, you look familiar. Do I know you? And I said, Uh, probably not, you know. And I don't, you know, I don't Don't get you know, I'm not gonna draw any conclusions from that kind of exchange. And then he says, What do you do for a living? I said, and I pulled out my famous line, and I said, Yeah, I'm an auto mechanic. And he went, Oh, and that was it. That was the end of it. And the look on his the look that washed over on his face, I almost laughed out loud. I didn't, um, because I was a little annoyed at the same time. I was annoyed and amused at the same time, which is you know it's kind of tough to pull off, but hey, Uncle Jimmy can do it, right? And I and he was like, Oh, you're just a piece of shit mechanic. It's basically he didn't say it. His body language said it. The look on his face said it. But that's that's what uh that's the impression that he got from me. Just telling him I'm an auto mechanic. And I know that a lot of you get that. A lot of you get that, a lot of you have that happen to you, and that's society's fucking problem. That is a problem with the people on this fucking planet. How can they look at somebody and draw some sort of conclusion like, oh, here's a guy who, you know, I mean, he says to me, I you look familiar. Okay, where am I going to look familiar to you? You know, I I mean, do I do I golf in the same golf course that you golf at? Do I work at the Porsche dealer where you get your car serviced? Uh, you know, am I uh am I a peer of yours at uh you know, basketball night at the YMCA or something? Or, you know, am I a friend of your brother's? Or, you know, is there some sort of social circle that I might be in that you're in also that that you would recognize me? And then to suddenly find out that my job is as uh an auto mechanic and to have that whole notion just disappear. It just disappears. You suddenly went from somebody that I feel like I might know to being somebody that I don't want to fucking know. Okay. And this right there, folks, that is the crux of the entire fucking problem with the technician shortage. Because why in the fuck would you sign up for that? Why would you sign up for that? I'm sure that there's kids out there. I know that I know that this has happened. I don't have to see statistics on it, I don't have to hear stories about it, I don't have to talk to somebody it happened to. I know that there's kids out there, not that many, not like there used to be, okay? Because before the internet came about, we had to get our information from books, uh, fucking encyclopedias, and magazines. And in my household, for me anyway, my formal education was auto mags, uh, automotive magazines, car magazines, car craft, hot rod, popular hot rotting, all those magazines, they came to my fucking house and I scoured them. I fucking immersed myself in them, and that's what I wanted to be. Actually, uh, truth be told, there was a cartoon that used to show up in Carcraft years ago called Crass and Bernie. And I always imagined myself as one of those two characters, even though they were a cartoon. They lived above their garage and they built fucking bitching hot rods all day and all night and ate pizza and burgers and went out with girls that had huge breasts all the time. It was a cartoon, but hey, you know what? Guy can dream, right? That's what I wanted to do. And you know what? You know what? I'll tell you something, and this is ridiculous, but that's the life I am actually leading. Because my apartment is not over the top of the rock and roll garage, it's next door, it's still on the second floor, but it's about 30 feet away. So I got as close as I possibly could to being this guy, and that's because I had passion for automobiles. And the passion was born out of the fact that I used to have to ride my 10-speed bike for three, four, five miles to get anywhere at all because there was really nothing around where I lived. And so when I finally got an automobile, when I finally got a car, it changed my entire world. It opened, it broadened my my horizons, it opened up all kinds of different sorts of opportunities, and I loved it. And I love cars. I've always loved them. My very first car is still the car that I love more than any any other car ever, even though I don't have that exact car. I have three fucking copies of it. I know make make all the jokes you want, but uh hey, that's that's what turns me on, okay? So back in our day, back in my day anyway, and not our day, I don't know who I'm talking to really specifically here. Uh back in my day, you had passion for cars because you didn't have the internet, you didn't have a phone that you could fucking dial up any information you want, and TV kind of sucked. I mean, you know, there were only three fucking channels. You didn't like what was on, you went outside and fucked around. You rode your bike, you fucking, you know, threw rocks and at stuff, and you you fucking went camping with your friends. You just did all kinds of different stuff. You never, you never stood around staring at the phone. You didn't that was not one of the things we did. But since then, since then, we have the internet. There's all kinds of information out there. We have phones where they have the internet on them, and cars are just a secondary sort of a thing to some people. Lots of people every year just decide I don't want a car, I don't want a driver's license, I don't need that. Have fun getting where you're going. Loser. So the dynamic for people who are into cars has changed completely. And the cars themselves have changed completely. I mean, back in my day, cars had carburetors on them and it points ignition and spark plug wires and shit. And now they don't have any of that fucking stuff, they don't have any of that fucking stuff. This shit's all gone. You can't even ask a kid nowadays how to spell carburetor, they're gonna get it wrong every fucking time. Society does not appreciate what we do at all. So when kids talk about, and then and this didn't used to be the way it was, I would say, you know, in my my youth, that becoming an auto mechanic was you know pretty viable occupation for a young, destructive little bastard like me. But uh nowadays, no way. Uh-uh. Uh-uh. I I imagine that this has happened to some of you out there, and and you can let me know, hit me up on the Facebook page if this has happened to you or what the story is, if you feel like you want to share. But I'm imagining that let's