Episode 360: Pissing Match

On this week’s episode of Grease The Wheels, Uncle Jimmy starts a proper war on LinkedIn. We love LinkedIn, from the endless networking with people who want to sell us stuff, to some of the most ludicrous and overhyped job titles we have ever seen. Everyone is an expert, a guru, a wizard, or mogul - at least in their own head! What started as a post about not wanting to pay technicians for Video MultiPoint Inspections quickly became an entire week’s work for one of these self-ordained “Fixed Ops Leaders” who has spent more time as a service advisor and Gym Manager than he did in Fixed Ops Leadership. The results were very heartening as well, most people agreed with us in the idea that technicians should in some way be compensated for the time that the spend doing Video MPI’s if they are on the flat rate system. If you are salary or a hybrid hourly with a production bonus, you don’t really have much of a leg to stand on. This was a properly fun drubbing of someone who thinks they know best, but we want to heart from you! What do you think is a proper amount of compensation for a Video MPI as a flat rate technician? 
 
 Also Erik takes a week off to try bourbons and beat the life out of race cars. 

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 evening and welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Greesta Wheels, your semi-weekly technician podcast coming from the pie hole of your Uncle Jimmy here at the Rock and Roll Garage. Thank you, thank you, thank you very much for listening. Thank you very much for what you do. I appreciate it greatly. I really do. I wish the rest of the world did. Hey, listen, I apologize for not coming to you every week. Uh last week, uh kind of wanted to give Eric the producer a little break from his Uncle Jimmy because he was uh he was busy, he was out of town, so I thought, you know what, I don't need to do it. Besides, it was a really good excuse. It was a really good excuse for me not to do the fucking thing. Okay, so but here it is. Here it is. I'm back. I'm gonna try to get back on schedule. You know, try. I'm gonna try. That's all I can do is try. Uh again, I want to say thanks to everybody out there who do uh who does who does that's all folks. Sorry about that. Uh I want to get I want to say a special thanks to everybody out there who's working hard, getting things built, getting things repaired, getting things done. Thank you very much. I don't want to go on and on about it. Now, uh this week's podcast, and I gotta tell you, let me just uh put this out there real quick for you, if you don't mind. I struggle sometimes to find a real good reason to bring you a podcast, and it it kind of eats away at my brain. I'm like, oh, what can I talk about? And I've written a few things down, and I have some subjects coming up that I might uh bark some shit into a microphone about. But this week something leapt out of the internet at me and hit me in the head like a baseball bat. I need to comment on it. Very important to me, and I think it's gonna be important to you. And uh let me just explain to you where this has come from, and then I want to set a couple of ground rules, not for you, but for me, in talking about this, okay? Now, first off, uh I get on LinkedIn every once in a while. Uh, in fact, a lot of times pretty much daily, and I go there for no reason. There's no reason for me to go there as a technician. There's nothing for me on that particular site. There's nothing. Uh sometimes some jobs will pop up, but uh, you know, they're not typically for us as technicians, red twisters, guys who fix stuff. This is more of a uh a social media platform for people of the white-collar world. Okay, so you're gonna find a lot of people on here who are uh not getting their fingers and their elbows and their uh hands dirty working on cars. They're just not, they're just not people who do things that make you sweat. These are people who sit in an office or a cubicle somewhere and contemplate things and and come up with policies and procedures, and most of the time none of them are any fucking good at all. Uh but for but this is where they go, and uh this is where they go to blow their own horn, to pat themselves on the back. And it's kind of funny, and and I've commented on this many times before, but LinkedIn is a real good place for you to go if you are seeking massive amounts of attention and you want to tell the world how great you are. It is fucking awesome for that. It is really awesome for that. And I see uh a lot of stuff on here where people graduate from this place or this place or another place or this, that, or the other college. And uh usually it's not uh any college that you might even recognize. Um, there's a hell of a lot of people on here who have graduated from the University of Phoenix, okay? And guess what? Your Uncle Jimmy was one of them. I took an online course uh shit probably 15, 16, 17 years ago and got a degree. And uh I'm not uh I wouldn't I'm not complaining about it. Uh let me just be clear, let me just be clear about that. But it also wasn't like a a real uh mind-bending experience. It wasn't uh it was it was my numbing, really, is what it was. But uh it didn't enhance my life at all. Uh, but I did sign up, take some courses, uh follow through and complete them. And I didn't technically graduate because I didn't want to pay for the diploma. I mean, that's I mean, you know, if they want they they make you pay for the diploma, it's like what kind of fucking school is that, okay? But those people that graduate from there are all over LinkedIn. They're like, oh, I graduated from the University of Phoenix. And I I keep thinking to myself, even though I am I am technically alumni, I think to myself, yeah, big fucking deal, right? Um, but LinkedIn is a place where a lot of people go uh that are not uh blue-collared types like we are, to kind of blow their own horn and show the world how smart they are and how good they are at what they do. And and one of the best parts about it is that some of these people show up and they have created these job titles for themselves that are just absolutely the the fucking sky's the limit of pretentiousness. It is just so self-serving, it is ridiculous. Um, my favorite one, and I talk about this every once in a while, my favorite one is recruiters. There's lots of recruiters on LinkedIn, and they all call themselves the same thing. They are talent acquisition specialists. Oh my god, I love that more than anything, okay? But