Episode 347: The Technician Shortage Part III: The Bullsh*t Factor

On this weeks episode of Grease The Wheels, Uncle Jimmy expands on the concept of “The Bullsh*t Factor” Quite simply put, this is anything that makes your job as a technician more difficult. This can from the environment, such as shops that are not properly climate controlled for the climate that they are in. It can also come from management and other support staff, being either too involved or not involved enough in keeping up standards, or adding steps to processes that should be incredibly simple. It can come from ownership that sees their technicians and support staff less as an investment, and more as a cost. It can also come from Parts Departments, usually because they are so underpaid for the job that they do. The bottom line is that if the effort is not there, and the view on the fixed ops department is that it is not a good investment but rather a human run impediment to selling more cars — then the situation is never going to improve and it is time to grease them wheels. 
 
 Also Uncle Jimmy resurrects an old intro format and gets an amber alert that almost completely derails an important bit. 

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 0:09

All right, boys and girls, once again it's Green Stheels time with your Uncle Jimmy. Sorry, I had to do a little throwback action for you. If you're a longtime listener, you might remember. We used to start that. We used we used to start with that. Uh sorry, that's one of my favorite songs, but uh what can I do? Hey, uh, welcome in to the uh rock and roll garage here. It's your Uncle Jimmy being an asshole behind the microphone today, bringing you uh your podcast, your weekly Technician podcast called Grease the Wheels. Hey, how are you doing out there, all you greasers? Uh, I hope you're doing well. Hope everything's going good for you. Want to say my uh ritual thank you very much for what you do. Uh, I'm not gonna be too elaborate on it uh at this time. I just want to say a simple thank you and know that uh your Uncle Jimmy appreciates what you do. Now, what I want to do uh this week, I want to bring you part three and the final part really, because uh, you know, I was thinking I might do three uh three parts or four parts. I'm gonna skip the fourth part and just do do three parts. Three parts in why there is a technician shortage. Okay, this is part three. Part one dealt with the society and how people in general feel about us, and uh this uh that feeling has a tendency to bleed into the people we work for, and it's an unfortunate thing. And I don't think there's really all that much we can do about it. I came up with a few different ideas, but uh I don't it's just not gonna they're not gonna provide any immediate uh any immediate change, any immediate uh improvement of our reputation with uh with people who don't do what we do. Sorry about that. I I can't I can't promise you anything. I really can't, not in that department. Society dislikes us. And uh if society doesn't like us, then uh, you know, why would anybody want to do what we do? That's basically what it comes down to. That's really that was part one. And uh that's one of the I think it's a I think it's a large, I don't know how you guys feel about it. I really don't get much feedback from you guys, which is fine. I understand you're busy. I'm busy too. I'm doing, you know, I I kind of take uh uh time out of my day to do this podcast for you, and hopefully maybe it helps, maybe it doesn't help, maybe you don't give a fuck. I don't I don't know really, honestly, uh how well or good or bad the podcast is received. And uh really gotta be honest with you, don't give a fuck. It's a Monday. Uh normally I do these on Sunday, or at least I try to do it on Sunday. Uh, but when they do a Monday podcast, you're anxious, tense, and uh worked up from working on Monday, at least I am. And so you're gonna hear a lot more swearing because on Sunday I'm trying to chill, but on Monday I'm back to the fucking grind and I'm fucking grinding hard and it makes the podcast angry. And maybe uh maybe that's one of the reasons why society doesn't like us very much because we have a tendency to use a lot of four-letter words in the shop, uh, in general public, and just basically all the time. There's that. Uh moving forward, part two was about the money, really. And uh it was I know that it was choppy and some parts of it probably didn't make a lot of sense, and I apologize for that, but uh I don't know. I just it's tough for me to talk about the money because uh and and I know a lot of you are just gonna chafe at this, and I get it, but I'm not really a money-oriented person. I'm not driven by the almighty dollar. I'm not even sure what I'm actually driven by, but it isn't the it isn't money. Uh but I know, seriously, that almost all of you are driven by money and that it's very important for you. And it pays for a lot of things that you have in your life. For me, it just pays for car parts, and uh, I gotta pay rent on my garage. I gotta pay rent on the rock and roll garage, and I gotta pay rent on my apartment and that sort of thing. But for you, I know that it's much more important because you have a lot of you have kids, have a wife, have maybe parents or grandparents you're trying to take care of, or at least help out, and you know, you're trying to make car payments and mortgages and you got to pay taxes, which sucks majorly dick, and uh all kinds of things that go on with money. And what I was talking about in in the podcast, part two, was whether or not the money was worth all of the bullshit that you had to put up with. And that that sparked me to uh invent what I call the bullshit factor. And really at the end of the day, to summarize part two, the bullshit factor has a lot to do with the pay, a real lot to do with the pay. And what it comes down to is is the pay enough to put up with the amount of bullshit that you have to endure to earn it. And I I think for a lot of us, we cheater on the fucking edge of that. I mean, some of us are hanging off a cliff by our fingernails on that one. It's like if we did, if we made even you know, 50 cents less an hour, we'd fucking screw. And and your employers have done that, I believe honestly, they've done that on purpose. They want to pay you as little as possible and still have you come to work. And so, and I mean there's a I I feel honestly that there's a great many employers who are trying to employ that tactic. Now, they won't come out and tell you, but you can see it in even the want ads that they post all over the internet, whether you're on Indeed or even some of the other ones anymore. I don't know, some of them come and go and they're gone. You know, there used to be uh uh quite a few of them, and I I don't see them anymore. Monster was one, Dice, uh Indeed's one that I look at quite a bit. Um, and when I look, I see that there are fucking just absolutely enormous amounts of ads for auto technicians in any any genre, okay, whether you're uh domestic or Japanese or European, whether you specialize in one brand or whether you can do everything and you want to work in an independent or you can work in an independent, uh, the ads are out there and they're the real litmus test for the fact that there is a fucking technician shortage. It's out there, it exists, okay? Uh and it exists mainly for the dumb motherfuckers who are just trying to pay you as little as they possibly can and still have you work for them. Because in your particular case, you're the gentleman, you're the people, you're the ladies too, you're the people who are hanging off the edge of the cliff by your fingernails. And if the bullshit gets a little deeper, gets a little bit more harsh, and starts hitting you in the face instead of just hitting you in the hands and in the stomach or in the chest, and the pay doesn't measure up. See you later. Grease the wheels, right? That's what's going to happen. That's why, that's why there's a technician shortage. You're not paying a wage commensurate with the bullshit that we have to put up with. Now, what I wanted to do in part three here is clarify the bullshit factor. And basically, what it comes down to, the bullshit factor is a measurement of all of the stuff that you have to deal with on a daily basis. On a daily basis. And some of it you don't have to deal with on a daily basis. Some of it comes along on Thursdays, some of it comes along every other Monday, some of it is so random it happens once a month, some of it is really random and happens once a year. And maybe you dread it or maybe you look forward to it. But if it's not something that increases your productivity