just say you're a guy who has a car in his garage. Okay, you're a mechanic, you're working as a mechanic at a dealership somewhere, or a shop, an independent shop, could be anywhere, and you have a project car at home in your garage. Maybe, you know, it could be anything from a 280 ZX Dotson, an E30 BMW, or a 68 Camaro, or maybe a Mustang, but you've got a car in your garage and you're working on it, okay? Maybe you're restoring it, or maybe you're putting a roll cage in it, maybe you're setting it up to go drag racing or uh circle track racing or dirt track racing or rally racing, whatever, whatever you're into, okay, because the the the genre, the whole idea of being an auto mechanic and performing your own repairs and your own modifications and racing or doing any of this stuff, okay, whether you're doing a frame off resto or whether you're updating your vehicle so it performs better in some sort of racing situation, the whole genre is huge. It is enormous and all-encompassing. But it is also a small minority of people actually do that compared to people who do everything else. Okay. There's lots of kids who are into cars, but they don't know anything about how they work. And there's lots of people who are into you know computers and things you can do with them and AI and all that stuff. And there's a lot of people who are into a lot of different things and they're all viable. But one thing that has become very uh prominent, let me put it that way, since about the mid-90s is that kids aren't really car people anymore. And automotive technicians, automotive mechanics, well, we're we're scumbags. We're bad actors. We're trying to rip people off. I mean, it wasn't invented in the 90s, but it's certainly got the knob turned up, at least as far as I'm concerned. And so, as I was saying, you're in the garage, you're working on a car, you know, maybe, maybe you're doing let's sit, let's just say you're doing a frame off resto on a 68 Camaro in your shop, in your garage at home. And the neighbors, you know, let's just pick a fictitious couple, maybe Jeff and Margie, and they have a son, and his name's Todd. And Todd comes over one day because his bike's broken, you know, his chain fell off, and his dad's all thumbs. You know, he's a coder uh uh at a computer company somewhere in town. He does IT stuff, and his dad doesn't he doesn't even have a crescent wrench or a pair of pliers at his house. So he comes over and he says, uh, hey, uh, you know, can you can you take a hey Uncle Jimmy, can you take a look at my my bike? Um and you know, and I'm I'm a friendly guy. I know a lot of you are super friendly guys. And you know, 13, 14-year-old kid comes over and he, you know, he says, Hey, my chain fell off. So you go and you get a wrench and you loosen up whatever you got to loosen up, you put the chain back on and the kid's good to go. And then he starts asking questions. Hey, what are you doing? I'm rebuilding my 68 Camaro. Holy cow! And you got it all torn apart. And and let me tell you something. For some people, seeing a car torn apart is fascinating. It's fascinating. You ever watch uh videos of them building these fucking things? Yeah, I do all the time. It's fucking awesome. I mean, it just it just tickles a mechanical itch in the back of my brain that I have, you know. So the kid starts coming over and and maybe he's helping you out. Maybe you show him how how to you know turn a nut or a bolt with a wrench, maybe you let him sandblast some of your parts in your sandblast cabinet, maybe you let him paint a couple of parts, maybe you you show them how some stuff goes together and how, you know, I mean, if he's never had anybody show him any of this shit, which isn't gonna happen. I mean, his dad's not mechanically inclined, his mom's not mechanically inclined, and and when he goes to school, there's no shop classes there. He's not gonna learn any of this stuff. So he's learning it from you, and and all of a sudden you see the kid's got a spark, and you're like, oh fuck, this isn't gonna end well, okay, because you're a smart guy, you know. His parents are not gonna appreciate you turning their fucking 10, 12, 14-year-old son into a little motorhead. They're not gonna appreciate that at all. In fact, they'll probably come over and tell you to stop fucking talking to their kid. Am I wrong? I'm not wrong. I know I'm not wrong. I've I've talked to people, I know people, and and I know that some of you have had this happen to you. Like, don't encourage our son to be an auto mechanic. You know, he comes back and you know, he's he's 14 years old, and people go come up to him all the time and go, hey, what do you want to be when you grow up? Now I want to be an auto mechanic. His parents are fucking spit up. They're spit up right on the spot. What the fuck did you just say? I mean, literally, you could tell your parents you wanted to be a porn star, they would probably be less upset with you than if you told them you wanted to be an auto mechanic. This is this this is the view that society has of us, okay? And this view that society has of auto mechanics and auto technicians is the fucking reason. I think it's the main number one reason for the technician shortage. Because let's just say, let's just say Todd, this the kid who came into your garage, you showed him some stuff, and he he's really hell-bent on doing this. He he gets on the computer, he starts looking at car stuff, he starts looking at how stuff's built, how motors work, how trannies work, rear ends, how they work, maybe, maybe even cooling systems, maybe he's getting into the physics of this. Maybe the kid's really smart. And if he wants to be an auto mechanic or work on cars, and he is smart, and his parents know he's smart because he gets good grades, he does well in school, and they have intelligent conversations with him, they're gonna be upset with you for directing him down a path that is gonna make him hated in society. And frankly, honestly, just a little part of me understands that. Do you want the best for your kid? Yeah. Do you want him to become a serial killer? No. Do you want him to become a mechanic? No. You want him to work in a cubicle somewhere, typing in shit, maybe coding, maybe data entry, whatever. Maybe he's a researcher. It doesn't even really matter. You want him to be really literally anything except a fucking auto mechanic. And these people are not alone. They're out there by the hundreds