to kind of get to the point here, I was on LinkedIn, I want to say maybe Wednesday, possibly Thursday, don't remember exactly which day it was. Uh, and somebody posted something, and I felt it was necessary to respond. And I don't do that, I'm not one of your big Reddit trolls, or I'm not somebody who chimes in on everything I see on the internet. I'm mostly an internet voyeur. I'm just reading the stuff that other people put out there. But then every once in a while I see something that piques my interest, and and maybe uh I will feel that somebody's uh opinion or somebody's idea or somebody's policy or procedure or whatever it is is wrong. And then I'll chime in if I feel like it. And and I have actually, this is the truth too. I I prefer this to remain so far uh undercover that I have typed multiple sentences of a reply, looked at it and realized that all I'm doing is pissing myself off and actually delete it. I say if I see 10 things a week that I want to reply to, I might even start to reply to them, but out of that I might reply to one. If I start to reply to any of the other ones, I've probably deleted it. Okay, so this is not something that I do all the time. It's I'm not out there trolling people, I'm not out there trying to piss people off. Although it happens, it happens, you know. You say something, you say the wrong thing to the wrong person, and it gets them worked up and they get pissed off. And actually, guess what? I don't give a fuck, okay? So uh I stepped on a landmine though. I I gotta admit it, I stepped on a landmine, and what I would like to do before I get started here, because this is not gonna go well, and you may hear some serious raw anger shoot out of your Uncle Jimmy, and it may be good, it may not be good. I mean, you may enjoy that kind of shit. I don't know, but uh uh what I did was I came across a gentleman who posted something about video MPIs. Now, I have obviously had a lot of opinions about them, and I I think you all know how I feel about them. Uh, I feel like they're important for the customer, for the shop or the dealership that you work for, I think that they're extra important for them. But if they're not gonna pay for them, eh, fuck you, okay? That's gonna say it right there. Fuck you. Don't ask me to do shit that doesn't have anything to do with fixing a car unless you're gonna pay me for it. Especially if you're a flat rate. If you're a flat rate guy out there and somebody says to you, Oh, we want you to do this. Uh, how much does it pay? Well, I'm not gonna pay you. Uh-uh. Both fingers, both, both middle fingers on both hands. Yeah, go fuck yourself. And I gotta tell you, and I'm a bloody, maybe you can you can call me a hypocrite, and it let me tell you what, that shoe fits, okay? Because I've been doing videos, I think I've probably told you a few thousand times, I've been doing videos since 2019, and I have never been paid for them. Never. But in my mind, the only way that I can reconcile this with my own fuck you to the management and to the uh government and to everybody else who thinks they're in charge, the only way I can reconcile that is by telling myself that it's actually for the benefit of the customers. And guess what? It is. It is, but is that a reason for me not to get paid for? No, it absolutely fucking isn't. So, what I want to do is I want to lay out for you, uh, I'm gonna give you the original post, and then I'm gonna uh this went on, it's like I said, it was a landmine. This really went on and on and on and on. I mean, it is it is a it is I've scrolled for a good two, three minutes quickly through all of it, and it there's just so many responses. And one of the things I want to do first is give you an idea about the person who wrote the original post. He calls himself, I'm not gonna give you his name, it's not necessary. Uh, he calls himself an automotive operations leader. Now, I don't know what the fuck that is. And then after that, because it's always cool to have more than one kind of uh, oh, you know, I'm I do this and then I do that, you know. I'm a I'm a taxidermist, but I'm also uh CPA, you know, it's like okay, whatever. But this guy has uh automotive operations leader, then business process optimizer, which sounds like a fucking great big road of bullshit to me. And then it says fix something in a if I click on it, will it tell me what it says? Fixed ops specialist. Okay, so he's uh a service, he's a service guy, he's a service manager kind of a guy. Okay, so this guy works in our industry from the management side, and he can't decide on what people should call him because it doesn't look like he didn't put down a place where he works, at least not in the header of his uh of his uh uh profile. Not at least in at least not in the header of his profile. He didn't put down where he works. Um, and I'm glad I don't know because I would hate to run into him. And I gotta say, I would really like to not say terrible things about this guy. He might be a nice guy, I don't know. Uh, but his opinions, his opinions put me right on the fucking edge. And he is seeing things from his point of view and fucking nobody else's. And some of the things he said to some of the people who responded kind of fucking pissed me off. And if so, I might bark out that the guy is uh fill in the blank. Uh the guy is a you know, anything, but I would prefer not to because I don't know him. He just he has an opinion, he put it out there, and honestly, in my opinion, he should probably be murdered for, at least theoretically, not not uh not obviously really murdered for it. But and and and like I say, I think he might be he might be a nice guy, might be somebody that if I met him, I liked him, if I talked to him, but the things that he was saying irritated me as a service technician, pissed me off really to no end. And I want to just kind of uh elicit your input and let you know that this is this is what's going on out there, this is what the fucking people who are in charge of what we do are thinking because some people chimed in that they agree with him, and and many technicians chimed in that they fucking don't agree with him. But this guy, I gotta I do gotta hand him hand him this too, uh also very tenacious. He answered almost every single reply. So this guy is fucking bought into this, and I I'll tell you, I can't I can't think of anything more wrong than this. Okay, so let me just let me just read to you the original post. Should technicians be compensated for completing video MPIs? Question