and the amount of money that you earn, then it's part of the bullshit factor. Okay, the bullshit factor is a measurement of shit that should not be present in your occupational world. Okay. That's what it is, basically a measurement of that stuff, okay? And there's and and the bullshit that develops the bullshit factor. Now, I what I did try to do was I tried to graph and I failed miserably. This is why I'm doing it on Monday, because I tried to do it yesterday and I just couldn't put myself together to get it done. And I don't I don't I honestly feel like I need to describe to you exactly what the bullshit factor is. I think you're you're already dealing with it, and you probably don't even really have a name for it, but you know it exists and you're familiar with what I'm talking about, okay? And I'm just putting a name to it, just so that we can talk about it. The bullshit fact. And I want to talk about uh where it comes from and why it exists and how to make it go away, how it should go away, or what should happen instead of what is happening, and then we're gonna rank some of these. Now it didn't add up to an any kind of a measurable number. I just started writing down random things that could random things that could cause you bullshit in your life at work as an automotive technician. And then what you're gonna have to do is decide where you fall on a scale of one to a hundred as far as the bullshit goes. And maybe when I bring up each one of these subjects, you could just take a second, maybe in your mind or on a piece of paper, even if you want, or on your phone, fuck it, I don't care. Um, but kind of rank where you stand with the bullshit factor where you work. And I can guarantee you there's gonna be something that I'm gonna mention that is gonna strike a nerve or a chord with you, and you're gonna be like, yeah, I fucking hate that. I fucking hate that more than anything. And if you add up a whole bunch of things that you fucking hate more than anything, then maybe what you ought to do is grease the fucking wheels. I mean, that's why it's called grease the wheels. In a lot of cases, greasing the wheels is is and or was. I don't know, it depends on where you live, but it was and still probably is the best way to get a raise out of some of these motherfuckers. You tell them you're leaving, they go, Oh, we can't leave. Oh, what do you gotta have? What do you got to have? What do you got to have? They go, Well, you should have fucking offered me a raise before I decided to leave. And I think a lot of us are like, you know, we're set in our ways. If we say we're gonna leave, that's it, it's over. I mean, you want to offer us$1,000 an hour, yeah, we'll stay. But you're gonna offer us$2 or maybe three, you know, it's just not gonna cut it, you know, especially if the shop down the street that wants to hire me and has a wicked technician shortage and knows and is familiar with some of my work. Maybe I know the guys down there, they're gonna give me almost ten dollars an hour, which says two things. Number one, they pay more, so obviously they're looking for quality, and you don't pay that much, and so obviously you're just a fucking shithead trying to save money by fucking skimping on tech pay. So let me get started here with the with the with the bullshit factor, part three. The bullshit factor. And like I said, you have to figure this out in your own mind, and I'm gonna offer some tips and and some hints as to uh what you want to look for, okay? Now I wanted to I I I'm gonna just kind of jump around here. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna follow any kind of real order, okay, because I wrote it down and uh and then I had to kind of write stuff in between other stuff. I double spaced it, but yeah, your Uncle Jimmy's not put together very well on a Monday, you know. I mean, I worked hard today and got a lot done and and things worked out for me okay, but I still I was a little worked up. So you're probably gonna hear more than your uh normal quantity of fuck. So just get ready for that. Okay, hit get the mute button. All right, we're gonna start out with the dealership or the shop, depending on what it is and where you work, okay? Now, uh the bullshit factor may come along for you as far as where you work, depending on what you like to work on. Now, I'm thinking for you and I as technicians, we all have a specific car, a specific maybe car or even brand of car that we like to work on. And so we have taken it upon ourselves to try to work at a shop or a dealership where they work mainly on that kind of car. Now, I as a lot of you already know, I have been a BMW technician for the last 20, 23 years now, and I would prefer to work just on BMWs, although lately some of the crazy fucking bullshit that they've come up with is is driving me fucking wild and adding to the bullshit factor, okay? But I'm out there looking for to work at dealerships that sell that brand of cars, and I'm not I'm not interested in working on Lexus's or Mercedes-Benz's or Toyota's or or even GMs, at least not professionally, okay? I'm just not that's not my thing, okay? So when you want to work at a shop or a dealership, and I would say a shop is what I'm really talking about here, lots of shops really can't specialize. I mean, they'd like to, and yeah, maybe they do say they specialize, but if somebody rolls into a Euro shop with a Chevy of any kind and they say, Hey, can you can you you know put a battery in it or do the tire rod-ons and give me the alignment? The owner of your shop is gonna say, Oh, hell yeah, every time. And this it you gotta understand that the owner of your shop needs to make money. And if somebody's standing in the driveway saying, or standing in the drive-on saying to you, hey man, I want you to work on my shit, and it's not something that you normally work on, probably gonna say yes anyway because they're in the business to make money. Now, let's just say that you're the guy that they stick this thing to, right? And you haven't worked on a Chevy ever. You know, you've been driving who even knows what? Let's just say you've been driving an old BMW E30 for a long time and you're working on some of the newer stuff, and and maybe they throw a Benz or a Volkswagen at you every once in a while, or God forbid an Audi, but then they stick a Chevy up your ass. And this is something that can increase the bullshit factor for you, even though your boss is just kind of like, hey, look, I know it's not your normal standard fare, but I need you to work on this, and it might irritate the shit out of you, or you might be able to deal with it. And you know what, too? This is the thing with the bullshit factors totally flexible, it's a living, breathing thing, okay, boys and girls. It's something that goes up and down. It's like the stock market, man. Some days it's fucking doing really well, and other days it's in the fucking toilet, you know, and you might be okay with working on a Chevy if you're a Euro guy on Tuesday, but come Friday, you might be like, fuck that car. I don't want to touch that car, I don't want to see it. Get it the fuck out of here. And I feel that way when I see cars pull into my dealership, because we have one brand at my dealership, but yet in drive on, and this this was this morning, actually. We had a Lexus and we had uh uh I don't even wonder what the fucking Toyota and we had a Dodge truck, and it's like where the fuck am I working? What the fuck? Now I didn't have to work on any of it, but still it kind of fucking, you know, it kind of fucking kicked me in the head a little bit. I'm like, what the fuck is going on here? Get this shit the fuck out of here, you know. We're not working on that stuff, you know. I mean, bring me work I can do. Don't bring me shit I don't want to work on, though, please. I've spent a lifetime really figuring out what to do with the cars that I work on. I've had training, I've had lots and lots and lots of fucking training. I've had I've got lots and lots of experience, and they're changing everything all the fucking time. It's it's amazing the shit they've been coming up with, and and it it's driving me wild really to think of the shit they've got coming because sometimes some of the stuff's not very well thought out. You know, I've railed uh recently on a podcast about them moving the oil filter housing to the back of the engine where, oh yeah, it's just so absolutely easy to access. And guess what? It leaks just as bad as it always has, you know. And uh God, I love the classics when oil filter housings leak. Holy God. And I know that a lot of you deal with that in other brands as well. And I know I'm to me, I'm not sure why they would make