Episode 348: It Hurts

On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle jimmy concludes his symposium on the technician shortage with the simple fact that the job is dangerous, and it will hurt you at some point. There are a million and a half ways to get hurt at work, from the cars to the equipment, to not properly using either. There are also a millions ways that the job can kill you, such as trying to catch rolls royces, to chemicals. In this episode we go over the burns, cuts, sprains, and strains that can knock a good tech out of commission, and if bad enough get their coworkers to leave the game all together. Seriously, everyone listening to this has, at some point in time, gotten hurt on the job. And if employers think that this is not a cause of the technician shortage, they are delusional! 
 
 Also Uncle Jimmy goes over how the Germans do it right, and how The King ultimately ended up dying on the bog. 

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

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All right, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome once again to the Rock and Roll Garage. Here is your Uncle Jimmy, barking out your weekly podcast, well, semi-weekly now, at Grease the Wheels. I want to just uh take a minute or two, or three or four, to thank all of you out there in the working world, working your buns off, working your ass off, working whatever else you got right off to get the job done, make everything better, make everything work, fixing it, building it, whatever you're doing. Thank you very much for what you're doing. Now, uh, I just finished up a series, a three-part series on why there's a technician shortage, and realized that there needs to there needs to be a fourth episode here. But it took me a little while to put this together, and uh, I didn't have a podcast for you last week because I was on vacation and I forgot to bring my microphone with me. Kind of hard to do a podcast without a microphone. So here you are, uh a week later, and uh my apologies for me being lazy or stupid or both, very healthy combination of both. Uh but I'm bringing you uh part four of why there is a technician shortage. And uh what I wanted to say here right at the beginning is that there are actually thousands of little reasons, uh subtle nuances and things that go unnoticed or even unmentioned, uh virtual cavalcade of minutiae for of reasons why someone might not want to be a technician at all in the first place, and then if they actually did get into the profession, why they would want to fucking am scray from this profession. And I can't really, I honestly I can't really authentically cover all of those nuance reasons for not wanting to be a technician. Some of them may be silly, you know. Maybe uh maybe somebody uh I don't know, doesn't like the color red, you know. I mean, I mean it could be that silly, okay? Because right now uh what we have in this country is where we divide everything up into these very small genres. I mean, music, cars, and people. And there are lots of people out there uh who have different sorts of uh I would just say chemical imbalances or uh grocery list of uh acronyms of different mental or health issues. And I'm not gonna sit here and and tell talk to too much to you about them because I'm not well informed enough to actually speak properly about any of that stuff. I mean, uh and there's a good chance that your Uncle Jimmy has at least one or two of those categories, it's just never been diagnosed. So uh, and this is how it used to be in this country. You just somebody acted strange or their behavior was odd, you just fucking dealt with it. You didn't go, oh, that guy's got this or that guy's got that. You just said, fuck it, he's the fucking weirdo, and you moved on with your life. And then if it involved that person, if that person was related to you, or you knew that person and maybe even liked them, they were a little uh odd. You just kind of dealt with it and you kind of put up with it, and you went on about your merry way. And you didn't really worry too much about how the rest of society sees them, as long as you know how you see them was was your main your main thing, okay? I'm I'm just saying that uh, you know, you can like somebody that everybody in the world hates. Uh, and you know, that that's perfectly fine. Nowadays it does not seem to be like that. It seems to be like you have to pick sides and then you have to pick how far you're gonna go to that side once you get there. Uh, I don't I'm not really a firm believer in that, okay? I like to give a lot of people the benefit of the doubt, especially my uh technician friends. So if you have some sort of uh maybe uh mental health issue, or perhaps you're just a little uh odd, I welcome you to listen to Grease to Wheels, made by one of the biggest motherfucking oddballs out there. Yes, your Uncle Jimmy. If any of you really do know me, you know that I am one oddball motherfucker. So not much I can really do about that, you know. I just uh my brain does not work the way most people's brains work. I don't think I don't think a lot of people's brains work the way most people's brains work, okay? And that's one of the things that can cause uh a very serious, grand myriad of reasons why you might not want to be an automotive technician. You might have uh an aversion to literally any one of a million things which would cause you personally not to want to do that job. Uh, I think that one of the things that a lot of people have that keeps them from wanting to be an automotive technician is just the basic good common sense, really, because it's a tough job. Boys and girls, I I've kind of skirted around it and haven't said that, but it's a fucking tough job. Not all the time. Sometimes it's brutally easy, but how often does that happen? It doesn't seem to happen often enough for me, anyway. I I can't, you know, I can't wrap my mind around uh what's going on sometimes, and other times I'm sitting around going, When where is there something I could actually wrap my mind around at all? You know, sometimes you're busy, sometimes you're not. The chaos is high, the chaos is low, the bullshit factor is high, the bullshit factor is low. You can't you can't put your finger on it and you can't you can't uh plan for it and you can't compensate for it. There's nothing you can do about it. It comes and goes in waves and tides and fits and starts. So it's something that you have to deal with. But one of the things I did want to talk about that I think has a very great impact on whether or not you become an auto mechanic or an automotive technician, and whether or not you keep doing it, and whether or not it's a career for you that takes you right to the end of your own career and drops you off on the doorstep of retirement. Okay. And one of those things is that working on cars is dangerous. And we, you, me, and I, we get hurt doing this job, and we get hurt a fucking lot doing this job. There's there's days where I I twist fingers, uh, shit falls on my feet, uh, bang my head against something, something hits me, something's hot, I burn myself. There's a million fucking ways, I mean, literally a million ways to hurt yourself working on cars. And none of us are immune to that. There's not one of us that's immune to it. I mean, maybe somewhere in the world there's a guy who just programs cars all day long, and all he has to do is hook them up, hook up a battery charger, and away he goes, okay. But I can tell you right now that that guy is probably gonna find a way to fucking hurt himself someday. Maybe he's leaning back in his chair, just kind of shepherding something through a programming uh on his computer, and then his chair breaks or he falls out of it, he lands on his ass. Maybe he hurts his back or something. It can happen. You know, even the most mundane activity that you might perform every day could go wrong. Maybe water on the floor, something's dangling from the ceiling, maybe an animal jumps out of a car and scares the fucking shit out of you. I have seen that. I know a lot of you have. Uh, there's all