of fucking millions. This is why schools don't have automotive programs, because nobody wants to see their kid enrolled in them. This is why there are no technicians out there, because all of these kids in their most impressionable years have been steered towards literally everything fucking else. There's an old saying back home that I remember from when I was younger. People would want to build a plant, or they would want to build a uh a warehouse of some sort, or maybe some sort of industrial facility, and it was really close to people's neighborhoods. And they would have a thing called NIMBY, and it was not in my backyard, is what it stood for. It was an acronym. Well, this is the same thing that's going on with this. People out there are upset because there's not enough technicians to work on all the cars that are broken every fucking day, but they don't want their fucking kid to do it. Somebody else's kid can do it. Well, guess what? Nobody else's kid is fucking doing it. Honestly, I paint a pretty bleak picture, okay? But I don't think I'm that far off. And society definitely does not like us. Society has definitely painted us with a broad brush as fucking bad actors and assholes and thieves and rip-off artists. They have. They have. And there's nobody out there. Fight me if you want. Most people don't look at technicians and think, wow, there's a guy who earns an honest living. We're not fucking saying that. Jesus Christ. Are you fucking stoned? No, they're saying, oh, there goes a mechanic. Wonder who he ripped off today. And here's another part of the problem. This whole attitude, this whole way that society sees us bleeds over into the facilities that we work in. Uh oh. Holy shit. What? Are you serious? Yeah, I'm fucking serious. Talk to some of the fucking people that work in your building with you. If you work in a dealership, talk to a finance manager. Talk to a general manager, even. Talk to a salesman, maybe receptionists. How about a guest service person, somebody who who deals with that stuff? How about a lot porter, maybe even? Talk to them. Say, hey, what do you think about mechanics? What do you think about technicians? And they'll try the wow. You know, technicians are very important. Bullshit. You think we're fucking gorillas. We're monkeys with we're grease monkeys with fucking wrenches and screwdrivers and bad attitudes. And we fucking speak in obscenities all fucking day long. Well, that part's true. But they don't have the highest opinion of us either. And I have fucking heard it. I have heard it with my own ears. I remember I was at a a shop, not the one I'm at now, but I was in a shop before this one, and I heard one of the salespeople say, and then and they don't last that long, okay? I mean, they're either really good or they're just gone. But I heard one of the not really good ones who wasn't there long say, Why do we have to have a service department? I heard him say it. I heard it with my own ears. I was just like, oh, this is really what they think up front? Yeah, it fucking is. They don't understand why they have to have a service department. I've seen the attitude of general managers who were not all that happy with the fact that we had to have a fixed ops department, a service department, whatever you want to call it. They never, they never, not ever, ever, ever once came out back. And when they did, it was like, oh, holy shit, what's wrong? Is somebody getting fired? I mean, it was that kind of deal. And sure, they were nice to you to your face, but then after you leave, after you get done talking to them, they look through their purse to see if anything's missing. I'm not even making that up. I'm not that that I'm not making that part up at all. I heard somebody say that. And I, you know, if somebody was to say that to me and say, Well, I don't feel like we need to have a service department, we just sell cars here. I go, Yeah, do you sell perfect cars? Well, no, we don't sell perfect cars. No shit, asshole. What do you think I'm here to do? You stupid fuck? No, the way society thinks and feels about us is a very bad thing because this is, I mean, on top of all the other reasons, which I'm gonna document later, on top of all of the reasons why we might not want to do this job, is the fact that if we do do the job, people are good just gonna automatically hate us. And it's not this is not a fallacy. This is not my opinion. This is just the straight up fucking truth. Who wants to take a job where you're hated? I mean, literally, I feel like we're treated like like we were in a fucking SS during World War II. I feel like we we we're serial killers. That's how poorly we're treated. You take a list and make a list of people of occupations that people don't like. We're gonna be in the top five. We're gonna be in the top five. And you want to know something? Here's here's something that's fucked up for you. Here's something that's fucked up for you, especially if you're not a technician and you're listening to this. We don't deserve it. We don't deserve it. Yes, I will agree there are some bad actors out there. There are some people who will try to rip you off. There will be some people who will try to sell you stuff you don't need. And and I if I could do something about that, I certainly would. But because you have one or two bad apples and maybe you have a bunch of bad apples, the rest of us who are out there trying to do the job the best we can in the most honest way possible, with integrity, we don't fucking deserve the way we're treated. We don't we just don't deserve it. When you bring your car to me and I make an estimate for something that you need, god damn it, you fucking need it. I am not, and and I'll tell you what, I let more people off the hook with stuff. I really do. I'm I've got I've got three levels of stuff I'm supposed to list, okay? Green, yellow, and red. I think all of you are familiar with this, okay? If it's green, okay, nothing's needed. If it's yellow, it's gonna be needed soon. If it's red, it's needed now. I skip the yellow quite a bit. My yellow is low. If people brakes are still good, but they're getting close. I'm not gonna hit them with yellow. I don't need to ramp on somebody's anxiety. When they get to the point where they need to be done, I'll mark them red. I'll mark them red and I'll create an estimate and I'll watch the service advisor fold right before my very eyes and sell just the pads when