mark. I've had this conversation with a couple of dealers slash managers after my last car dealership guy podcast episode. Okay, I don't know what that is. Car dealership guy, whatever. Why don't you just say fucking great big idiot? I believe buy-in is the biggest concern. The two sides of the coin were number one, video MPIs are simply part of the job, they're part of the culture, the customer experience, and building trust. Okay, well, I agree with that, except what you're implying is is that because it's part of the job, you shouldn't get paid for it. Now, I've said it earlier, I'm gonna reiterate it. If I'm a flat rate technician, which I am, and you ask me to do something that you're not gonna pay me for, double birds, baby. Fuck you. I need to get paid for what I do. If it doesn't have anything to do with fixing a car, especially, okay, because that's what I'm supposed to do. I diagnose them, I fix them, I'll do your MPIs, okay? I'll give you that. Your MPIs pretty much it needs to be done, and that I will do without getting paid for it. Although I believe, honestly, myself personally that you and I should be paid for that, because it's work that we have to do, it's work that we have to do. We have to look at the car and make decisions about what fucking kind of shape it's in and how the maintenance items look, and and it's important. And my thinking is why wouldn't you pay us to do them? Okay, because a lot of us, not myself, but a lot of you out there, if you don't get paid for something, you're gonna phone it in. And I do not blame you. If somebody's not paying you for something and they want you to do it, do it as fucking piss poor as you possibly can so that they fucking stop asking you to do it. Okay, if you don't get paid for doing something and they tell you you have to do it, I honestly believe that might even be against the law. I really do. And in a flat rate situation, if they're not paying you for it, they can go fuck themselves. And if they come up to you and say, Oh, you missed you missed this on this car, I go, Yeah, well, take the money back. Oh, wait, that's right, you didn't pay for it. Fuck you. So his second, the second thing he said here is number two, if a dealership expects additional tasks that generate value, technicians should be compensated for them. Abso fucking lutely. Absolutely. If a dealership expects additional tasks that generate value, technicians should be compensated for them. I'm gonna be on team number two all day long. I'm not in fact you can call me the deuce if you want. I'm and then he writes at the bottom, I'm genuinely curious how other dealerships approach this. Well, he fucking already knows. He already knows. He is just starting to start shit, I think. And and let me tell you something. It worked. It worked, okay? And here's the here's the response that I made. And this was just off the cuff, a couple of sentences, like, yeah, okay, here's my response. You want to know, you're curious. Here's some here's something that'll fill you in. This is what I wrote, okay. As your Uncle Jimmy, that's what I wrote. No dealer or shop wants to pay for videos or even MPIs. Oh, they want you to do them, but paying for them, yeah, that's a big nope. Now, and I've I've heard this, now they are complaining about the quality of the videos. I say you get what you pay for. Okay, so what I've said is basically dealers and shops don't want to pay for videos. That's fine. But they still want you to do them. Well, okay, then that makes it optional for me as far as I'm concerned. Okay, because if I don't do them, what are you gonna do? Take some money away from me? Try that, right? And then now, even though I do them and I'm not getting paid for them, if you're gonna complain about the quality, I'm just gonna go into the shutdown mode. Fuck off. You don't like the quality of my videos? I won't do them anymore. Then he writes back, okay, and then I I I this is where I got a little hot. And uh I I was I had mentioned that the the quality of the videos. Now, folks, I'm not I'm not gonna kill you with this, okay, but I do pretty good videos and have actually uh found uh several situations where my videos actually sell because of what my service advisors have said to me. Now, if any of them are listening to me, which I don't know if they are, I don't care if they are. If they are, I need to apologize to them because I like them. I just wish they worked a little harder at what they're supposed to do. But, you know, phoned it in seems to be something that all service advisors do. They didn't invent it, but they seem to be perfecting it. Uh, one of the things that they do is they come back and they'll say to me, Oh, you know, remember that car you quoted tires and brakes on? They'll say, Yeah, that customer called and he said he wants all that stuff. Well, what that means to me is, guess what? They didn't call him, he called them and said, Hey, that guy said my tires and brakes are bad. Go ahead and have him replace them. That's a sale that I made. Okay, and that's one of the things that's lost in this whole video thing. Is if you make a video and your video is responsible for the sale, who's getting the fucking commission on that? Yeah, it's somebody who sat there playing Candy Crush on their fucking phone and emailed them the goddamn estimate and didn't say one motherfucking word in either a text or a phone message or anything about buying something that they need for their car. No, they called them. Okay, now I can tell you right now that that shit's gonna come to a screeching halt. They're not gonna say that to me ever again. And I have I have shown them my cards in a game where we're trying to play poker and I'm not gonna win now, okay? But I know that that is happening. I don't need all the clues. I know it's happening. And especially it especially telling is when they go through and they automatically decline things, and then maybe 15, 20 minutes, half an hour later, they have to go back and undecline them and approve them because the customer said called and said they actually want them, even though the uh service advisor made the call that they weren't gonna want them. Okay. Now, this is what this gentleman uh wrote back to that response that I had made for him. He says, I think quality comes from standards, training, and accountability. All things that are missing, all things that are missing from the video MPIs. Okay, there are no standards, there is no training, and there is no accountability. There's none. Eric