kinds of shit that can go wrong. And so uh, as an automotive technician, it's a brutally physical job that that can damage you. I mean, you know, not like being an NFL running back or anything like that, but I mean, still, the opportunities abound for you to get hurt. And uh, I wanted to kind of I wanted to kind of look this up on the internet and see uh what the internet might have to say about this because and and I don't know, okay, now myself personally, and I have to I have to just kind of disqualify myself from this, okay, because um, as your Uncle Jimmy, I am uh an extremely hard-headed, and I mean that physically and uh mentally and metaphysically, um extremely hard hard headed. I have banged my head off a lot of shit, some of it hard. Um, and also two, I'm a little thick when it comes to like trying to understand stuff sometimes. Sometimes I I revel in the brilliance of my mind, and other times I can't tie my fucking shoes. It's really a conundrum. And as you get older, it rises up to kind of slap you around a little bit and treat you like shit. So you you have to get used to that. But uh I myself am a very stout person, very uh robust physically. I don't really get hurt too often, and if I do, I'm really kind of able to shrug it off. But uh at 240 pounds and 510 or whatever I am now, uh I'm just I'm I'm just a solid brick wall. I mean, I'm not in great physical shape, but I I am stout and I am tough, and I that's by my own standards. I don't have anybody else's standards to go by. Uh that's just me saying that. But but what I what I have as a result of that, an ability to hurt myself in minor ways working on cars and shrug it off. Okay, now if you're if you're uh a s more slight person, maybe you know, maybe you're 5'4 and you weigh 150 pounds and you get your finger caught in something or you get a a bruise or or perhaps you burn yourself. I mean, there's all kinds of things that can happen to you. This might be something that would put you out of commission and it may or may not phase me. I I'd have to you know assess each situation. But so the the the larger you are and the more physical you are, the better you are able to withstand the punishment, the sheer punishment of being an automotive technician. And no one I have ever talked to, either in the shop or out of the shop, being management or a service advisor or even customers or or anybody else, somebody who doesn't do this, they never speak of the dire physical hazards of being an auto mechanic. Nobody nobody knows. Uh, if they do know, they're not saying a fucking word about it. They're not teaching you really anything in uh tech school about not hurting yourself or what to do if you do hurt yourself. They really don't talk about that. Uh, there's a lot of stuff they don't talk about in in tech schools that I think would be important, but also too, I understand why they don't, because you certainly don't want to you know bring a kid in uh for uh you know an automotive shop class at at a community college or at UTI or Wiotech or anywhere else, Lincoln Tech, wherever you might go, and then start telling them, hey, this job sucks, you're gonna get hurt, you're gonna burn yourself, you're gonna cut yourself, you're gonna drop shit on your foot, and then oh, by the way, all the other technicians are gonna treat you like dog shit and you're gonna want to quit after a couple years. They're not gonna tell you that. They're just not they're not gonna prepare you for that, and they they really can't because they don't know. They don't know what it's gonna be like for you in the shop, and by the way, neither do you. Okay, so nobody knows, but the physicality of the job and the potential to hurt yourself is pretty much a constant, and it is gonna reach out and touch you at some point. Now, I did find a little article here, it just says on a, you know, I mean, I like to snoop the internet every once in a while, sometimes for non-porn stuff. And this is one of the things I came up with here. This is uh the four most common auto shop injuries according to OSHA. Okay, so these are people uh and OSHA stands for if you don't know, occupational safety and health administration. It's a government agency and uh out there trying to keep you safe and trying to keep you from hurting yourself, and yet some of you fucking do it anyway, and I'm right there with you. I have uh if I, you know, I'm I've got like a some kind of fucking rash on my hands right now. I I hurt my arm real bad the other day, and I've got cuts, and I've got I don't bruise. I don't know why I don't bruise, something's wrong with me. Maybe I'm an alien, I don't know, but I don't bruise, but I have gotten aches and pains and did have back problems at one time. But uh yeah, none of us are immune to it. And honestly, if you get hurt in a shop, that's like the worst fucking situation in the world, and I'm not kidding you, because if you get hurt so badly to the point where you can't work, guess what else doesn't happen? You don't get fucking paid. Now, maybe, maybe if you're hurt severely enough, you can catch up with some uh work workman's comp, some workman's compensation. But uh there's a lot of different hoops to jump through for that, and I can't even help you with that. I've never had to do it, I've never done it. Uh, always gotten uh either back to work quickly or quickly enough or had enough money to be out of work for you know a week or two. But I know some of you don't have that luxury, okay? Especially if you have a family and they count on you to be the breadwinner. And when you hurt yourself, you're no longer a breadwinner, you're a bread loser, and uh it's tough. So if you're going to be a mechanic, this is one of the things that you have to kind of put in the back of your mind and say, listen, be careful. Don't fuck around with stuff that can hurt you. Really, literally, don't fuck around with stuff that can hurt you. Like lifts. Don't do don't fuck around with that stuff. You know, torches and other machines that lift stuff up or set it back down or line. I mean, there's a million things in the shop that if you don't use them properly, or if they're not maintained properly, they can fucking hurt you and even end your life. Now, according to OSHA, these are the four things that are that are bad, that go they go wrong in the shop. And uh they said number one on the list here is burns. And I gotta tell you, uh, you know, and I'm gonna just relay some experiences that I've had. I know that some of you are right there with me, had a Ford truck and was trying to put a uh aftermarket exhaust on it, and there was a pipe in that kit that did not fucking fit properly, and I was trying to get it to it to bolt up, and it was fighting me, and it was fighting me, and I thought I had it. I I ran the truck for 10, 20 minutes, and it started to leak, so I went underneath it, the truck to uh try to tighten something up, and I st I laid my arm right across this pipe and it burned the fucking piss out of me. A third degree burn. And uh I'm pretty I've got a pretty good relationship with pain. It did hurt, it did suck, uh, but I don't remember crying or yelling or screaming, which is unusual for me anyway. But uh I just had this third-degree burn on my arm for you know probably about three weeks. And I remember that the people I work for just uh they kind of didn't seem to care, which is uh a whole nother that that's a subject for a whole nother podcast, which I'm not gonna I'm not gonna go near, but uh I burned myself pretty fucking good. Now I didn't have to miss work, I was still able to keep doing what I do, but I think that somebody who had a lower threshold of pain, they might not have showed up for a couple of weeks, to be honest with you. I mean, and so uh burns is a really it's something that happens in the shop to a lot of us, and I don't know, some of us keep going and some of us don't. It says here you can prevent burns by providing the appropriate personal protection equipment to your team. Yes, yes. Where are the gloves stored in your shop? Yeah, and what kind are they? The latex kind that would melt if