the fucking things out of plastic. It just sounds like a really bad idea for something that's that fucking hot and that important to your engine to be made out of fucking plastic. But there it is, okay? And I make money changing them. But I'd rather not. Honestly, I'd rather not have to change them. I'd rather they were just built right in the first fucking place, and I didn't have to fucking yank all this fucking shit off to get at it. But I started out talking about the dealerships and the shops and and the stuff that they bring in, and maybe even just where they're located, okay. Now, I have uh in the past commuted an extraordinary distance to work. It was an hour each way, uh, roughly 55, 60 miles. And uh I uh I didn't think anything of it, and I'll tell you why. Because at that particular dealer that I drove quite a ways to get to, my bullshit factor was actually fairly low. I worked with some really, really great people, and I I mean that when I say it twice. Really, really great people. And the only reason that I left is because I had one fucking guy who was in his entirety my complete bullshit factor, and uh I had to get the fuck away from that piece of shit. I mean, that's what I'm talking about when I talk about a shop or a dealership. It's like a collective group of people who do a job and and present the opportunity for people to bring their vehicles to your shop and to your dealership. And it being a long ways away was not part of the uh bullshit factor because they did things fairly well. There were some things that could have been better. Obviously, every every dealership, every shop out there is gonna have a chaos to it. I mean, there's a chaos factor there, and that's not really part of the bullshit factor because the chaos is just standard equipment in a shop. It's standard equipment. There's days when it's off the hook, and there's days when it's got it's a dull roar, and there's days where it's just a whisper. Uh, chaos is part of the plan. And depending on where your shop or your dealership is and how the parking is, okay, that's that's been a problem in a lot of places, hasn't it? You bet your ass it has. I talk to people all the time about their parking situations. They'll be like, oh, yeah, you know, I gotta I gotta get shuttled in to the building from three miles down the fucking street because we don't have any parking on the lot. I mean, customers show up and we don't have any place to put their cars. We're certainly not going to be putting the employee cars on that lot, too. Just not gonna do it. Make you park down the street and shuttle you in with a fucking bus or a van or something, and God forbid you miss it at eight o'clock and you're late for work, even though you've been sitting there for 20 fucking minutes. These things add to the bullshit factor. Okay, so you have to take into account the overall location, the commute, and the general visual aspect of where you work, along with what they do there. What can you do at work? Can you do everything or are you limited? Do you have lifts even? Or are you just changing oil? I mean, I mean, that's something that you have to have to determine. As far as a shop or a dealership service department, there's a lot of things that go on in it that you have to you have to judge for yourself what the bullshit factor is on that stuff, okay? Some of the stuff is uh, and I think this is an important one, actually. And this may be, honestly, for some of you guys, it may be the most important thing is climate control. Is your shop heated sufficiently in the winter? I can tell you right now, there's a lot of guys shaking their head, no, freezing their balls off at work right now. Oh, yeah, you're indoors, and it might be 50 50 degrees indoors, and that's as warm as it's ever gonna get because your boss isn't gonna turn the heat up because it costs him money. And if he turns the heat up, then you might relax and not work as hard, right? Do you work for a boss like that? Yeah, you might. Uh, climate control is very important. Uh, where I am in Texas, it gets very hot. Uh, I was I'm in Dallas now, but I was in Austin. And in Austin, Austin feels like a city that was built right on the sun. It gets spooked and blazing hot down there. And there's some shops down there that do not have air conditioning. I honestly, I could never work there. The the bullshit factor would be fucking off the charts. Off the charts. Can't do it. Not gonna do it, not even when it wouldn't even attempt to do it. And the thing is, with the brand that I work for, they require the V the uh shop to be air conditioned, they require it because if you're trying to program a car and it's 105 degrees in the shop, and some of these modules are getting programmed and they're you know buried under the dash, and it might even be 120, 130, 150 degrees under that dash, even out of the sun, and you're trying to program that thing, ain't gonna fucking work. So they require that the shop be air conditioned. Now, how high did they turn the air conditioning up? Well, that's a whole other story, too, right? Because just like the heat, they could turn the air conditioning on, and instead of being 105 in the shop, it's only 95 or maybe 90, still hot, but it is cooler than the outside. Yes, I'll give you that. So that and that can contribute to your your bullshit factor. And uh that's something that you need to consider is how what the climate is inside your shop at any given time. I think that uh in uh in America, at least in the U.S., we have uh an inordinate amount of time where we can have the doors open and the climate control can just be off. And it's pleasant. Different times of year, though. Uh throughout the summer up north, you can typically just open the doors, turn the air off if you even have it, and uh just operate that way from probably mid-May to about mid-September. And then you're gonna need to close the doors, and then you're gonna turn need to turn the heat on about a month after that. Down here in Texas, you'll have to run the heat for probably a couple of two, three months in the winter, and then you can kick the door open and uh you know let the uh let the weather outside in. And then you get to about end of May, beginning of June, you're gonna have to close the doors again and kick the AC on. Okay. So these are these are things you're gonna have to take into account. Uh, some of the other things, uh, as far as the facility goes, lighting. And uh also, too, I talked about parking. Lighting in a in a in a in your in your shop. I've seen so many different versions of light. I've seen different kinds of lights, different versions of them, different clusters of them, different types, uh, different wattages, whatever. Some of the modern shops that I've worked in lately, they're they're extremely well lit. It's kind of important that you need a well-lit shop, but I I worked in one when I first started uh working as a professional. They had these fucking lights. I think they got them from uh I don't know, I don't know where they I think they bought them from uh a German uh World War II uh surplus store. They were big and bulky and they didn't really provide much lighting. And if you put the car up in the air too far with the hood open, they fucking banged into them and fucked them all up. And this was terrible. Now I know that since I've left that shop, and that shop has actually changed owners, they've come in and redone the lights, but you know, it's a it's it's a thing that you need. To do your job effectively is good lighting. And that can contribute to the bullshit factor. Tools and equipment, sure. If you're working at a dealership, especially, and in even uh some independent shops, you're gonna have to you're gonna want or you're gonna have to have tools that do a specific job, tools that do a specific repair. Um at a dealership, they're really pretty much required. And if you don't have somebody who really marshals these tools, keeps track of them, uh stays on top of them, chastises the guys who break them or strip them or lose them, uh, and maybe even just kills them, okay, because you know you you've you've always got one guy who is constantly fucking the tools up, and then he throws them back in the tool room like you know, like it's an empty milk jug, and he's putting it back in the fridge, you know, so so nobody will know that he was the last guy to use it, you know. That kind of bullshit that I'll tell you what, that rocks my world. That makes my bullshit factor go fucking right through the roof. I can't take that shit at all. Where I'm at now, we have some specialized equipment that you use to pull transmissions and engines and subframes out of cars, lift