and I have developed a system through our company, Surf Wrench, to provide standards and training and accountability. But so far, we're not seeing anybody going, hey, yeah, go ahead and come on in and help us. No, we're not seeing any of that shit at all. Do you know why? Because it's not fucking free, it's a big deal. Dealers could call us up, and the two of us will come in and show their staff how to perform serious, high-quality video MPIs. We will. We'll we'll take the time, we'll do it. And it's not so expensive, not compared to the fucking actual amateurization that it's going to provide for you when you start selling more and more and more because the quality of the videos is now spectacular. Yeah, we'll set standards for you. We'll come in and train them. And the accountability, well, they either do them or they don't. But the last part of it is they need to be compensated. And this is what this guy writes. I think quality comes from standards, training, and accountability slash not just compensation. All right. But if you're not compensating anybody, you can forget about the first three. Who's gonna have standards when they're not gonna get paid for it? Nobody. Who's gonna perform any kind of training if there's no compensation for it? Nobody. Who's gonna be accountable? Nobody. You want something in this country? God damn it, it's a capitalistic society. You should fucking know that by now if you're in in a fixed operations or if you're in a service department of any kind, that money talks and bullshit walks, pal. That's the way it goes. Then it says here, we don't pay separately for accurate diagnosis, clean repair orders, or torquing wheels correctly. Yes, you absolutely do. Because if you didn't, trust me, there's a fucking shit house of flat rate technicians out there who will turn their head and tell you, fuck that, I don't get paid for that. Get ready to hear it. These are, and this is what he writes, okay? And he and I gotta say, this guy responded to everybody, okay. So he feels passion about not paying for shit that they definitely should be paying for. And and I'm on, I'm on, you and I are all on team flat rate technician, okay? It says here, those are all expectations of the job because they contribute to the customer experience. Okay, that's true. That is a very true statement. Uh, and I would love to contribute to the customer experience, and with my videos, I am doing a really good job of that, and that's as much praise as I'm gonna give myself because I think I could do a little better. I have, you know, I have to modify maybe my uh script a little bit. When I do the videos, I have to show stuff a little bit better or maybe a little differently, or whatever. And every everybody who views my videos who isn't a customer has some sort of input, and that's what murders me is especially when we talk about videos, is that everyone on LinkedIn and everyone who works as a manager or general manager or anything that had that doesn't do them is a self-proclaimed expert at them. And I'm sorry, your opinion doesn't mean jack fucking shit to me if you've never done one, and all you do is critique the ones that are made. You don't understand what goes into them, you don't understand what's said about them, you don't understand the experience behind what happens. You don't. Even if you were a technician, you don't. And this guy says he was a technician, but I don't I feel like he doesn't mention where or how or whether he was a master or an apprentice, or if he was run out of the business because he kept stripping lug nuts or whatever. It doesn't really matter. Saying you were a technician doesn't bring any credibility to the argument, okay? So he writes this all those are all expectations of the job because they contribute to the customer experience. Uh yes, I do agree with that. The customer experience is something that the video changes. Okay, most customers, when they experience a service department, they can they have to deal with a service advisor. And sometimes these you know I mean, you know, I don't want to spend any time bashing service advisors, I don't want to do that at all this on this podcast. But sometimes it is it is not a very satisfactory exchange with service advisors. But if we can do a great job at making a video, it can change everything, literally. I mean, honestly, folks, in my videos, I start them out good morning or good afternoon. And you know why? Because it's a common salutation that they probably aren't getting when they drop the car off. A lot of a lot of our advisors will see somebody walk in the door and they'll say, Oh, who are you working with? Or oh, who are you here to see? They're just trying to deflect the work to somebody else. I've heard that so many fucking times. It's like nobody goes, Hey, how are you? Welcome in. What's going on? You all right? Everything cool? And they'll say, Oh, and I got a problem with the car. Well, you're in the right place. That's what we do, is fix problems with cars. Nobody's doing any of that shit. So the customer experience is definitely important when it comes to videos. There's no question about that. And that's what we're trying to enhance. And look, if and I'm serious too, if you do a video, even a horrible, grainy, mumbly, stuttering video, it's still better than nothing. We we had an experiment, Eric and I, where we tried to make horrible videos. And guess what? It still worked. It was ridiculous. So quality of the video shouldn't be anybody's question. This is what it says here, though, in the response to my uh to my reply. The question is whether a video MPI is fundamentally different or simply another way to communicate the technician's expertise. The question is whether a video MPI is fundamentally different from fucking what? Or simply another way to communicate the technician's expertise. Well, okay, yeah, a video will absolutely communicate the technician's expertise by what he says and what he shows. And but I don't think that there's a huge scale there. I think the scale is is uh could be measured with a micrometer. If somebody's looking at your car in a shop, there's an expectation of expertise there. That's really not uh in play here at all. Okay. The question is whether a video MPI is fundamentally different. Different from what? Different from what it is is it different from a non-video? Yeah, absolutely. It's it's the it's the presence and the voice of a video of your car and the voice of a technician telling you, hey, everything's good