you touched them to an exhaust manifold. Um, yeah, I have gloves in my toolbox. If I gotta pick up something that I know is hot, or if I gotta fuck around with something that that's been heated up with a torch or was running, uh the latest example for us is we're doing in the middle of a starter recall, and they'll come in off the highway after driving in from the planet Mars and they're at like four million degrees, and we got to change a starter in them as a waiter. So, you know, I get on there with the gloves. I mean, I'm you know, I'm just not gonna grab that fucking starter when it's already at like 350 fucking degrees and then uh try to set it down in a normal manner with my bare hands. Now, I probably could because I've got some pretty fucking serious calluses on my hand, but uh still you don't want to fuck around with that stuff, okay? That's the number one thing. Number two is cuts and lacerations. Now, I swear to God, and I mean this wholeheartedly, that some of the cars, if I work on certain parts of it, it seems like they sent a kid in there with a little file to sharpen all of the fucking shit around it. I had an incident one time where I was trying to take a battery out and it was real tight, and I was trying to get the battery to move over like a just a quarter of an inch so it fit properly, and I got my hand wedged into a spot where I could not get it out, and when I pulled it up, it found like, I don't know, it looked like a knife. I mean, that's what it looked like. I don't know why it existed, it was part of the sheet metal of the body of this particular car. But when I tried to pull my hand out, it dug right into my wrist. And no matter what I do, I couldn't push my arm, my hand or my arm back down again to get it the fuck out of my wrist, and eventually had to get it down as far as I could and then yank it out, and it cut the fuck out of my hand. And I remember holding my hand up with blood squirting out of it, going, You motherfucker, really, really loud, and then looking over and seeing some customers who were looking at a car to buy in the shop, it was just, you know, not the best situation in the world. But what are you gonna do? I mean, you know, I just about lost a hand and it was stupid. And I pulled that battery back out and took that little piece of metal and cut it off so it didn't happen to somebody else. I don't know what happened there. Um, but these are these are things that happen. You get cuts and lacerations, and sometimes, you know, you look at something and you just go to touch it and you realize that it's razor fucking sharp and oh, maybe even hot. So you you cut yourself and you carturize the wound at the same time, maybe if you're lucky. Uh, here's what it says here employers and managers can prevent cuts and lacerations by providing cut resistance gloves. Here again, gloves seem to be the answer, often made from Kevlar. Yeah, who's gonna buy me Kevlar gloves? I don't know. Uh, probably nobody I know anyway. Uh, here's another one. The next one is number three. It says instances of eye injuries in tire shops. Now, look, I don't know why they said it like that. That's what it says here. Instances of eye injuries in tire shops. Now, eye injuries are not the sole proprietorship of tire shops, okay? They're not that's not the only place where you can get an eye injury, trust me. You can get fucking shit in your eye in every job in the shop, okay? I don't care if I don't care if you're fixing them, I don't care if you're washing them, you can get shit in your eye in in any shop, not just a tire shop, okay? Uh we're talking chemicals, maybe grit, maybe those little tiny pieces of wire that shoot out of a wire wheel. Always be careful around those. I have found those things stuck in everything I own, and I mean everything. My face, my nose, my ears, my shirts. I I think probably at one time I had one or two of those little wire things stuck in my cock and balls. I mean they they go everywhere, okay? So don't ever fuck with a wire wheel without wearing your safety glasses, because that is one hell of a good way to end up as a pirate wearing a patch all day long, going, arg, have you seen me eyeball, matey? Seriously, it's not a joke though, okay? Uh don't fuck around with your eyes and wear your safety glasses as often as you possibly can because you do not know when shit's gonna come your way. I I find uh I I wear safety glasses pretty often, and I have regular glasses I have to wear and see really literally anything mostly for reading, but when I'm looking at a car, I have to have them on because I'm I'm looking at them pretty closely, pretty intensely. Um and I will pull shields off a car, you know, just the the fucking shit they put on the bottom of the car to make it more aerodynamic and and I'll unscrew those things and when I drop them down, there's always some shit on those things that is gonna rain down on me if I don't do it right. I finally it took me a long time to figure out, but I like when I get to the last screw that's holding this panel up, I pull that fucking thing out and then I push that shield away from me so that whatever the fuck was up there on it doesn't go on me or up my nose or in my ear hole or in my eyes or possibly even my mouth, whatever. I the it I have seen just every form of garbage and shit on this planet on those fucking lower body shields on the cars I work on. Maybe you don't have that problem. Uh, if you don't, God bless you. Um, but be careful because uh you know you could get something in your eye real easy if you're working on something over your head and you look up at the wrong time. It happens all the time. And it used to happen to me a lot more when I was able to see, but now I'm not, so I've got to have some sort of lens in front of the old eyeballs because they don't work right. All right, number four, number four on their list is suffering back injuries during vehicle maintenance. Yeah, that's exactly what happened to your Uncle Jimmy. Picked up a great big fat fucking tire and wheel combo for a SUV, and then like a retard, I turned my body. I twisted, and my spine just said, eh, tilt, and I ended up uh having to go to the doctor. And uh this was this was a while back too, and uh, I was in a good bit of pain. Uh I I personally had it managed, but they wanted to give me some painkillers, and they gave me this was before all the shit came down the pike for this stuff, but they gave me one of the biggest motherfucking bottles of oxycotton I've ever seen. I mean, there must have been 150 fucking pills in there. And I took maybe a couple, two, three of them, and yeah, you know, you you feel pretty good when you take that shit. There's no question about that. But uh uh they're uh they're narcotics, and narcotics have a tendency to uh lock up the waste management system. And if you've ever run into that problem, you'll probably want to stop using oxycotton. I personally think that that's really what killed Elvis is that he had some narcotics in him that caused him to lock up and that he had a heart attack trying to chop a deuce. And uh makes sense, right? Because that's what happened to him. But um and I went through pretty I went through kind of the same thing, you know. I mean, I'm you know, I'm not trying to pass some uh peanut butter and banana sandwiches or anything like that, but uh going to the bathroom after not having gone to the bathroom for a couple, two, three days, having taken about maybe three or four of these oxycotton pills. Yeah, I swore them off and gave them to a friend. I gave them to a friend of mine, which I think is a felony now, but uh uh I'm not sure what he did with them. I think he probably probably popped a bunch and then had some beers and had some fun for a little while with them. I don't know what he did, but uh the thing is uh I had uh hurt my back pretty good. And at one point I was uh in a lot of pain and was actually screaming, and uh they actually gave me some morphine, which really fixed me up. I'm not even kidding you. I mean, yeah, I wasn't feeling any pain, but after that, everything my back was back was