tables. And some of the guys now, where I'm at now, these guys are all very, very good at taking care of the equipment. I I want to give them kudos out loud for that. I have worked with some technicians though who will take the lift tables and just put every fucking fluid in the car, including some that I've never seen before, onto the lift table and then just park it in the corner like it's somebody else's job to clean it. And I'll give I will fucking go right over and give them a ration of shit because that's real high on my goddamn bullshit factor list, okay? Because I don't want to have to clean up your fucking mess before I can use a piece of equipment that you were the last one to use. I will get all up in your ass about it. And I don't have a problem with that, okay? Because I'm not gonna go up to you and call you names and give you a hard time just gonna say, are you gonna leave that like that, really? Because if I got to use that next and I've got to clean it, I'm gonna fucking take all the goddamn wet rags from clean it up and throw them in your fucking face. Oh, I didn't know it was a big deal. And it's a fucking huge deal taking care of the equipment and the special tools. I've I've even visited shops where they have a uh a tool crib manager. He actually takes the big shops, obviously lots of techs, but he takes care of the tools, he signs them out. You have to uh he checks the condition before he signs them out, and then he checks the condition when they come back. And if they don't come back, he goes looking for them, and when he finds that they're all fucked up, he tells somebody that you need to be fucking fired. That to me would be a perfect scenario. Um, however, I think that that's in probably uh 0.01% of dealerships out there. There's just not a lot of dealerships that are gonna have a tool cage attendant or whatever you want to call them. Um great idea. You're just not gonna fork out the fork out the money for something like that, not gonna do it. You know, I mean they're barely forking out any money for you. They'll tell you to go fork yourself. Um, what else is going on inside the building? Well, there's other employees, and uh some of these employees bring with them uh it's it's tough to talk about, really, just because uh some of the other employees in the building, and there's a lot of them that aren't technicians, okay? We're gonna talk about technicians separately, the other technicians, but there's a lot of different employees that are gonna work in and or around your building that are support staff. Typically, they're supposed to be support staff for you. And I'll tell you why. And it's not me being big headed or trying to tell somebody what to do, like I'm their fucking boss. It's not. But when you think about a service department or a shop, even what the money-making thing that is going on in a shop, the the the thing, the situations that occur that create income, that create the actual business, all revolve around you as a technician. Now, I'm not saying the sun sets or rises on us. I'm not gonna say that we're the center of the universe, okay? But we are the ones who perform the tasks that put money in all of our pockets. A car porter never turned an hour, a service advisor doesn't turn hours, parts guys, they don't turn hours. Detail wash people, they don't turn hours. We're the only ones who create a commodity out of nothing, out of thin air. Labor. Labor is what gets sold. Now, what should happen is that everyone should cater to us because we're creating the money. We're creating the situation that the money gets paid for. It's time. Time equals money. That's how that's all it is. All it is, and everything else is directly supposed to support that. Your car porters are supposed to put the cars outside with a hang tag on them in a parking spot with a number on it, and write it on the key tag so that I don't have to waste the time that we are supposed to be selling to the customer, that I don't have to waste that time looking for that fucking car. The hang tag is hanging properly from the mirror, and you have legibly written the number on the key tag in your wherever you keep your keys, whether it's a board or a key track system, and so that when you pull that key out, it says it's in parking spot 142. You go to parking spot 142, and the car is there, and you pull it in and you work on it, and then you make a recommendation and they sell it, you do the recommendation, you check it out, you make sure it's good, you send it to the wash department, and then they come to get it and they pay for what you as a technician did. They're not gonna pay for what the car porter did, they're not gonna pay for what the wash department did, but those people are important. I'm not, don't, don't get me wrong, I'm not putting anyone down. I have and and and I want to tell I want to say this, okay, because it sounds like I'm sucking up, but I I have a really great crew where I work. I don't really have a whole lot of problems with any of them. They're smart, they understand what's going on, they understand what they're supposed to do. Sometimes if they write a parking spot number on a key tag, it's illegible. I can still fucking find it. It's not that big, it's not that huge of a deal. But it does contribute to the bullshit factor somewhat. And honestly, for me, okay, just like you, there are days where that wouldn't bother me. And then there's other days where for some reason, or I mean it's like, you know, Sagittarius is in retrograde or something like that, and it just pisses me off to no end. Because really, as a car porter, you got like one job. You have one job and you can't do it right. And I feel like ripping your head off. But I don't do that. I don't do that because I know that it's me, I'm the one who's getting worked up, and it's my bullshit factor that's going off the charts. And sometimes you and I, we have to do that. We have to allow certain people who normally do a good job to fuck up every once in a while, you know, and it happens, and it's part of the chaos, and you you can't do anything about the chaos, you can only try to keep it down to a dull roar. As far as wash and detail people, I gotta I just gotta say this real quick, okay? There is real, honest to God, power in the car wash. You you bring somebody, somebody brings their car in and it's filthy from stem to stern on the outside, maybe on the inside too, who knows? And you do something to it, you know, maybe you do brakes or maybe you do tires, it doesn't even really matter what you do to it. You make it run better, you make it work better, you you bring it back from from the edge of destruction and it's mechanically good, and then you run it through the wash, and it hasn't been washed in two fucking years. And so they scrub off dirt that has been on there for months, and all of a sudden a gleam starts to come out. And when the customer shows up to buy to get that car, they can't believe it. They can't believe that you cleaned it and that it's that and it's clean. It it just validates everything that they brought it to you for. You fixed it, it works right now, and you cleaned it. It looks good, it looks not exactly like the day it was built brand new, but it looks a hell of a lot better than it did, you know, six, four, six, eight hours ago. Holy shit. Sometimes, sometimes, uh, and and it this is not a surprise to anybody who's who's known me at work. Uh, I'll wash the cars. I don't have a problem with it. I mean, where I was before uh I'm the shop I'm in now, I did it all the time. I don't do it that much here uh because I you know just it's just not a thing here because they have they have had in the past enough people to do it, but now they now they're a little short, but it's fine. And I'll drive it through a car through the car wash. It takes about two, two and a half minutes. It's no big deal. You know, I'm not gonna vacuum it. Fuck that. That's somebody that is somebody else's job. But I'll wash them. And sometimes I'll wash them, and if they're really, really filthy and I pull it up and I park it wherever it's got to be parked, and I get out and I look at it and go, man, that car looks a fucking hell of a lot better. And the customer's gonna say that too. Customer's gonna say that too. And if your wash department, your detail people do a good job, it makes you look good. It makes everybody in your building look good. But there's really no bullshit factor there. If they don't wash a car, yeah, I fixed it. I don't give a fuck if they cleaned it. But on the down low, if they clean them, customer feels way fucking better about paying the bill or about having paid the bill. When you get the keys, you go