or this is bad. Either way, it doesn't matter. Now, uh I want to this this went on for a little bit here, okay. And like I said, this gentleman he responded to everybody. Now somebody added, and this was a technician, and so there are technicians on LinkedIn, okay, but I wouldn't recommend it for technicians. It's not something that's gonna it's gonna improve your quality of life by any stretch of the imagination. It is for white-collar people to just jump up and down and go, see me, see me, feel me, touch me. They're like Tommy, they're deaf, dumb, and blind, really. And uh they just want attention, is all. And this guy, this guy really threw a rock into a deep pond. Okay. Here's what somebody else wrote in response to what I initially wrote. It says, those are all part of the job, but you are getting paid for that job. And he's talking about uh whether you're torquing wheels, clean or you know, doing accurate diagnosis, those are all part of the job, but you're getting paid for that job. In no way can you convince me that an MPI is part of any service, and it's not. And and this guy's calling it out. It is its own line on a ticket, or at least it should be, and should be compensated as such. Video MPI is just another level to it. Okay, and this is from a platinum master technician at a Nissan shop. And I want to say, if he if he hears this podcast and he identifies himself, I want to say, fine work. Thank you very much for backing me up, and I appreciate it. And then, of course, the original author had to chime in. That's where we differ philosophically. Yeah, philosophically, your ideas, your your thinking is is bogus and wrong. I don't see an MPI as an optional add-on. Well, the MPI itself is not an optional add-on. I see it as part of a technician's professional responsibility. Okay, I kind of agree with that. I I wouldn't I don't care if I get paid for an MPI, I'm gonna do it anyway. But then it says every customer deserves to know the condition of their vehicle, whether they came in for an oil change or an engine replacement. The video doesn't create that responsibility, it simply communicates it more effectively. Okay, so what he's saying here is oh, well, you're gonna do an MPI, we're not paying you for that, but now we want you to do a video MPI, and we're gonna continue not paying you for that. And that really basically the final message is fuck you, we're not paying for it, just do it. That's that's the point that I got. Now, uh, I am you if you've listened for even more than a couple of episodes, you know that uh I'm basically a great big bowl of alphabet soup that is barfed all over your fucking earbuds or your Bluetooth speaker. You know that I use a lot of words to say one thing and then I'll flip it back over and use a whole bunch of different words to say the same fucking thing. It's kind of annoying. I know I do it. I apologize. I am redundantly redundant. Yes, that's true. But here's the response that I made after his response to me. And I want to just I'm gonna read it verbatim because I like the way it came out, but it it's a long drawn-out description of how this would work for him in his particular occupation, his particular job. And I want to know, I would like to hear from somebody that it works or doesn't work. But let me let me just read to you what I wrote. Let's look at this from your point of view. Let's say you make a hundred thousand dollars a year salary. Now, some tool like you comes along and says, we don't want to pay you while you take breaks or lunch or even use the bathroom. I mean, you just have to do that. But why should I pay you to take a dump? So I'm gonna take one hour a day out of your pay, which to my point of view, folks, one hour a day for taking breaks and going to lunch and taking a shit, that's that's not a lot, really. That means you're cramming a whole bunch of shit into one hour. I think that that's actually fairly uh amicable. Now, this is just I continue with what I wrote, that's five hours a week. Now, if you take out the two weeks' vacation, $100,000 a year is roughly $2,000 a week. Now deduct the roughly $50 an hour at five hours weekly. That turns your weekly pay into $17.50 a week, and now you only make $87,000 a year. So we're gonna take an hour's worth of your pay every day, and at the end of the year, we're gonna end up paying you $1,750 a week less. Or excuse me, let me try that again. That math was bad. We're gonna end up paying you $250 a week less, and at the end of the year it adds up to $12,500 less a year. And the next sentence I wrote is, would you would that fly for you? I don't think so. And yet it is the same thing you are advocating. It is exactly the same thing that this tool is advocating. I said I wasn't gonna call him names, but he's a tool. I want to call him a stooge, but even the stooges make money. As a flat rate technician, I get paid for what I do. If you want me to do something and there is no compensation, expect to hear, quote, I don't get paid for that, unquote. You call yourself a leader? Yeah, you are. You are the leading reason for the technician shortage. I thought it was very succinct and to the point. Seriously, as a flat rate technician, guess what? As a flat rate technician, I do not get paid to go to the bathroom. Do you know that? I'm not gonna go in there with the latest copy of Ola La and sit there for an hour and expect to get paid while I'm in there fucking beaten off. Okay, which by the way, I don't do, but but I don't go to the bathroom and sit in there for hours on end watching videos on my phone, like I hear some of the other people in my building do. I don't do that at all because I'm flat rate. And if you've got something you want me to do and you don't want to pay me for it, I might as well take a shit because that's what you're gonna get is shit. Now, there were other people who chimed in on this, and I want to say if if you recognize yourself as somebody who chimed in on this on our side, the technician's side, I want to say thank you. But there were some people who did chime in on the side of this particular guy. So it is a divisive, a divisive subject. And you think really I would think that it's not that big a deal. I mean, because all we're asking for, and I did a little bit of math in my head before I came up with this, but we're asking for two-tenths, two-tenths of an hour. Okay, let's say you make sixty dollars an hour. What's two tenths? Look, I understand why a business would not want to pay for videos, okay? It's an