able to relax and I I felt a lot, a lot better from there on. But uh I did end up having a little bit of surgery where they ground down a couple of bones in my spine. And I've I've been good ever since. And that was literally 20 years ago. So um I got lucky there. Uh a lot of you guys out there, you know, lift weights and stuff like that. Just take it easy. Don't I mean seriously, when we're talking about back injuries, you don't have to pick up every fucking thing that you that looks like you could lift it up if you were strong. You don't have to do that. Don't do that. I work for a German car brand, and the Germans are very famous for not picking up anything that weighs over a certain weight. And I believe it's 40 kilograms. Uh I could be mistaken. I think it's 88 pounds or 80 pounds or something like that. They they just won't pick it up. Not personally, anyway. They'll get some sort of device to pick it up with, whether it's a you know, a two-wheeled cart or an engine crane or whatever, but they they're not going to lift up heavy shit because if they wreck themselves, if they wreck their backs, they can't work. And you know, then to the to the Germans, if you can't work, you're pretty much useless. And well, they used to deal with that in a lot of different manner in the past, but uh still it's it's not good. It's not good for your uh your workforce, it's not good for you, it's not good for your uh your finances, it's not good for your family. Uh if you can't work, no money's gonna come in. Nobody's gonna pay you not to work, trust me. I've I tried that for a while when I was younger. It didn't work. But yeah, one of the things uh one of the other things I want to talk to you about, though, is uh when you do when you do get hurt at work, you need to make sure that you let somebody know immediately what happened and what the circumstances were, and maybe even write it down, okay? Because later on you may have to go back and get Workman's Comp, and they're gonna want specific dates and times for everything that went on with your particular injury. What were you lifting? Why were you lifting it? Is that part of your job? Is that not part of your job? Should you have been using a piece of equipment to lift that? Uh, did your boss tell you to lift it and then tell you not to be a pussy and just lift it? I mean, that there's all kinds of things that go on with that. So when you hurt yourself, make sure that you write down what has happened and write down uh what needs to be done. And if you went to the hospital, who you spoke to, just maintain all that information, okay, because it could be important if you decide you need to get a workman's compensation, because they're kind of fucking assholes about that sometimes. They get a lot of people who are trying to defraud that particular uh program, and so they they will rain down a hell of a lot of scrutiny on you and look in look in all the nooks and crannies and try to deny you. Okay, so if you if you are properly documenting when it's possible, obviously you don't want to you know chop a hand off and then start writing, oh I chopped my hand off, and this is what everybody said. You want to be, you know, obviously you want to you want to document everything that happened, but you know, obviously you want to get you want to go to the fucking doctor or the hospital first. Don't be don't be an idiot. Now, one of the things I wanted to tell you, and and I I I didn't laugh out loud. I thought it was funny, but then when I thought about it, it pissed me off. I was on the internet looking for uh articles and information about preventing. Well, here's the other article, common mechanic injuries and how to prevent them. But while I was looking for this, what came up with were dozens and dozens of ads for lawyers who are out there ready to fuck your boss to get you money for you hurting yourself at your job. And I I gotta I gotta be honest with you, it fucking pissed me off because I just I mean, as far as being a lawyer goes, I just I'm not down with it. With all of the advertising and the, you know, we'll get you millions and you know, and all this stuff. Yeah, maybe you do honestly deserve to have some sort of a payout or a judgment for getting hurt at work, especially if there's somebody who's liable. Maybe a guard wasn't in place, maybe the proper equipment for handling uh a large piece of equipment or a large car part or you know, working with a tranny or an engine, maybe that equipment wasn't properly maintained. And yeah, you got hurt and and now you can't work, and you do need you do need some sort of compensation of some sort. But for these lawyers to be out there and just basically, you know, ambulance chasers with this stuff, I just find it disgusting. I really do. I really do. And what what what the part that makes it the worst is that most of the people who make the laws in this country, legislatures in your state, uh assembly men in your state, whatever form of government your state has, and in Congress, uh, you know, as far as senators and and members of the House representatives go, they're chock full of fucking lawyers. So that shit's not gonna go anywhere. If a lawyer, if the lawyers got together and said, Oh, you know, we should be able to advertise on the moon, you'd look up at the moon and you'd see a fucking great big ad that said, call 888-888-88888 and get your money. You know, it's like really they they've got a they've got a death grip on that kind of shit. And really, as far as I'm concerned, now maybe some of you have a different take on this, okay? But as far as I'm concerned, I'm not out there uh injuring myself so that I can get money from my employer. And in a lot of cases, let me just let me just be straight with you here, too. Your lawyer might be immune to uh litigation if you get hurt at work, okay. There are some states where there's laws against suing your employer. Now, if they're negligent, that's one thing. But if they're not and something just happens and it's not something that they can control, uh, I think the uh the example that I came uh came in contact with was uh a gentleman I used to work with was had done a brake job on a car and he hadn't pumped the brakes up, and a lot kid came along and said, Oh, I'll pull that out for you. And the lot kid pulled forward and pinned this technician against the toolbox, his toolbox, because he hadn't pumped the brakes up before he put it in gear. And when he stepped on the brakes, there was nothing there. You know how it is. If you've ever done brakes and you do a four-wheel brake job, but you you don't have any brakes right away. You gotta pump them up. You first two, three stabs of that brake pedal, you got fucking nothing. And this guy got pinned against the toolbox. And I would imagine that once he he was young, he was young at the time, probably in his mid-20s, maybe late 20s. That dude gets to be about 50 or 60. That those injuries from that are probably gonna make him a cripple. I hope not. He's a good dude. I liked him a lot, he was pretty smart, very good technician. But this is something that could cause that that dude to not be a technician. It's something that could that could cause the technician shortage because this guy can't do the job anymore. And it's not the dealer's fault. Yeah, it's some fucking idiot car porter who you know ran basically ran them over or pinned them up against the wall. It's not good. It's not good. So I I feel like myself personally, I'm not I'm not a big fan of lawyers, and I don't appreciate that they're stepping in to try to make uh millions of dollars off of uh other people's misery. Well, not one of my favorite things to think about, so I try not to, but their advertisements are everywhere. And when I was trying to look up this subject, that's all I found. It was like three pages of lawyers who will be happy to sue somebody for you in your behalf and take take half. So, this particular article that I found, it's a different article than that one. It's not talking about uh OSHA, but this one is uh most common workplace injuries in auto repair shops. And I'm