you need pads and rotors. It happens to me all the fucking time. But that that particular that particular uh part of the uh of the series is down the road a piece, okay? I'm not gonna go there right now as far as that goes, because that is another reason why there's a shortage. It is a definite, honest to God, according to Hoyle, reason why there's a shortage. But for right now, I'm I'm gonna I wanted to concentrate on the way society looks at us. What I would like to try to do is offer some solutions. Now, the damage is done, and unfortunately we have to live with it. Unfortunately, I have to watch people recoil in horror when I tell them I'm an auto mechanic, and I feel like that's gonna that's gonna go on for a long time. And any improvement we make in our actual reputation as a as a genre, as auto mechanics, as auto technicians, and really of technicians of any kind that work on stuff that people fuck up, I feel like the solutions are really, really long term, and I can't even say to you that I would guarantee success. I would never I would never try to guarantee success. Okay. Now, I think a lot of us by now are familiar with uh the CEO of Ford, uh Mr. Farley, having addressed the problem in a public manner. Uh there's something that that isn't being reported along with this, okay? So Jim Farley comes out and he says, Oh, I have 5,000 open jobs in Ford dealerships. Well, uh let's separate uh the fact from the fiction here, okay? Mr. Farley himself probably does not own even one single Ford dealer. All those dealerships are privately owned, and uh probably a very large chunk of them are owned by automotive groups. You know, your uh uh Lithia, Auto Nation, Group One, maybe even uh, you know, there's just a million of them, really literally there's a million of them out there. Some of them are big, some of them are small, and a lot of them own Ford dealers. So when Mr. Friarly says to you that he has 5,000 open bays and he needs 5,000 technicians, he's not talking about Ford Motor Company. Ford Motor Company gets its employees via the UAW. They're union workers. They're well paid. They're well paid. It's a collective bargaining thing. Uh they have specific benefits, which would fucking make you gag if you heard what they are. They're probably awesome because that's one of the things you get with collective bargaining. You know, you you go and you go work for Ford, you become a member of the union, the union looks after you. You pay them dues, yeah, but they look after you. And here's the other thing, too. You work at a Ford assembly plant, you're not working for the general public. You're not fixing uh a 77 F-150, you're not fixing a fucking 86 Ford Mustang, you're not fixing a mid-80s escort or a fucking, you know, whatever the fuck else they have. You're not fixing grand marquees or or fucking LTDs, you're not you're not fixing cars, you're fucking building them. Jim Farley is in charge of building them. He does not have a technician shortage. It is not technically his fucking problem. It is the problem of the dealership network that he ships his cars to. And you want to know something? Jim Firley, the CEO of Ford, has no more control over how these dealerships are run than you or I do. He has no control over them. And let's just say, let's pick a nice round number. Let's just say there's there's probably way more than this, but let's just use this as a number. Let's say there's 500 Ford dealerships in the country. Out of that 500 Ford dealerships, probably 75% of them have open bays where they could have a technician, but they don't have one. But then there's probably 25% of Ford dealers out there who have all the technicians that they need. Every base full, all the techs are happy, they show up to work, they fix the cars, everything's hunky dory. Now, not everything is going to be hunky dory. There's no way. As a group, you and I, we're some of the crankiest sons of bitches on the fucking planet. Some of us complain endlessly, and I mean endlessly. I'm one of them sometimes. But for the most part, for somebody who knows what they're doing, and whether it's An owner or a general manager or a service manager, fixed ops director, whatever it is. Some but some of these people out there know what they're doing. They know what needs to be done, and they understand how to get the job done. And so for them, they have all the technicians that they need. They pay them well, they take care of them, they show them appreciation, they know their names, they know the names of their wives usually, they know the names of their kids, what schools they go to, what they excel at. They know them. They're human beings to them. They're not scumbag technicians, they're human beings. I just happen to fix cars for them. They get treated well, they get paid well, and they're looked after and appreciated. And guess what? That guy who runs that dealership with that mentality, his techs love him, and guess what? He does not have a technician shortage, does he? No, he does not. He probably has two or three, two or three applications, and maybe even up to 20, 25, maybe even 100 on file because the technicians that work there say, hey, where I work, it's a great place to work. How many of you can say that? How many of you out there can honestly say where I work is a great place to work? Yeah, not many, right? Not many. And you know why? Because your managers and the people who run your shops, the shop owner, maybe even, they see you just exactly the same way as society sees you. They're gonna treat you like shit. They're gonna pay you absolutely the least amount of money they could possibly pay you and still have you show up for work. They're not gonna offer you top-notch benefits. They don't give a fuck what the name of your wife is. They don't give a fuck how many kids you have. They don't care where you live, how far away you are. They're gonna give you shit if you're late for work, if it snowed fucking half a foot overnight and you live 30 miles away and you show up 10 minutes late, they're gonna fucking give you shit because you are working for what I like to call a stupid fucking asshole who is gonna moan and complain, I have a technician shortage, yeah, I'm a technician shortage. And I'll tell you what, Mr. Farley or even Mary Barra GM could come down to your fucking place and bring along a mirror and show you exactly why you have a technician shortage. Yeah. It's fucking because of you.