expense. And when you run a business, the greatest thing that you have to do every day is keep expenses down. You have to keep spending down. You don't want to take all the money you make and then have to pay it out to somebody. And it especially hurts your feelings to pay it out to technicians because if you have technicians working for you, chances are you have contempt for them because, well, we're a dirty, filthy bunch of pirates sometimes, and we just want to get paid for everything that we do, and you don't want to because that eats into your profit, and and that's what one of the reasons why this is such a viral argument, all right. They don't want to pay us because it just comes directly out of expenses. And any asshole CPA out there in the world, any accountant will tell you that you need, if you're running a business, you need to keep track of all your expenses and keep them low. Keep back, keep it low, all the money that you pay out, all your expenses. And the best way for every single person in business to this day, and for the next thousand years, even, the best way to keep control of expenses is through payroll. So they will fight you tooth and nail over raises and paying for videos. They will fight you tooth and nail. I did a little math, uh, it didn't really work out in our favor. Let me tell you why. I took, let's say somebody makes $40,000 a year, which is a pathetic medium average income for automotive technicians. 40, it's actually 44K, still too fucking low. Can't buy fucking jackfucking shit for 44k a year. You're making dirt. They're paying you in dirt, literally. That's just, I mean, and that that's the median. That means there's some dudes who make less, and there's some dudes who make more. But the people who make less are outweighing the people who make more. And that median should be a lot higher. And this is the actual reason for the technician shortage. Now, for us to scratch the ground like we are, a lot of us as technicians, to get paid for, you know, things like doing uh video, for us to scratch the ground like that is really only natural. You're asking us to do something and you're telling us you're not gonna pay for it, and that's just straight up wrong. It's not the way capitalism works, not the way any business should work. But yet somehow, a great many leaders who actually lead in the automotive industry as fixed ops people, or even general managers, or even district managers, or perhaps even the owner, are gonna say, Well, I don't want to pay for them. Well, I understand that. I don't want to pay for anything. I go to the store, I would love it if they just said, Hey, you know what, grab whatever you want. You don't have to pay for it. I would fucking love that, but I have to pay for everything. And I don't get to just pay for 10 items when I've got 12 and then steal the other two or have them just give them to me as a gift. That's not happening. Everywhere you go, you got to pay for everything. Why should you be exempt from that? You should not. You should not be exempt from that. And I think there's actual laws, honestly, against it. If you called your state labor board or whatever state you're in and said, hey, my boss, my my shop, my dealership, the company I work for is making me do stuff and they're not paying me for it. They'd say, Oh, okay. Well, we have some uh ACLU lawyers we'd like to get you in touch with. Because that's what would happen. They go, Oh, that's a violation of human rights. Seriously. I'm not bullshitting you. That's a violation of human rights. And you know what I used to do, and just because I'm a joker, I used to tell my boss year years ago I had a boss who was just uh no, not gonna bring up any adjectives for him, but I had a boss and I used to like to yank his chain every once in a while, and I told him that I was gonna get I was gonna join the Screen Actors Guild because I'm doing videos that makes me a fucking performer, right? And then I was gonna have them come in and fucking hit him with a lawsuit for not paying me for them. And I was kind of joking, but kind of not joking. I mean, if I joined a guild or a or a fucking labor union and they said, Oh, you got you absolutely have to get paid for them, and guess what? That business would be in trouble. They get fined, lawyers who make more money than all of us put together would come in and say, Yep, class action lawsuit, and they'd have to compensate you for every video you ever did in the past. And then, you know what? They'd fucking lose big. They'd lose real big, okay, because you'd have to pay interest on all that money you didn't pay us from before. Oh shit, right? Okay. So you're making 40k a year, and it's considered a medium average income for technicians. And let's say you do, I don't know, 20 videos a week. So 20 times 52, that's what is that? 104? 104 videos? Does that sound right? No, that's not right at all. Fucking mass skills suck, Uncle Jimmy. Let me get the calculator out here. It's 1,000. It's a thousand videos. Holy fuck, that's almost a it's a thousand forty videos. 52 times 20. You're doing 20. And and I'll tell you something. I got a kid at work who does like 150 videos a month. He could he could seriously probably buy a new car if they just paid him two tenths for every video he did. And I think they should, but you start to think about the money that they would have to spend, and where would that come from? Well, it comes from the customers, right? Well, that's why they're that's why they're so vehemently against it. Because if you take that $1,040, let's just say at $40 an hour, two tenths is what? What is two tenths at $40 an hour? Let's see if we figure that out. Fucking calculator is smoking. It's four dollars at eight dollars an hour. So you have at the end of the year, you have a thousand forty videos times eight dollars. It's eight thousand dollars. It's kind of easy. I don't need the calculator for that, but sorry. But that's eight thousand dollars that that technician would earn at forty dollars an hour. Imagine if you're making sixty, it'd be a lot more. It's money that your dealership doesn't want to pay you. Oh, they're getting it from the customers, but they don't want to give it to you. And it and and all these people in fixed operations, but for the most part, they're they're on the side of the business. Now, here's an here's an individual, and his job title is fixed operations production manager, which again I don't understand. He goes, yes, this is this is his his statement. Yes, they