outside, you're looking for some fucking gray car that had fucking three inches of dirt on it, and you look, and it looks like your car, but it's clean, and it looks like it did when it was new, and you're like, oh fuck, that ain't my car. Oh, wait a minute. Yeah, it is. Holy shit, it's clean. It's a big deal. And that's one of the things, you know, you have to think about that as a technician. You have to think about what the customer is gonna see. And really, that that that's not part of the bullshit factor, and that's a that's really a subject for another podcast, really. Um, not really this one, but uh, these are people that are supposed to support what you do by cleaning the cars after you fix them. It's a big deal, it's a bigger deal than you think. And uh, you know, it can it can ease the bullshit factor if a customer doesn't get, you know, if there's a problem, I'm not even sure how to talk about this because I don't like it, but uh sometimes the customers aren't really happy with the repair that they got done because it didn't fix what they thought what was wrong to them. You ever have that happen? Yeah, somebody writes down what they think the customer said, and you fix something that had nothing to do with what they thought was what their concern was, but the car's clean. So hey, I appreciate you taking a look at this. That wasn't the problem. The problem is this. Oh, somebody that wasn't paying attention when you told them what was wrong, or I didn't see what was wrong, or or maybe whatever it was I was looking for, it's not doing it. Not right now, maybe it's intermittent or something. So washing the car can help you out in some cases, okay? It can help to lower the bullshit factor. There's a lot of other people involved. You have owners or general managers. Now, these people, if if you're talking about an owner of a repair shop, obviously they're gonna be very interested and vested in what you do in the shop, and maybe they're micromanagers. Because I'll tell you what, if I owned a shop, I would be a micromanager. I really would. I would be like, everything's gotta have a spot, and if it's not in that fucking spot, then I'm not happy. If there's fucking 10 tons of shit on your bench and you don't seem like you know how to throw anything away, that's gonna that's gonna uh cause me uh some anxiety. So fortunately for me, I don't run I don't run a shop. I'm not a service manager, I'm not an owner, I'm not a general manager of any kind. Sometimes, though, you have those people that are micromanagers. Um now what I have found in my experiences, I I found this true through all of my uh dealings with general managers and owners, is they're just not they're not there very often. You don't see them very often. They're not part of what you do. They have a lot of bigger fish to fry and they have a lot of other things to worry about. And you know what? It's a good thing. Really, okay? And I'll tell you why. Because you and I we're professionals, right? We know what to do. People bring us cars, they're fucked up. No matter how fucked up they are, we can fix them. Really? I work with some brilliant guys. We can fix literally anything that goes wrong with a car. No holds barred. So if a service department even runs remotely efficiently, the technicians are the one component of a shop that you have to worry about the least. So if a general manager or even an owner doesn't feel like he needs to come out into the shop all that often, he doesn't need to talk to the technicians, he doesn't need to interface with them. It's fine because a lot of times they have to deal with salespeople, and we all know how they are. Uh, and sometimes they'll come back into the shop and contribute to our bullshit factor by wanting something completely fucking stupid or or needing something immediately because the car is going to be delivered right now. That's one of the things that they do, and that can that can cause my bullshit factor to go up. Uh, a lot of times, if I see a salesman and he's he's in some kind of a dire need, I'll go to him, say, what do you got to have? What's going on here? And then if I can, I'll help him out. And usually, usually I can. Okay, I think a lot of you would would a lot of you would run away from a situation like that. But uh, you know, we got to work together as a team, and it's it's it's it's tough. And and when it comes right down to it, yeah, you got to help them out because if they don't sell that car, you're not gonna be able to do any of the oil changes to it. You're not gonna be able to sell that guy tires in the future. He's gonna go and he's gonna drive something completely fucking different, and that's gonna take money out of your pocket. And even though you might not see that, you're not gonna go six months later after this guy got uh you know chased off the lot because the car wasn't ready and he buys a Lexus, you're not gonna six months later go, wow, I should be doing an oil change on that guy's car right now, but I'm not because he bought a Lexus instead of one of our cars. And nobody ever really does that. It's like when you have accident prevention stuff and it works and you don't have accidents, you can't say, well, we would have had an accident today if it wasn't for all the accident prevention stuff. It's like nobody has nobody has that crystal ball, okay? Most of the time I have found that general managers don't really do anything to increase the bullshit factor for us. Now, maybe, maybe some of you have general managers who like to put their little fingers and their two cents in where it either doesn't belong or isn't going to do any good, or at least it shouldn't, should be a factor. But uh, you know, I'm not, I haven't dealt with that. If you have, then yeah, your bullshit factor can go off the charts. You know, say they come down and say, you know, maybe like the situation with parking, let's just say uh that parking has become a real premium on the lot where you work, and you've always parked right behind the building because you get there in the morning and there's there's plenty of parking in the morning, but then later on there's no parking and there's nowhere to put the customers' cars. So a general manager might come down and say, Listen, we're going to start parking down the road at this remote lot and we're going to shuttle you in because we need the space here at the building for customers' cars. And you might you might see that as something that is jacking up your bullshit back. But typically, general managers have their hands full with the sales department if you have a dealership. Um, as far as owners go, a lot of owners are former technicians, they're not too likely to come out and jump up and down about on your shit about anything because they know what that's like. Uh, it's when you get an owner who has like a manager or even a service advisor of some sort that's never really dealt with technicians before, and that's that's when it becomes a problem because you and I know that we have a tendency to be belligerent, we have a tendency to to to to to fight authority, to to you know, to to chafe against authority, especially if authority really shouldn't have any kind of authority at all. Uh, if you don't have any respect for my authority. That's one of those things that could that could really up your your bullshit factors when you you have somebody who's in charge who fucking shouldn't be. And that uh that starts right at the top with the general manager or an owner and then goes right down through a service manager and then on to uh whoever else is uh in charge, whether it's a team leader or a foreman. And these people, if they're idiotic, if they're if they're dumb and they and they just want certain things out of you that are not smart or detrimental to your to what you do, then you're gonna chafe against them and uh you're gonna resist their efforts and it's gonna increase your anxiety and your stress and your bullshit factor. Uh other people who can cause you problems, obviously a service manager, and and here again, uh, you know, they could be uh uh micromanagers, which is always gonna be a source of bullshit. It's always gonna provide a source of anxiety and stress when you got to deal with some clown who, you know, maybe he has the same last name as the owner, or he's, you know, somebody's doing him a favor by giving him the job as a service manager, and he doesn't have a clue what he's doing, and he doesn't know what technicians are supposed to even do, and he doesn't know anything about cars, and he can't can't really manage anybody, he can't provide any kind of leadership whatsoever. And I gotta tell you, um, from a lot of people I talk to, and