unknown 46:17

Bick.

SPEAKER_00 46:18

Now, as far as solutions go, what you need to do, let's just say you're an owner and you have a service manager and you also have a technician shortage. You have 10 lifts, you have four technicians, you have a shortage. Accountants everywhere in the world. I don't give a fuck what language they speak, they will tell you. If you have 10 lifts, you should have 10 technicians. That maximizes that maximizes the amount of hours that are turned, that maximizes the amount of money you make. You have 10 lifts and you have four guys, you've got six cars on six lifts that aren't being fucked with at all, and that's costing you money. It doesn't technically cost you any more money than it would cost you if they were empty, but it costs you money that you could have earned. Okay, there's a difference, okay? You're not losing money, but you're not making money. And probably the reason that you have a technician shortage is because you're a fucking asshole. A cheap scumbag asshole. Okay, let that sink in. What's the fix? What's the fix? How do we fix society? How do we fix the fucking crowbars that run your shops, who are also, guess what, part of society. Yeah. How do we fix it? Well, I honestly, I mean, you might want to call it, you could call it anything you want. It might be sensitivity training. If you're not sensitive to what's going on with your technicians, if you don't give a fuck about them at all, you should probably expect them to leave. Because I know, despite what you think, despite the rumors, technicians are fucking people. And we, and because of in some cases, okay, myself especially even, we have endeavored to train, get ourselves trained to an extraordinary level so that we can be as absolutely valuable as possible for you and for your customers. Right now, if I was to roll in to a shop, let's just say I rolled into an independent shop and they brought me a car that was from the brand that I've been working for for the last 23 years, I could fix it without any trouble at all. It'd be like falling off a log. It'd be simple. No matter what the fuck it is. Now, how are you gonna pay me? Are you gonna pay me with a wage that puts me just barely above the poverty level? How fucking long do you think that's gonna last? How long do you think somebody's gonna hang around where you're paying him literally pennies on the dollar compared to his value, compared to what he's worth? How long is that gonna go on? How long is how long do you think somebody's gonna let you take advantage of them? Not gonna happen. So, really, the problem with fixing society needs to start right in the building. The people that you work for. Oh, yeah, they sure they may be nice and they may be friendly, but they probably deep down still won't think much of you. I know that that's true. I can see it. I can see it. When I talk to somebody who feels like I am a lowlife, really, quite honestly, a lowlife or a scumbag, and they talk to me, and they're you can't just fake the sincerity necessary to show someone that you really honestly appreciate them. You can't fake it. Okay, there's not there's no actor out there good enough to fake the sincerity necessary for us to believe that you really care about us, that you appreciate what we do. There, there you can't take acting lessons for all of your life. You're not gonna be able to pull it off. We're gonna be able to see right through it. We're gonna be able to see right through it. So you can take a and bring a mirror into your service department, and when you look at the reason why you only have four texts, which you have ten lifts, and show that mirror to every single person there, any service advisors you might have, sometimes even the parts guys, and definitely for you and any office personnel you might have. Yeah, the way you treat these people. Now, that doesn't mean that everybody in a building is gonna treat a technician like a piece of shit. That doesn't mean that, but I think an overwhelming majority of people carry that with carry that around in their back pocket. They could meet you and personally decide they like you, and that'd be okay. That'd be okay. But they need to change your attitude about the entire genre, about all technicians, not just one technician. But it I I really honestly believe it is gonna be one technician at a time that helps to turn this around. And uh I I you know, and I hate to bring this up because I did a whole series on this not too long ago, but I think that one of the things that is, and you know what's coming, but one of the things that is gonna help us turn society around, and it's gonna be one fucking stone at a time. It is not gonna be masses, massive amounts of people, it is not gonna be an overnight thing, you know. It is not gonna be like an election where we have a new president or we have a new uh congressman for our area. It's gonna take a long fucking time. But I think that the video, the videos that we make, a lot of us are making videos on cars and talking and speaking directly to the customer as a technician and showing them what's going on with their car. That is gonna help us. I don't even want to say restore a reputation. We never had a reputation to restore. We never had a good reputation. It was bad, it was always bad. But yeah, they the video could definitely help us get people to learn, not maybe, maybe not to trust us, but not to hate us at least, okay? Not to look at us as scumbags or bad actors or whatever you want to call us. Now, as far as could as far as videos go, now as far as videos go, there are two types. I believe. This is my personal opinion. The first type of video is really short, it's a minute long, maybe, maybe a minute and a half long, and it just shows the customer what the hell is wrong with their car and why they need it. And it's obviously a sales tool. And people, I think a lot of people, a lot of customers are gonna see right through that and dismiss