should be compensated for them. As long as flat rate pay structure is around, continuously asking a technician to go above and beyond for free will be detrimental to the shop morale. Absolutely. The technicians will start grumbling about how they are being used and losing money while the dealership puts down record profits. Having worked in every aspect of a shop from apprenticeship to shop foreman, I have seen both sides of the argument. I want to thank this gentleman. I'm not going to call out his name, but I would like to thank him for trying to be as as uh as transparent as possible, for trying to be, you know, seeing it from both sides. And here's what he goes on to say because it sounds like this guy has it together. Yes, doing video MPI will bring in more work if the service writers can sell the job. What do you say? A mouthful there. Performing the inspection plus taking video and explaining the reason behind the recommendation as well as pricing out the job on the tickets so the writers can sell the work takes roughly 30 to 45 minutes in all. Doing almost an hour of free work is not justifiable by any possibility of getting more work. In other words, and this is what they do. They go, Well, you're gonna sell more work if you do the video. Yeah, but who profits from that? Not me. You do. Now there was no, there was a reply here. Here's what our head guy, the author, says. Aside the compensation for a moment, is it normal that a video MPI takes close to an hour? I figured with an efficient process, it should only take seven to ten minutes with the right video MPI tool. Well, okay, here's where you fuck up, pal, okay? Because a video MPI does not take close to an hour, but all the ancillary bullshit that goes along with it does. I figured with an efficient process, it should only take seven to ten minutes. Well, you're showing your ignorance, okay? Because everyone has a different opinion on how long a video should be. And the videos that I do, I have to do them within five minutes because the video, doing the video, times out at five minutes. And you can hear it sometimes in my voice because I've got 10 seconds to say three things, and I say them really fucking fast to get them in there. All right, that's the end of the video. Thank you very much for coming. And I get cut off. It's five minutes. But number one, I have to look the vehicle over in the first place, and it's important, okay, because when you're doing a video, the last thing you want is to see something that surprises you. You don't go, okay, we took a look at the tires and we found, whoa, there's a fucking huge nail in it, dude. Oh, you don't want that on your video, do you now? No, you want to look it over first and go, yeah, we took a look at the passenger front tire and there is a huge nail in it. So we're gonna send you across an estimate for replacing it. Now, I'm not gonna give you a primer on how to do videos, but if you calmly point out that they have a great big fucking nail in their tire without using the obscenity, it shows them that not only did you look at it beforehand, you've also figured out what needs to happen. I have sent you across a recommendation to replace a tire. Because folks, I ain't patching a fucking tire. They can all suck my fucking dick. I'm not patching them. They said they they even they even made us take a little 15-minute class on how to patch a video a few years ago. And the guys who did it were the most unenthusiastic gentlemen I've ever seen in my life. And I came in as a joker, you know me, right? I came in and we had fun doing it. I'm like, oh, what the fuck, you know, and then and then we had a good time. And and they even thanked me later for taking the process which was killing them by boring the living fucking shit out of them and making it halfway fun. I'm not even kidding you. But then later on, after these guys went around to all the stores in our company and showed everyone how to put a patch in a tire, that a company, a company that makes tires, found out about it, called up the headman and said, Yeah, no, you can't patch tires. That's bullshit. Stop doing that. Or in Uncle Jimmy speaks, stop fucking doing that. Seriously, stop fucking doing that. Sell them a tire. Never patch a tire, sell them a new one. If they don't want it, send them off with a leaking tire. They'll have to buy a tire somewhere eventually. Plus, they want to drive with no tires. It's like I always say, every tire is technically a run flat. Every fucking one of them. You've seen it, I've seen it. They come in with a bead and that's all that's left. Videos take time, bro. You got to look the vehicle over. How long does it take you to look a vehicle over? Well, for me, it doesn't take that long because I see this pretty much the same vehicles over and over and over and over and over again. Because, like I said, I've done probably close to, if not over, 10,000 videos since I started doing them. Which means there are certain cars that I have seen literally almost two and three times a day for the last seven years. Two and three times a day. I can spot what's not right in seconds flat. That's experience. Experience that you're not paying for because the MPI is free, which I'm fine with. But the video, that ain't that should not be free. That's an add-on. That's like power windows. And believe me, everybody has a subscription for heated seats or whatever the fuck else is on the car. Everybody has to pay all the time. So do you. But then the fun begins when you have to make an estimate. Suppose you got a car that has seven or eight things wrong with it. You well, in my case, I have to look up the labor time. Okay, that that takes time. I have to look up the parts to see what else goes along with it. God forbid it'd be a warranty job, and I forget to replace a bolt that is supposed to be replaced when you replace that part, and they kick the claim. My my management is going to be like, well, you're going to have to pay for that repair. Here again, double birds, right? So yeah, it takes it takes a good sometimes 20 minutes to half an hour at the very least to do the multi-point inspection, then to go back and through and do it again in a video, and then to make an estimate for whatever you found, and then to send it off, and to look up the labor times. And maybe you look up the parts. I look up the parts only because I'm the only one who knows what I'm talking about. And it's easier for me to just look it up than to explain to the parts guy. Now I have great