just gonna read through them real quick here. Cuts and lacerations. I don't need to talk to you guys about that. You some of you guys are out there cutting your hand daily, sprains and strains, yep, absolutely. Lifting heavy tires, engines, or transmissions can strain muscles and ligaments. No shit. Really? Yeah. Um, a lot of that shit, boys and girls, you should definitely not be picking up. You should just not do it. Uh, yep, you're a strong guy, you've got muscles, you could pick something up like that, but if you twist or if something happens, man, not good. Uh burns was the next one here on this particular list. Uh yeah, we work around a lot of hot shit sometimes, don't we? Yes, that's right. And I'll tell you, uh, some of you probably have the same calluses on your hands that I do. I mean, honestly, I can throw a hot dog in the oven, hit broil, watch it get hot, real hot, it's bubbling, go in and pick it up with my hands, can't feel it. You get calluses like that. You could pick up radioactive isotopes, not feel it. Uh, here again, this one is eye injuries, also, flying debris, sparks, and fluid. Yeah, you gotta be careful, man. Absolutely. Uh, and I understand when they when they, you know, most of us probably don't wear our safety glasses all the time. Uh sometimes they're not comfortable, sometimes you can't see anything out of them, sometimes they just don't, they don't sit on your head right. It's not it's not comfortable, so you don't wear them. But if you've got something in your hand or you're working on some sort of machine that spins, and and I don't give a shit how it spins or why it spins, what it's supposed to be doing, you should probably have on some safety glasses because if something pops out of that for some reason, and and you know as well as I do that these situations pop up all the time. Something goes wrong and it and it goes and hits your eye, you could be a pirate, one-eyed, one-eyed monster. Let's not let that happen to us, okay? Uh, the next one here on this particular list, and we didn't talk about this one earlier, is hearing loss. And let me tell you something. Your Uncle Jimmy has suffered hearing loss his whole life. I mean, I really can't even say it was hearing loss. I never had very good hearing to begin with. And then on top of that, I only hear what I want to hear. So basically, fuck basically the fucking world is silent to me. Uh, it's kind of a it's kind of a problem, but there's been a lot of loud noises in my life, and some of them have come from working in shops, working on cars. For Christ's sakes, folks, protect your head your hearing, okay? And and with all these things, okay, you can understand very easily why any of these five things, hearing loss, eye injuries, burns, sprains and strains, cuts and lacerations. We didn't even talk about broken bones, but uh, these things could cause you to want to leave this occupation and just seeing it, okay? Imagine you know, you got a new kid, he's he just started working, he's working next year, he's doing a pretty good job, he's got a pretty good attitude, he's not stupid, and he helps you out, you help him out, and and and you know, you're building a rapport with him, and he's a good kid, and all of a sudden either you or the guy next to you gets hurt really bad. Maybe he breaks your arm, breaks your collarbone, cuts, cuts their arm, cuts, cuts their hand. Uh, just any one of a number that burns gets a you know a very uh bad burn on you know either fingers or palm of your hand or on your arm like I did, or or maybe you drop something heavy on your foot. Maybe you are very seriously injured. You or somebody nearby is very seriously injured, and this kid, he's still brand new, you know, three, two, three, four months in, and he sees this, that could be a game changer for somebody. That could be something that puts him out the door. Like, I don't want to end up like that. I remember, and this is this is not funny, but it's gonna sound funny. But I remember going to college way back when I was 18, and I was in a tool and die class, and our instructor was missing a quite a few digits on his left hand. And he had said, because I'm an old guy, he had said that during World War II he got him chopped off in a Cincinnati milling machine. Guess what we had in the basement, folks? Yeah, Cincinnati milling machines. It kind of fucking spooked the shit out of me. So if you think that hurting yourself and and trying to be safe in the shop is not causing a small part at the very least, uh, some of the technician shortage, now you gotta think again. You gotta think again. Nobody wants to go to work and get hurt. And I I've I've said it before, and uh, it's not really a joke, it's kind of funny. We kind of turn it into a joke, but whatever you do, man, don't go to work and do shit and that kills you. Don't do it, okay? Don't die at work. Don't let l don't let work win like that, okay? I'm sorry, really seriously, it's not funny. And uh one of the the other things too is uh, and I've talked about this a lot, and uh I can I can talk to you without getting emotional about it, but it does that there's something I have a a just a terrible feeling about this, and I can't describe how I feel about it properly, but I want to relay this one little uh thing that is that's happened to me, and I pray to God it doesn't happen to any of you, and I hope that you're smart enough not to have this shit happen to you. But uh I had seen a video, and I think it was just a like a regular video where they just kind of watch what's going on to make sure everybody's working, and they had this video of these two kids, these two black kids, and they're working on a believe it or not, a Rolls-Royce in a shop somewhere in the world. It didn't mention where, uh, but they're working on this Rolls-Royce, and they had not set this car on the lift properly. And they were shaking the fucking shit out of something underneath it, and that car started to come off of the lift. Okay, now a Rolls-Royce typically doesn't weigh anything less than three tons, six thousand pounds. Okay, now I don't know of anybody in the world who can pick up six thousand pounds, and these two kids, one of them immediately got the fuck out from underneath that car, and the other kid, I don't know really what he was thinking. Um, and unfortunately, we can't ask him, but it appeared that he tried to hold the car up and was unable to. And the car came down and it it crushed him like a walnut. I think it probably folded him in half the way he was juxtapositioned underneath that car. It definitely killed him. There's really no doubt. And then I was forced to watch that video again later because the company I work for came around and said, Listen, you guys can't fuck around with these lifts. And then they showed us that video again, and I I moaned, I went, Oh my god, you're gonna show this video. I said, Well, at least the one kid was smart and he got the fuck out. And the other kid, he was the only one that got killed, and the guy said, No, I'm gonna pause it. And when he paused it, you could see that the other kid got the fuck out, but then got the fuck back underneath it again for some reason. I don't know. He must have thought he could help his friend hold the car up. They were both wrong. They both ended up dead. Two of them, not one, two. And uh I I you know I want I'm trying not to get emotional when I talk about this because it's it's a horrible thing, and I don't want to think about this happening to any of you guys out there. So, for fuck's sake, when you're fucking around with the goddamn lift, get down on the fucking ground and make sure it goes where it's supposed to. I know a lot of you just fucking flip it underneath the car with your foot, and whatever it grabs, it grabs, and you don't give a shit. Could be a good way to end up dead. Okay, let's not let that happen. All right, I don't want I don't want that happening. I'm gonna tell you what I used to tell. I'm gonna tell you what I used to say all the time. I used to say, listen, none of you are allowed to die before me. Don't even ask for