the video as just some sort of fucking tool to help the service advisor sell. That is, if the service advisor is interested in selling, lots of times they're not, and the video uh becomes a waste of time if they don't want to sell, and if they do want to sell, it becomes a waste of time because the customers are gonna become numb to them. They're gonna dismiss the video and what they see in the video because it's always gonna be about what you need to buy, and they don't want to hear that, and that's why they don't like us because they feel like we're trying to pick their pocket or snatch their purse. I am of a different school of thought with the video where you need to go through and show them everything that's good on the video, and it and if something's bad, you don't let up, you don't have to let up, okay? If you show them 10, 15 things on the car that are in good shape, all the systems are working properly, everything looks good, but you got tires that need to be replaced. Maybe one, maybe two, maybe all four. But if you show them that everything's good except these fucking tires, and maybe you even explain to them why they need tires, say, listen, and I've gotten to the point where in my videos, and and I know that Eric used to come on here and and and tell you that, you know, if you want to learn how to do videos, you should learn from me. And you could learn a lot from me because I've done a million, I've I've probably honestly, and this is no hyperbole, I've probably done 10,000 videos easily, and I've enjoyed a fair amount of success with them because sometimes advisors that typically don't ever sell anything suddenly sell stuff. And I know it's not because they tried, it's because the customer saw it in the video and realized that they needed it from what I showed them and what I told them. So even a longer video that fills the customer in on the actual condition of all the components on their car, and oh, by the way, one or two bad things, that video is is the kind of video that works better, in my opinion. It allows the customer to see parts of their car they never see, it allows them to learn that those parts are good, that every that this part's good, that part's good, all these parts over here are good, everything here is good, it's all mechanically in excellent condition. And then if they've got something wrong, because I'll tell you, probably one out of every four videos, there's nothing wrong. I see we I'm working at a new car dealer. Our customer base is super, super young. Okay, the oldest car that we sold brand new is just a year and a half old, might still be considered new by the customer, even, and they're not fucking up yet because they're good cars. I work for a high line Euro line. Their cars are excellent, they're they're engineered to the nth degree, the design is good. The main the uh execution of the construction of the vehicle is bar none is the most excellent out there. The quality control is top-notch. We get the vehicles, we look them over, there's never anything wrong with them. We put them out on a lot, we sell them to people who drive them. They drive them like madmen, they drive them like assholes, they drive them like race cars, and they come in and they don't need anything still. When they do need something, we tell them how everything on the car is in good shape except this. You know, 10, 15, 20 items on the car are in good shape. This one item needs some attention. I think personally it makes them feel good about their car and the fact that they bought it, and the fact that they brought it to me, and the fact that I'm looking at it, and I'm not trying to line my wallet or you know, boost my bank account. I'm not trying to do that at all. In fact, I'll cut some of our customers slack on some of the stuff when I know that they're not going to need it for a little while. There's no need for me to give them any kind of cause for anxiety by telling them, hey, you know, you're getting low here, you're getting low there. Well, I'll do it. And then in some cases, even try to explain to them why certain things are necessary. Uh, my famous example is, and you've heard this before, I'm sure, is brake fluid flushes. Lots and lots of car companies don't recommend brake fluid flushes. That's fine. But do you know, do you, as a technician or does your customer know why my particular brand of cars definitely recommends a brake fluid flush? Do you know? Uh I've explained it in videos. Brake fluid absorbs water. Water is a shitty brake fluid. Water boils at 212 degrees or 100 degrees Celsius. As brake fluid, that makes it no bueno. Because when fluids boil, they become a gas. And guess what? If your brake fluid boils and becomes a gas, you can squeeze the piss out of it, which means that your brake pedal is going to go right to the fucking floor and nothing is going to happen. Nothing is going to happen. It cools down and becomes a liquid again, then yeah, it'll start working again. It's called brake fade. Big problem on race cars, let me tell you what. That's why you get brake fluid that doesn't boil in a brake car at like 1,500 degrees. You don't really need that in a streetcar unless you're driving it like a race car. So you understand that the video is probably the number one thing that you can do to help your own situation out as a technician, to help society learn to like you, to help society to stop feeling like you're fucking trying to rip them off and fucking steal their purse or fucking pickpocket them. Do you understand? Now I've come up with a crazy solution because I can't, I can't possibly, I can't possibly do a podcast without fucking jumping over the edge of reality into a a world of uh of make-believe. Can't do it. Now, if Mr. Farley wants to talk about the technician shortage, even though it doesn't affect him at all, technically, here's something that they could do. Ford and General Motors could get together and sponsor some sort of media. And