I'm myself, I'm one of them, I have left jobs because of service managers. And I think it's it's important to uh to look at that, at what they do and how they behave and and how they treat all the employees that are under their thumb and and the things that they will and will not do. Now, where I'm at now, I feel like a service manager, I I I like him a lot. He kind of gives me some shit, which is fine. He's allowed. Um I deserve it most of the time anyway. But he doesn't really corral the service advisors very much. He doesn't have any kind of any he doesn't have any kind of whip that he brings down on them at all. And they they need to be they really lit almost literally need a beating. As far as the service advisors that we have in the building, they don't seem like they're doing the job very well to me. I get awful, awful lot of declines. I get an awful lot of cars that leave the building with tires and brakes that are really, really dangerously low. And they were unable to convince these people to make their car even remotely safe. I feel like they do a lot of different things. And of course, uh, let me just throw this in there real quick. I could be wrong, but I don't think I am. And some of the other technicians have stated that they they feel the same way, that they avoid talking to or trying to sell things to customers. And it's been a running theme with me now for the last few months to uh describe to you and and to tell you about my my perils at the hands of these people who just seem like they're phoning it in. And the person who needs to handle this is the service manager. It's not my job, and I have no authority to say to people, say, listen, you need to get this guy on the horn right now. Tell him after looking at it at the video that he needs tires and that we're really not going to let him have his vehicle back until he gets them because it's just too too unsafe to drive like that. And yet, this is not happening at all. It's not happening at all. We're letting people pull out of our dealership with cars that really shouldn't be on the road. It doesn't happen every day, but it does happen with alarming regularity as far as I'm concerned. Uh, that's just one of the things that has increased my bullshit factor. In the past, I've had service advisors or service managers, excuse me. In the past, I've had service managers who have just done this is what I would say about them is that there was no situation that they couldn't make worse. They were really just horrible. You know, there were some that were bad seemingly on purpose. There were some that were bad because of the management and the and the ownership above them. There were some that were bad because of the technicians that they had hired were terrible. Uh, and of course I was one of them, but you know, I'm not, I don't consider myself terrible. Maybe somebody else would. That's fine. They can think whatever they want. But service managers is a great, is a great flash point for a lot of us, a really big flash point for a lot of us. And if this is somebody who can't help us solve a problem or make a situation better, and typically either ignores it or makes it worse, then that's that's a big, huge factor in the bullshit factor. That's a great big huge lump of bullshit. I think that's the service manager uh should in a lot of cases try to make the the environment for the mechanics, for the technicians, for us, as good as possible. And when they fail to do that, and they don't recognize that that's something that they should do, because after all, we're the ones earning the money for the business in the service department. I mean, the only other way they earn money is by selling parts and they have to stock those parts, they have to buy them and then resell them, which is fine. Okay, that's what everybody else in the building is doing. They're buying and then reselling something. We're the only ones that are creating a commodity right out of fucking thin air, right out of thin air. And the uh the potential for us to create labor out of thin air is off the charts with a lot of us. I mean, if given the right amount of work, if all the recommendations that I've made were sold, the shop would make billions, literally. I mean, I'd I'd be there right now if I had something I had, you know, uh some job that it got sold and they needed it tomorrow. I'd still be at work right now trying to finish it up for them. I'll put in the time, I'll give them all the time that I've got. I think a lot of you are like that. You know, you got a job and you know it pays 10 hours and it's four o'clock in the afternoon, and you can bang it out in like three, four hours. You'll work till eight to get that done. And it's not uncommon for guys like you to turn 20, 25 hours a day. All you need is someone to just get the fucking bullshit out of your way and to get the advisors to sell, and that's the service manager. And when they don't do any of that stuff, then you've got a shitty one. Basically, that's it. If they're not gonna help you be as efficient as possible, then maybe they should just go away. Really? It's part of the bullshit factor. I mean, I've I've like I've said, I've left a place because a service manager was so fucking horrible. Was so horrible. I loved everything else about the place I was working, but that service manager was just such a fucking cocksucker. I had to get away from him. I had to, I had. Fucking get away from him. He had fucking zeroed in on me, tried to make my life impossible and make it hard for me. And he tried to fire me, but he couldn't because I don't do I hadn't done anything wrong. I hadn't done anything that I could be fired for. It didn't stop him from trying, though. And it was all because he's a piece of shit. Couldn't understand, you know, that somebody might have an attitude with him. Does the job, does the job just fine, does a good job, gets along with everybody else except him. There's your bullshit factor. That's a big, big fucking chunk of the bullshit factor right there. Is your service manager or your shop manager? Your foreman can can sometimes help you out one way or the other with that. Sometimes they will help. Sometimes they won't. It depends on how your attitude is towards him. Uh I get along with my foreman really well because he's always trying to help. Okay. And that's that's all I can ask from him. And he's there. But if you have a foreman who's a who's a dipshit, and I've I've I've run into a couple of foreman that were dipshits, not too many. Most of them are pretty sharp. In fact, I had one who was like to me, he was a he was godlike, really honestly. I mean it sounds silly to say that, but he was just really, really good at a lot of different things. He could he could deal with people, he could talk to people, he was fun, he was funny, and he was really, really, really fucking smart. And I misworked with that guy an awful lot. And I think he's probably either close to or has retired by now. And uh, I hope he uh I hope he lives to be 150 years old because he's a good dude. But uh sometimes you get you get foremen who don't know anything happens, you know. You got a shop full of new guys because the owner's trying to keep the wages down low and he's doing a good job, but he's also got to hire new guys all the time because the guys he hires, they've decided they can get more money somewhere else, and they can, and they do, and so you have a revolving door on the shop where technicians come in and then right back out again. And so you got to pick a foreman, you got to have a foreman in in some of these uh some of these situations. You gotta have somebody that somebody else can turn to for help with something, and that guy's only got a couple more months to work in there than you do, you know. I've I've seen that situation, I haven't been part of that situation, but but I have seen that situation where uh some guy says, Oh, yeah, I'm the foreman at this shop, and and and then talking to him, you find out he doesn't even know I have the shit that you know, you know, and that can add to your bullshit factor if your foreman's not helpful. If your foreman's not helpful, he's not good at what he does, and he can't help you out, that's definitely gonna raise your your bullshit factor. What else do I have on my list here? I actually did make a list. Um, I'm kind of following it too, actually, believe it or not. I talked about some of the uh some of the people in it in the dealership, and I think a lot of people, and because they have a uh, in some cases, erratic behavior, and uh sometimes they they don't do they don't do what they're supposed to do or they don't do anything at all. They do what they want