permission. Fuck off. Keep living, keep working, have fun, do drugs, have sex, whatever. Keep living. Do not do stupid shit like that, okay? And I'll tell you something, honestly, and this is another part that we don't think about. Let's say you're working in a bay and these two kids are fucking around with this Rolls-Royce and it falls on them and it kills them. Are you gonna want to go back to work the next day? I mean, really, literally, are you is this something that would chase you out of the business? I I gotta tell you, if if a hundred people saw that, I think 50 of them would quit on the spot and say, I'm not fucking doing this anymore. It's not fucking worth it. I mean, on top of society hating your guts and your boss not paying you a uh a significant wage or or uh you know paying you for the value that you bring to the job, and then having you know all the other stuff going on, the chaos and the bullshit factor, and you know, the the way you get treated poorly, and then you see this, it would make me want to find another profession if I saw that personally. So when you think about you know getting hurt at work and having things happen to you, and maybe even having to not be able to work because of something that happened to you, this is definitely uh causing a problem uh with the uh technician shortage. It's definitely causing a problem. Nobody wants to work a job that is dangerous for the fucking small amount of pay that some of us get. Now, what I wanted to do too, also, is uh here are uh injury risks by task or work zone, uh tire and suspension work. Yeah, you can definitely get hurt doing some of that stuff. Uh there's a lot of kinetic energy in in coil springs, and most cars have them. You have to be very careful working around those. Engine and exhaust repairs. Have you ever gotten anything caught in a fan belt? It's probably why we don't wear ties, even though we wear shirts, they have a collar that you could wear a tie with. I always thought that that's funny. I'm definitely not gonna be wearing a tie in a repair shop. Uh and I I I chafe my I chafe mightily against the style of uniform that I have to wear. I think a lot of you wear a similar uniform that has a collar, a formal collar that you would have if you were gonna wear a tie. That's real 20th century to me, okay? Uh and and if you're working around an engine where anything's spinning, if some of this stuff is loose, and I know a lot of you guys have long hair and a lot of you guys have beards and long beards, and uh I'm I'm a fan of the beard. I have some friends who have some really epic beards. I would certainly hate to have your head get sucked into an engine block because a belt or some sort of moving uh part of your engine grabbed a hold of your beard and said, Hey, come here. So let's be careful around that shit. All right, electrical system repairs. Well, let me tell you something. Some of these electric cars that I've been working on lately, yeah. Three, four hundred volts in them when they're charged up. That'll definitely ruin your day. That'll put you into a hole. So you definitely need to be hat be very, very careful around that stuff. And I gotta tell you, honestly, you know, I mean, I'm not afraid of much, but uh there's a a tad bit of anxiety that goes along with working on electric cars and the fact that if you're not fucking smart, which I'm not, you could easily fucking zort yourself. And uh, I would prefer not to do that to myself, and I would certainly prefer that none of you do that to yourself, so let's be careful around that shit. Let's use our brains, okay? There's enough voltage in there to fucking put you out, take you out. Uh, fluid handling here is another one. Yeah, we deal with some pretty nasty shit, ladies and gentlemen, just so you know. Um, you can't really ingest anything that goes into a car and expect to not get sick. I mean, you you get a gulp of brake fluid or coolant, coolant especially, coolant will kill you. Coolant will kill you fucking dead in a hurry. Motor oil is not too tasty. Fuel, never good to get that shit in in you know, in your mouth or even on your hands. So let's be careful around that shit. Uh, I know a lot of uh shops don't really regulate having drinks on your toolbox. And I will I will just I will just tell you this right now. I almost always have a bottle of water on my toolbox. I'm always drinking something. I'm thirsty all the fucking time. I think a lot of you are, and if you're not, you probably should be. You need to hydrate. But be careful, okay, because it is really easy to need to take like a fuel sample and to take one of your empty water bottles and run a fuel sample into it to see how much water is in it, and then put it on your toolbox right next to your bottle of water. Just be careful. And I'll tell you what, there are some OSHA inspectors out there, and even some of these aftermarket inspectors who are supposed to protect you from the OSHA inspectors, they will they will get very upset if you have something to drink on your toolbox, okay? And and I'm kind of with them because the last thing I want is for you to walk over to your toolbox and think you're taking a slug of crispy cool water, and it's gonna quench your thirst, and then you're gonna get back to work, and all of a sudden you realize that it's the fuel sample you just took out of that car, and you're spitting it up all over the place, and maybe you're even throwing up, and you might even have to go to the hospital if you actually ingest it. So let's be careful with fluid handling, please. Uh, one of the other things they put down here, welding and fabricating. Let me tell you what, I've got pants I can't wear because there's so many holes in them from welding and oxygen settling torch cutting and and trying to fabricate different things. Uh, I ruined a lot of clothes. And uh, I'll tell you, and and I can laugh about this now, and actually I it was kind of funny at the time, even, because it's just weird what happened. But I was using an oxyacettling torch set to cut a bumper off of a car, and I had to kind of get down on the ground and look up at it, and when I hit the uh the oxygen lever to blow the uh molten hot metal out of the way, a small tiny ball of slag went directly into my right ear hole, hole in one, and actually burned a hole in my eardrum. I am not making that up, and it it hurt intensely for about a second, and then because it was so fucking hot, it cartarized everything. It didn't hurt after it hurt for like a second, and uh and then I just kept working because like I said, I'm a pretty fucking uh pretty stout, tough individual, right? And I kept doing what we were doing. It it hurt for a second, and then it stopped hurting. I'm like, okay, and then when I got up the next morning and took a shower before I went to work, I went to blow my nose and uh air came out of my ear hole. That doesn't usually happen. So I ended up going to the doctor, I think later that day, maybe later the next day, and he pulled a small tiny ball of steel slag out of my ear hole and then said, Well, you're in luck. Your ear uh drum actually was bleeding a little bit, and that meant that it would heal itself. He says if it didn't bleed, then he said he would have to go in and fix it. But because it bled, it fixed itself. Uh, I don't want I really honestly don't want that to happen to any of Of you. I don't understand why it didn't hurt more than it did. It should have burned a hole straight through my fucking brain, but uh maybe my brain is just numb. I don't know. But listen, if you're fucking around with a torch or the welder, I would throw I would throw some earplugs in if you're not using AirPods. I would definitely put a ball cap on or maybe a uh a pullover cap, something to cover your ears up with, and uh just just to keep that shit from trying to score another hole in one. So you don't want you definitely don't want that to happen. Uh I'm sorry. I know that that that the kind of stories I'm telling you tonight are not the kind you really want to hear, and I I can appreciate that, okay? But these are all things that can happen