when I say some sort of media, it could be a YouTube TV show, it could be a TV show on regular TV, it could be a channel on uh on on, you know, it could just be a channel in on Amazon Prime, or it could even be a movie. But what it would show is, and you would have to use actors, okay? Couldn't use technicians, because you and I both know that we're an in in this doesn't fit really, really well. It's like a square peg and a round hole, doesn't fit really, really well, but a lot of us as technicians, some of us are cranky, obnoxious, ignorant fucks. And then not to put you down, because I'm right there in that fucking barrel with you. We're not actors, okay? We're not performers. Some of us don't speak very well at all. Just listen to this guy. Fucking get the idea. A lot of times we use a lot of obscenities. Fuck, I know I do. So you would want to you would want to put together, and and Ford and General Motors should pay for this, I believe, because this does affect them. They put together a show that shows technicians as thoughtful, smart, intelligent people doing important work for customers, and then showing some of the absolute st unbelievably stupid shit that we have to put up with, showing some of the problems that arise, and maybe just maybe uh showing a couple of technicians in in a situation where they did something they shouldn't do. And they are chastised uh vehemently or perhaps even fired, just to let them know that yeah, it it is there, they are out there, and it does happen. But most shops and most dealerships and most auto groups are very diligent about weeding out people who can't do the job or who do it in a in a very uh very evil way and a very non, you know, they're very dishonest about it. It shows that these people are people who have lives, who have wives and kids and dogs and and hobbies. It it shows them as uh upright citizens who do good things all day long, who help people. It can show all of the situations that we get into where communication just sucks dick or somebody doesn't do something they're supposed to do. Uh, I think that, you know, it it I could even dream up a good dozen, even two dozen episodes for them. You know, give them the basic premise, write some of the dialogue. I could do it. I know that I could do it because I'm living it and you're living it. Okay, it would be a more truthful, more honest portrayal of what it's like to do what we do. And yeah, there there's there's always going to be some drama, and there's always gonna be some tomfuckery going on at every shop. There's all there always is. But for the most part, in in almost all of your shops out there, ladies and gentlemen, you're getting the job done and you're getting it done right. Am I correct in thinking this or am I wrong? I mean, I don't know. I I feel like all the people I met show up to work to do the best that they can and to make as much money as they can. But doing the best that they can comes first. And earning money from that is is the follow-up. You do good work, you get paid. That is strictly my opinion. I could honestly probably in a span of a week write a dozen episodes for a show like that. Make up characters, make up problems on the cars, make up certain circumstances that cause specific problems and how they should get handled or how they don't get handled, all of it. It's just would be from my experience in the business. And a lot of you have had different experiences than I have. We could certainly uh mine all of your input from you guys. I mean it. I I think that this is something viable. It could be a movie, it could be a TV show, it could be uh it could be half an hour even, or it could be an hour. It would kind of be like a crime drama where they, you know, like law and order, where they they they show a guy dead at the beginning of it, and then they figure out who fucking caused this and then how to arrest them and how to put together evidence, and then at the end, they either get convicted of it and go to jail or they get off. We could do the exact same thing. We could follow a car through the shop that has a problem, and maybe even the customer's not aware of it. And and every week it could be a different car, it could be a different kind of car, it could be different actors every week. This would do a lot of different things that are good for us. Number one, I mean, think about the repercussions of something like this. Number one, people would become interested in what goes on in our shops because they're seeing it on TV. They you know they might see somebody who who rolls in for an oil change and we discover they have uh uh water pump leaking and they're within warranty by like three days. So we take care of it, we fix it, and then everything just works out perfectly for them. And these people who are watching this could be like, wow, is that really what goes on there? They don't because they don't know. They don't fucking know, folks. They don't know what we do, they don't like us because of their fear of the unknown. This would help fill them in on some of the things that we do so that when they go, and and and and of course this is gonna happen. You know, they go, Well, I saw something leaking under my car, I was wondering if my water pump leaks. Well, that's a perfectly reasonable thing to wonder, but we're the pros. We'll take a look and we'll let you know. Maybe you overfilled the fucking washer solvent bottle and you don't have a problem at all. Because you know, fucking hey, that happens, right? It happens. We had a situation in the car, I just want to put this out there real quick, where if you overfilled the washer solvent bottle, it would cause the overflow vent to siphon out about half a gallon or about half a quart of the washer solvent. Personally experienced it. Do you think I could explain to a customer that this was happening? No, he wasn't buying it. He was a total physics idiot. He didn't understand that if you overfill something and you