to do. Uh that could add to your bullshit factor. One of the one of the things that this is a dumb, this is a dumb one, but uh I'm just gonna throw it in there because it's it's just to satisfy my own my own uh bullshit factor. Uh the cleaning crew. We have a cleaning crew that comes in and they come in at seven o'clock. And a lot of times I'm still there trying to bang out some work, and they're they're cleaning around me, and it's annoying. Why can't they start at nine o'clock? I don't I don't know. And and you know what? Usually if I'm there late at like seven o'clock trying to trying to get something done, there's three, four other dudes there too, trying to get some work done, get some things finished up for the day. And then this cleaning crew comes in and you know, they're they're and I think that they're upset that we're still there. I mean, I don't know, they would never really say anything to me because I give it right back to them. But they uh they don't seem to enjoy the fact that uh, you know, I want to get some stuff done, and uh I don't really give a fuck if they I don't really give a fuck if they get the shop clean. That's not my that's not part of my bullshit factor. I mean, I would you know I gotta have the the shop's gotta get cleaned. And and that's something else for some of you guys out there is your bullshit factor might be really, really, really fucking high when it comes to cleaning the shop because you have to do it. And I worked in a couple of places where if the shop got cleaned, it was because the technicians cleaned it. There was nobody else coming in to clean it. So I do consider myself lucky that I have a cleaning crew that cleans up and they do uh they do an okay job. I mean, they bring leaf blowers in and blow the shit underneath my toolbox, but you know, I have to go in there with a broom once a week or so and clean out all the shit they blew underneath there with the fucking oh, that's just great. Get an amber alert. I forgot where I was, but uh I'll I'll pick I'll pick it back up again here. Okay, so having a cleaning crew is good. Uh having a cleaning crew that doesn't clean very well, that sucks. That that raises my bullshit factor, but that's just because I'm I'm kind of nuts about that stuff. I have to I have to work in a clean environment. That's all. Uh I know some of you don't give a fuck about that. So fortunately for you, that does not increase or cause you any any increased points in the uh bullshit factor. Okay. What else did I have here? I had salespeople on here too. What is there to say about sales? These are people who are supposed to sell cars. Why are they in the shop all the fucking time? Uh, they're constantly traipsing through the shop. Uh, I worked uh this last Saturday, which I was really overjoyed with, and that's another part of the bullshit factor, is that I don't like working Saturdays. I don't know how you feel about it. You know, all these people who work nine to five all week long, they can't get into the building, they can't get in to get a service appointment. I go, well, guess what? I work eight to five fucking two Monday through Friday. I don't want to have to be here on Saturday just to make it convenient for you, fuck face. What if I want to go to the doctor? I gotta take a day off. Why don't you take a day off to bring your car in? Shit for brains. Salespeople, uh, and what I wanted to tell you was what I wanted to sorry, long pause. Thank you very much. What I wanted to tell you is that we work Saturday, but we get to leave at 3.30. So about 335, 340, 345, most of the technicians are gone. Now I was there doing some stuff, and I noticed that suddenly there was a lot of activity in the shop from salespeople. And they would see me and they'd be like, oh, yeah, they're not all gone yet. Yeah. They fucking roam through the shop when you're not there. They fuck with stuff, they go through your toolboxes. Uh, one of them a couple, two, three years ago, blew up one of my very good uh air pressure gauges. I don't know what the fuck they were doing. Uh, they they typically drain my washer solvent bottle. They'll borrow anything that's laying out and sometimes even stuff that isn't laying out. And I just don't really like it in general. I mean, you know, we don't, as technicians, we don't go up into the showroom and rummage through their shit. But uh, this is the equivalent of that for the back shop. So uh salespeople can, but typically don't too much, but they can increase your bullshit factor. What else do I have here? I have uh I didn't I I failed to mention service advisors directly and parts guys directly. Let me address let me address the parts guys first. Lots of times in shops and dealerships, if you have somebody who is working in a parts department or maybe a de facto parts department, maybe you don't even have parts, you just have a guy who calls. These are typically individuals who don't get paid very much. So they don't also care very much. Uh where I work, the parts guys are paid fairly well, so and they do a fabulous job. And I feel extraordinarily lucky to have the individuals who work in our parts department working with me and us where I'm at. But I know of a lot of places, and and I think that some of you do battle on a daily basis with your parts department. They can't seem to get you the right parts, they don't give a fuck if they give you the right parts, and they don't give a fuck when you get them. They really uh can cause an extraordinary amount of the bullshit factor to go up. And this is one of the reasons for this is because typically parts guys aren't paid very well. Typically, honestly, you just get what you pay for. So the people that work in your parts department, they're gonna have a very direct effect on how much money you get to make and how quickly you get to be able to do repairs and whether or not you're gonna have all the parts necessary to do the repair. And because they're typically not very well paid, they may not be very diligent in getting you everything you need on time or getting everything that you need at all. And so there's a there's an opportunity there for the bullshit factor to be extremely high. And I I I just want to say that if you have problems with your parts department, I feel for you. Um, I'm fortunate enough not to have those problems. I was a parts guy for a long time, so it's I have a tendency to to to kind of give them the benefit of the doubt. I know that a lot of you have great difficulty with your parts department, and uh this definitely increases your bullshit factor uh exponentially. Now, the one the one the last thing on my list here, and there's other things that can cause the bullshit factor to go up. Customers can sometimes cause the bullshit factor to go up. We have a certain ethnic group of customers that we have at the facility I'm at, not right now, who are extraordinarily picky. They hear every fucking noise, they they see everything that's wrong, and then they want you to fix it. And some of that stuff just doesn't exist, and some of that stuff can't be fixed, and some of that stuff is so fucking intermittent. And I swear to God that these fucking people uh that I'm talking about, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna name for you what kind of what kind of people I'm talking about. You can just let your imagination run wild. But I think what they do is that they drive around with the fucking radio off, listening for noises. And and I look, here's the thing, and then I always say this, most automobiles right now on the road weigh anywhere between 4,000 and 8,000 fucking pounds. That's two tons to four tons, and they're going down the road at 60, 70, 80, 90 miles an hour, they are not going to be silent. There's a lot of physics at work there, and it none of it is silent. Okay, they have made it as silent as they possibly can, but they're not going to be able to make it completely silent. The only way for anybody, the only way for anybody to make an automobile truly 100% silent would be to take a number two pencil, sharpen it up real sharp, stick it in your ear hole, and drive it home with a fucking ball peen hammer. Then your car will be fucking silent, and so will everybody else in your life. You understand what I'm saying to you? You don't need to complain about every little motherfucking thing that goes wrong with your fucking car when you're under warranty. As soon as because it's killer, it is killer that when they hit that point where there's no longer any new car warranty on the car, that suddenly these noises are no big fucking deal. I think a lot of you have to deal with that. That is definitely something that sets my bull bullshit factor