in the shop, and these are things that may cause you to not want to work in a shop or to not be able to work in a shop as a technician, as a mechanic. And it can also be something that happens to somebody else and causes somebody else in the shop to not want to fucking do that anymore because they don't want to end up like them. Okay, that's always that's always something. I mean, when you see somebody do something that uh you've done before and they got hurt doing it and you somehow didn't, you're gonna be really extra cautious if you have to ever have to do that job again. And maybe you might just beg off on the whole job to begin with. You might just say, you know what? I'm gonna get I'm gonna hurt myself really bad if I keep doing this job. So I am fucking out of here. So that's one of the things. Here's some suggestions via this site here on how to keep yourself safe. Uh, always use personal protective equipment, safety glasses, mechanics, gloves, steel-toed boots. Always a good idea. Uh, they haven't been required in any place I've worked in in a long, long time. Hearing protection in a noisy environment, yeah, monkey. You definitely don't want to be uh listening to stuff that's uh over, I think what's 130 decibels is where it starts to really hurt your ears. Yeah. And also to wearing long sleeves and flame retardant gear when you're welding or grinding. Also, using proper lifting techniques, lift with your legs and not your back. Use hoists or jacks when possible. And definitely don't do it, Uncle Jimmy, avoid twisting or sudden movements while picking up something incredibly fucking heavy. Okay, just don't do it. Keep tools and equipment in good shape. Yeah, because I'll tell you what, that some of the equipment, if it's in the middle of doing a heavy-duty job and it decides to fuck up, it could seriously injure you and possibly unalive you. Let's not let that happen. If you've got tools and equipment and something is fucking wrong with it, shut it down and get it fixed. Don't let anybody else use it. The worst thing would be to use a piece of equipment and somehow break it and then put it back as if nothing's wrong, which a lot of you do, okay? But then have that piece of equipment get try uh try to be used by somebody else, and they find that it doesn't work when they're it work properly when they're right in the middle of using it and it fails and causes them injury. They may not know it was you, but guess who will know it was you? You. So don't let it happen. Okay. Also, two here, handle chemicals with care. Yeah, boy.

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Whew!

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There's some nasty fucking shit out there. Let's just make sure we're we're handling it properly and definitely don't put it in clear plastic water bottles on your toolbox. It wouldn't be good at all. Uh, here is uh something else here, too. It says the role of shop management and injury prevent prevention, uh, build a safety first culture, provide ongoing training, clear, post clear instructions and signage. Yeah. Do you want to know where the fire hydrants are or the fire extinguisher fire hydrants? Well, you want to know where those are too, but you're gonna want to know where the fire extinguishers are. You're gonna want to know where the eyewash stations are. And if you don't, I would say to you, look around right now if you're in the shop. And if you're not in the shop, when you get there, look around and figure out where that shit is, okay? And I'll tell you why. I know where the fire hydrants are. Here I go again. I know where the fire extinguishers are in my shop. If a fire was to spontaneously break out somewhere in the shop, I would go right to where the fucking fire extinguisher is and get that son of a bitch and go over and try to put that fire out. Instead of, like everybody else would be, they would be looking around for the fire extinguisher. They wouldn't know where they are. Be aware of your surroundings. Do you know where the eyewash station is? Do you know where do you have one? You should. Do you have a shower? Because sometimes you get chemicals on you that are definitely no bueno, and you need to get them off of you as fast as possible. And water is a real good base if there happens to be acid, so get underneath that shower and pull the lever. I mean, it's it's not flash dance, but it could save your life, okay? Um, but knowing where the fire extinguisher is, I think that's a number one thing that you should know. You should be able to go right to it and not have to look around in a panic and try to find one. I do know where it is. It's actually pretty close to my bay. So if somebody catches fire near me, I'm on it, baby. I'll be right there. And it it did happen one time in my bay. I wasn't there. It was a Saturday. Kid was spraying down something really hot with some uh brake cleaner. And we know brake cleaner is flammable, right? Well, yeah, this kid does too now. Um he's he set the brake clean on fire. And uh so uh one of the other technicians grabbed the fire extinguisher and hosed everything down with it the car, my bay, the lift, the kid, the can of brake clean. Uh he made quite a mess. And the best part about it was this is no fucking lie. The dude was on lunch and he was relaxing in the breaker room, which was right next to where my lift used to be, and he had his shoes off. So in in the dust on the floor where all this fire extinguisher stuff, whatever it is, was all over the floor, you could see you could see bare footprints in it. It was kind of funny. But hey, he got the fire out and everything was okay. I mean, you let a fire go for more than a minute or two in a shop on a car, it'll engulf that fucking thing. They're very, very flammable. Take it from me. I burned up my brother's Dodge pickup one time. That thing did not have any problem having flames licking out of it six to eight feet high. I was surprised how well it burned. Also, too, it says here uh track incidents and improvements. Yeah, if you've you know if you've got some stuff going on uh in your shop, you're gonna want to make a note of it so that you can warn other people to not let this happen to them. And then also to if you can put some measures in place to keep it from happening to you. Now, the reason why I bring this to you as part of the reason why there's a technician shortage, they don't teach this in tech school, and nobody is gonna really tell you about it. I mean, if the kid next door comes over and says, Hey man, I want to be a technician, what do I gotta do? You would probably say, Well, you're really fucking crazy and you might slap the shit out of them, and you'd probably be doing them a favor. But if he's really bent on being an auto mechanic, one of the things you're gonna want to tell them, say, listen, this is a job where you can hurt yourself really easy. You get yourself into dangerous situations all the time, and it would be even worse if you were careless and lazy. Remember that. If you're careless and lazy, you end up like those two kids trying to hold up a Rolls-Royce on a lift that they did not set properly. There's nobody to blame in that situation except the two dead motherfuckers under that car. Don't let that happen to you. And let these people know. I mean, nope, they're not gonna teach you that in tech school. They might teach you about how to be safe, how to pick up stuff properly, how to, you know, maybe treat a wound, uh, how to, you know, use an eyewash station or whatever, but they're not gonna tell you how often you might have to do that shit because nobody really knows. And if you work in a good, clean shop where there's not a lot of shit on the floor and and everything's taken care of and everything's taken seriously, especially safety, then it's not something you really have to worry about. But if you work in a place that has cardboard on the wall and it's got a dirt floor and they have a stove in a corner for heat, and you're over there working with chemicals, you know, maybe gasoline, who knows what else, sulfuric acid maybe out of a