cause the vent tube to start to siphon out all the water, it's gonna siphon it out until it gets down to a certain level and then it's gonna stop. Anyone who's ever siphoned anything knows that if you don't lift up the jug you're siphoning from higher than the jug you're siphoning to, the whole fucking thing comes to a screeching halt. This guy didn't understand that. There's things that we would be able to show in a show like this, situations that we that would happen, things that would that would pop up. I mean, uh we would have a whole episode on rodent damage. Dude, you you guys know some of you, some of you have this problem. We have a pretty bad here. It's not like you know, they're not chewing the mirrors off the side of the car or anything like that, but they're chewing up wiring. Shit's not gonna work right if the wiring to it isn't fucking intact. And if we could just show some of the wiring all fucked up and how we try to fix it, and maybe it gets to the point where we have to replace a harness. And then we show, uh, because this would be good for people to learn too. Then we show how we have to deal with adjusters, uh, aftermarket warranty companies, and insurance companies. And if we showed all of that, people would just be going, oh, that's why I couldn't get my car back for five days, because you had to wait four days for an advisor for uh an advisor to show up, and then he decided that, well, they they don't need that part. They just need this one part, they don't need the other part. I I gotta tell you, I honestly, you know, you know, you were all you're all like me. Don't you just love having to diagnose something twice because you have to show an insurance adjuster what the fuck is wrong? Oh, why does this need to be replaced? Did you read what I wrote? Yeah, but I need to see it. I need to take a picture of this of the smell. I need to take a picture of a leak. I need to I need a picture of the failure. I go, why don't I just take a fucking selfie asshole? That's another thing that we could show our customers. Because they're gonna get mad at us as technicians for not fixing their car right away when we have to wait for some ding dong to come out and go, yeah, what they said is wrong is wrong. Oh, we'll go ahead and pay for it then. Lots of times you and I know that if we're seeing an adjuster, that's the insurance company admitting out loud that they don't really want to pay for it, but they will if they have to. I honestly think that that is uh a workable solution. Okay. Now that's not going to fix the whole problem. It's only going to start to fix some of it with the video, with the videos that we make of the cars and a TV show like this that maybe people get interested in. I'm imagining that it probably wouldn't do very well. I think a lot of people are not interested in finding out what it's like being an auto mechanic. They just wouldn't care. You know, they'd move on and watch a show about World War II or World Cup soccer or baseball or something else. They wouldn't watch that. There's too much stuff out there to watch, you know. And of course, you know, to make a show like that watchable, they would have to invent some drama. And they could certainly do that. And and they would have, I believe honestly, they would have to hire actors. I don't think they could hire uh technicians, they could have uh technicians come on as technical advisors. And say, oh, that would never happen, you know, the way that's written, or if that happened, it would have to be this kind of car, or, you know, that sort of thing. To make it right, it would take a lot of work. And I think honestly, uh, if Ford and Chevrolet and General Motors got together and sponsored something like that, they could put the message out there that technicians are very important to the whole broad spectrum of the automotive industry instead of just being an afterthought and being a bunch of guys who are out there to rip people off and steal money and place parts that don't need to be replaced. Okay. Now, I don't really have any other honest to God solutions to that problem. I can't change society. Society is not going to change overnight. It's going to have to be changed little by little by little, but it's not going to change in at any kind of a rate now because even the people that we work for are part of that problem. So really that's honestly where uh that where there needs to be a change is how we're viewed just by society, but by the actual people that we work for. All right. Uh I had a whole bunch of other stuff I wanted to try to bring you tonight, uh, including uh some stuff from Runchway. But there's stuff the the stuff I found here is a little dated, but it says that uh uh there are 400,000 technicians needed by 2024. Well, we we went past that signpost a long time ago. Uh it says here that uh total of, and this they're talking about collision techs and diesel technicians of 600,000, again, 2024. So the shortage is getting worse. You're hearing less about it, and a lot of people are not really signing up to do anything about it because they, you know, I mean, who is influencing kids nowadays? Their parents, their teachers, and other assorted people that they come in contact with at school, and there isn't really any of them out there who would steer a bright, smart uh kid with a with a bright future who's intelligent. There's not a single one of them out there who would steer a kid towards a career as an auto mechanic. Not not a one of them, not a single one of them. So we have a lot, a lot of work to do. There's some people out there who could help us out with this. They're probably not going to. The problem is probably not going to get solved by that, but it is uh I think it's where it needs to start, and I honestly think that that's where it could actually come to an end. When I get to the point where I think I should just stop talking and let you mull over what I've said, I usually just go see ya.