off. Last but not least on my list anyway is service advisors. Um, and I I just want to broad stroke this really quick. When you have a good one, he develops a relationship with the customers and then he talks to them, and then when you recommend stuff, he asks them if they want to go ahead and get that repaired. If you don't have very good service advisors, what they'll do is they'll try to have a minimum amount of contact with them, and they typically won't listen to them very well when they're trying to figure out what it is, whatever it is, reason that they're there in your dealership or your shop. They won't listen. They don't listen because and you can see it, all of you are shaking your head now. You you have seen lines on your ROs that make no fucking sense because the advisor was not paying attention to what the guy said, and he he pictured it all wrong in his mind, or he understood it all wrong, or maybe he just wasn't listening at all, and he just wrote some fucking horse shit, and then you're back there trying to diagnose whatever it is, and then you find out later after you checked everything you could check, and you've come up with no problem found or could not duplicate, and then you find out that this guy or this lady or whoever it is is complaining about something completely fucking different. That sends my bullshit factor off the fucking charts. I need accurate write-ups. I need, I need they have to be accurate, they have to be. I can't do anything with with some of the general bullshit that I've seen lately. The other thing I need for them to do is to just ask the customer for the sale on anything that's recommended. And I know I've I've heard it, but I also know that this is true too, that a lot of times they don't want to have to deal with this customer any more than they have to. And if they actually do sell the customer something, then they're gonna have to continue to have to deal with this customer, and they don't want to do that. It is so much easier to just hand them their keys and say, have a nice day. Thanks for dropping by, see ya, bull bye. Instead of saying, hey, your tires are not so good, your brakes are not so good. We'd really like for you to get them replaced so that we don't have to worry about your safety when you leave here. That's the difference. And that makes it makes my bullshit factor go right off the charts. When I make the effort to make a video, when I make the effort along with the parts department to create an estimate for repairing something on a car, for making something right, for making something better, for fixing it, for maintaining it. And the advisor just makes no effort to sell those repairs and services and maintenance. They just make no effort. I mean, I I've I've seen them, I know they do this. They'll our our uh our estimates come in a form that's real easy to email to customers. The customer could be on the showroom floor, they're still gonna email them the estimate. I know this because I get a lot of cars back after a couple, two, three weeks. They went home, saw the video, saw that they needed tires, saw that they needed brakes, saw the estimate. They got no call from the shop, and they just came back, made an appointment and came back and said, I need those tires and brakes that uh you uh quoted last time. It certainly isn't because the advisor asked them, it's because they saw that they needed them and they got the estimate. They decided themselves that they wanted it. That's what raises my bullshit factor. Okay, and I documented a couple of weeks ago that I had a bad pay period and that all of the declined services that I had recommended for that two-week pay period were 11 ROs that were gonna add up to about$60,000 worth of business and would have uh profited me personally 142 hours. Now, you know, obviously, and I have to say this, obviously, they're not gonna sell 100% of my recommendations. Nobody's going to. Even the best salesman in the world would not be able to sell certain people anything. But I'm only asking for you to sell two, maybe three of those 11 and give me some hours in a pay period where I had really so very little. I mean, I'll survive. I have enough money to survive. I didn't, you know, I didn't have to move out of my apartment and start sleeping in a dumpster or anything like that, okay? But I'm there a hundred hours and I'm turning 50. That's an enormous part of my bullshit factor. And if I leave and I go somewhere else that has plenty of work and their advisors sell, that's obviously going to decrease my bullshit factor. And that's something that I can do. So, in a nutshell, just to sum this all up, parts one, two, and three, the reason that there is a technician shortage is because technicians don't want to even head down the path of having to deal with the bullshit of working in a shop to begin with, because of what society thinks of them. And then they really don't want to deal with the bullshit and the chaos of working in a shop when they see how much the shop owners and the dealerships are willing to pay them or willing to not pay them, is what I should say. And then once they do get in the building, sometimes the conditions, the way they're treated, the equipment, the building, the commute, the cars, the other people there create such an enormous amount of bullshit that it is not fucking worth it. It is not worth it to keep working in that particular location. And I can tell you this too. A lot of the people I know who have left the shops that I've worked in, and there's been fucking a great many. A lot of these guys go and do something completely different besides working on cars, besides being a mechanic. They get into any one of a number of other fields where they're treated better, they're more roundly appreciated, they're paid better, they have better hours, everything's better. Folks, I'm just gonna say it right out loud. Being an auto mechanic can suck. And you have to be really, and I'm talking to you guys out there that have the AirPods in, or you're listening to this on a Bluetooth speaker, and you're you've got a wrench in one hand and you're trying to start a bolt and have a wrench on the other end of that nut right now. You have to have passion because sometimes the bullshit is too much. And passion is the only thing that gets you through. That's how it works for your Uncle Jimmy. I just have passion for the job. I have passion for what I do. I just it really gives me uh gives me a jones to put stuff together and make it right. And if it wasn't for that, I would not fucking do it. I would not uh fucking do it because I break my balls every day like you do to do the job the best I possibly can. And I work in a I work in a situation where a lot of people don't do the best that they can. They do as little as they have to, and that's part of what needs to change. In order for the technician shortage to go away, you have to start treating your technicians like they're gold. You have to value them, you have to appreciate them, and you have to look after them. That's why there's a technician shortage, ladies and gentlemen. Because the job sucks, and lots of people don't want to do it to begin with, and then when they start doing it, they find out it sucks and they leave. It's as plain and simple as it is. Everybody's gonna have to start treating us different. Everybody. Society, customers, owners, general managers, service managers, advisors, lot people, parts people, everybody, everybody, everybody needs to start treating us better, or else we're just all gonna leave and we're gonna let you fix your own fucking shit. And gentlemen and ladies that are technicians, I laugh because I've seen people try to fix their shit because I have to come along later and refix it. That in a nutshell is is what the problem is, what the problem is. Okay, there's not one solution to one problem. There is a thousand solutions to a thousand little problems. Some of them pop up daily, some of them pop up weekly, some of them monthly. Let's try to make it a little easier. That's all I ask. You know, I don't need I don't need some of the bullshit that comes down the pike. Neither do you. Let's put the kibosh on it. If you're in a if you're in a position to put the kibosh on the bullshit that your technicians and your mechanics have to deal with, why don't you fucking do that? All right. That's enough for your Uncle Jimmy. This is a Monday. My nose has been giving me trouble the whole entire podcast. I've had to I've had to blow my nose about a dozen times. Hopefully, Eric will chop that all out because he's good at that. Yikes. All right. All right. So when the podcast is done, Uncle Jimmy usually just says, See ya.