battery, you could run into a situation that's really, really bad, really, really easy. And these are things that can either keep you from wanting to be a technician, or if you become a technician, can make you want to get the fuck out of it. It's not for nothing. Now, I did want to kind of talk about some of the other reasons that exist for people not wanting to be technicians in the first place and not wanting to be a technician after trying it for a little while, and then maybe after a while just leaving. And there's a there's a hundred million little things, okay? There's a hundred million little, there's as many reasons to leave a shop as there would be to stay in one, okay? If you're not taken care of, if the if the owners are terrible to you and the the shop has a very unsafe situation, maybe many unsafe situations going on, and the other members of the team don't like you, or they don't want to work with you, or they don't work well together, or maybe they're just stupid, and you end up having to fix their shit all the time. There's just so many different reasons why there is a technician shortage. Now, I've tried to outline four of the major ones, and I think that all of you can clock in on all of those four points somewhere on a scale of one to ten. Maybe uh what society thinks isn't a big deal. For some people it is. Uh, maybe on a scale of one to ten, maybe the pay isn't like the number one thing. I think for a lot of us it is. Uh, for some people it might not be. On a scale of one to ten, you'll have people who are like, okay, the pay's okay, but I think moreover, you're gonna have people who say pay's not that great. Uh, I was reading something about uh our friend Mr. Farley, uh, the CEO of Ford again. Uh he had said that there's good jobs available out there to working on Fords. I kind of chuckle. I don't know if that's if I don't know how he could categorize that. Uh I I don't talk to a lot of Ford mechanics. I don't really know anybody who is a Ford mechanic right at the moment. Uh I don't know if that's a really good job. I think that their cars might be, they might be difficult to work on, or maybe they're not. Maybe their warranty times are uh are generous, maybe they're not. They probably aren't. But he's saying that you can make 120k a year working that job and nobody wants to do it. And I'm like, well, Mr. Farley, you don't own any of those shops. How can you tell people how much they can make in that shop when it it's not your place to even really talk about it? And this is another problem that you run into with technicians who come wide-eyed and bushy-tailed out of a technician's uh out of a technical school, you know, maybe a community college or maybe a WildTech or UTI, a Lincoln Tech, there's a million of them out there, right? You can go there and you can learn how to work on cars, and they're gonna leave you just a little bit short on the practical points of working in a dealership. And then when you get out of there, you're gonna expect to be making, you know, anywhere between uh$50,000 and$100,000 a year because that's what they told you in tech school. And the truth is a slap in the face when they tell you they'll start you out at$15 an hour. And unless you ask for a raise within a year, you're not gonna get one. I think that honestly, that probably sends more people on it on their way out of a shop than really anything. Honestly, I don't care what society thinks about me. I make a fairly decent wage. The bullshit factor in my shop is not that high. The chaos level is controlled fairly well. Everybody does their job, and that's a big part of it. Just having everybody do what they're supposed to do. Everything's covered if everybody does what they do. And then the one thing, the one variable that really nobody can cover, that nobody can do anything about it, really. I mean, you can you could try to keep it to a minimum by making the shop as safe as possible and having a lot of different safety features in place, but it's getting hurt at work. It just happens. It is going to happen to you. I will tell you right now, if you're starting uh on Monday as a technician in a shop, that within five years, you are gonna have bruises, possibly broken bones, you will have stitches somewhere, and your back is probably gonna be sore. How long are you gonna put up with that fucking shit? I can't say how stout are you? How much does the passion for doing what you do burn inside of you? Burns pretty brightly and intensely for me. So that's why I put up with a lot of stuff that I put up with. And it's not always somebody's fault. You can't go out in the shop and make your shop accident free for the next five years on purpose. Accidents are gonna happen, and they'll happen when they when they happen, and there's no way to predict them, and there's no way to predict the outcome. Um, really, what you should have is a plan in place to take care of something, anything, if anything happens. A first aid kit, fire extinguishers, whatever. Okay. So don't discount the fact that you can get fucking seriously hurt being an auto mechanic. Some of these kids are gonna find out the hard way when they get seriously hurt. Nobody's teaching them that. You'll have to instill safety in them. If you're an old guy or if you've been there a while, you know, you got five, ten years in, let these kids know. Hey, we're not gonna put up with any of this fucking lazy, stupid bullshit that gets people killed. I don't want to see a car crush you. That would ruin my fucking day. Don't let that shit happen to you. Remember, you're not allowed to die before your Uncle Jimmy, and you definitely should not die at work. Do not die at work. That means they win. You don't want that. And that's, you know, and I want to conclude this four-part series, which I said was going to be three, but I thought it was important to talk to you about safety and about another reason why somebody might not want to work as an auto mechanic. And then I also wanted to just kind of fill you in and whisper in your ear, there's a fucking million reasons why certain people wouldn't want to work as a technician or an automotive mechanic. There's a million reasons. Not some of which I have no idea. Maybe you your desire is to be something completely different. And you start doing this because your friend did it, or your dad did it, and they they got you in uh and and you learned a few things and you you might even be good at it, but still just fucking absolutely hate it. Hate it. I think that that's probably one of the number one reasons for the technician shortage is that people get in thinking they'll like it, they do it for a little while, reason realize they don't, and then they just get to a point where they hate it and they just gotta get the fuck out. And at that particular point, no amount of money is really gonna change how you feel about it. If you hate your job, it's not the job for you. It is honestly, I believe it is honestly true that you should do what you love as your job, and you will never work a day in your life. That's how I feel about it. Of course, I'm a special case, right? All right, that's enough of your Uncle Jimmy. He has rattled on long enough. Listen, seriously, I I want to say this with the absolute utmost sincerity. Please do not get hurt at work. Definitely do not die at work. I can't have that. Uh let's be let's be good, let's be clean, let's be safe, let's be happy that we do what we do, let's get paid well. Remember, we got to bat a thousand. We got to get paid for batting a thousand, okay? And if you you work in a place that's inherently dangerous and they don't value you and they don't pay you and they treat you like shit, for Christ's sakes, ladies and gentlemen, just grease the wheels and get the fuck out. There is a definite technician shortage. And if you've got any or any amount of experience whatsoever, you can catch on anywhere. I swear to God. All right. All right. That's enough for your Uncle Jimmy. He usually likes to sign off the podcast by saying, You well, you know. But I think I'll make you wait for it this week. Okay, see ya.