parts, guys, absolutely phenomenal parts, guys. And I can tell them I need a part, and they'll get it, and they'll get it right. They do it all the time. And I know a lot of you don't have that, which sucks. And I'm sorry, I wish I could clone the guys I have and send them over to you. But so yeah, the process can take a long time. 30 to 40 and five minutes, yeah. And this guy, the author, he doesn't find he says he was a mechanic. There's there's a uh a couple of uh replies here where he says he was a mechanic. Obviously, it wasn't a good one, which seems obvious to me because I mean I understand what the guy's talking about. It takes 30 to 40 minutes for an estimate because it takes 30 to 40 minutes for an estimate. He's not fucking bullshitting. Man, if I could have somebody else do the video or have somebody else do the fucking uh estimate, it'd be great. And that honestly, that response is from a gentleman who says he's a fixed operations production manager. He, to me, and my in my sensibility, has his head on right. He knows what he's talking about, and he's seeing it from both points of view. And I and I'm trying to too. I understand that no business wants to spend X amount of money paying somebody to do something that they think that they should do for free. But as a technician, I don't feel like I should be doing that shit for free. Here's what his response was to this guy who said, Oh, it should only take seven to ten minutes. To just take the video, yes. But a full inspection takes 15 to 20 minutes. Sourcing the parts and building the estimate can take up to 20 minutes. Add all that together and you get close to an hour. Obviously, if you have a calculator, you can figure it out. And I would like, and you know, they do this in production plants where they build stuff in an uh assembly line, is they'll take a stopwatch and calculate how long it's supposed to take to do something. And we know that as a labor time. They got a guy with a brand new car and clean, shiny tools, and a lab coat and a well-lit shop and all the supplies and and special tools around them, and then they go go and they hit the stopwatch, and he takes the water pump out in an hour and about 15 minutes. So it ends up being 1.3 as a labor time. Well, how many times are you working on a spotlessly new car that was just built 15, 20 minutes earlier with spotless clean tools and a spotless clean shop with all the special tools not being fucked up and broken or lost or stolen? It doesn't happen. And so for you to beat that time, you've got to be really good at it. Because this guy that's doing these repairs and they're calculating the time, he's a fucking engineer and he should die a horrible death, as far as I'm concerned. Then there's another guy here who responded to that guy, and this guy, he's a proven leader as well, driving success in fixed operations. That's absolutely crazy. Sorry to sound that way, but wow, you're right. Five to seven minutes to Cops. No. No fucking way. There's another guy who hasn't done it, doesn't know how to do it, never had to do it, never had to make an estimate, never had to figure out what the fuck is actually wrong. Right? Five to seven minutes. I agree. The video itself should be five minutes. I agree. I want two tenths, which is 12 minutes of time. Cho it's an hour chopped up into 10 minutes chunks, which are six minutes. Do the math. Six times ten is sixty. Okay. So it's 12 minutes. Is it unreasonable? I don't think so. What do you think? As a technician, as a wrench twisting bastard, as a member of the fucking grease the wheels nation, do you think that that's too much? I don't, especially when I'm making whatever I make an hour and the company that I work for is making $250, $300, $400 an hour when they sell it to the customer. I think that they should just shut the fuck up. Here is another response from the author. Wouldn't sourcing the parts and building the estimate be part of the process anyway? Yeah. Without the video MPI? Absolutely. Absolutely. And would do we get paid for that? No. So you want to take something that we're not getting paid for already and add another component. And oh, by the way, still not pass. Here's what this gentleman, this one gentleman who seems to be on our side, folks, under a flat rate pay structure, the technicians should only be doing what they are paid to do. I'm going to get a tattoo that says that. Really, I'm not shooting you. That is to diagnose a repair, change the pay structure to hourly or salary, and the entire conversation becomes moot, which means if your salary or your hourly, just do the video and shut the fuck up about it. Because like everybody else, you're just getting paid no matter what you fucking do. When you're flat rate, that is when this is a fucking big problem. Now he responds again. Okay, now this is like I said, this went on, and I I might even do a uh second part on this video because this was this was a uh a loop that went on and on and on, much like your Uncle Jimmy. Sorry. Maybe this is boring the shit out of you, and I and if it does, I apologize. I try to liven it up as much as I can, but you know, I'm not a comedian and I'm not an actor. I'm not somebody who voices a cartoon character or anything like that. I'm just me. And my voice is probably mind-numbing to you, as it is to me, by the way. Uh, here's what he writes again after that. This is the author, and he's responding to the to the uh reply that as a flat rate, we should definitely be paid. I believe there is more nuance greater than diagnose and repair. Techs are responsible for documenting warranty complaints, the three C's, taking pictures and videos, the manufacturer requested, performing techline calls, messaging, etc. What is now a new process adaptation to existing team members will be the standard for new technicians. Okay, well, you're not really talking to new technicians. You're not talking about new technicians. And one of the things that we're doing, Eric and I, with our with our business, our consulting business, Surf French Digital, is trying to get uh technical schools, okay, tech schools like UTI or WildTech or Linkin Tech or all these places, we're trying to get them to hire us to show students who want to become technicians how to do the videos before they even get out into the field. And it's a two-fold thing that we think is actually kind of brilliant. Okay, and I'm not gonna I'm not gonna shortchange it for anybody. It's brilliant because what it does, it does two things. Number one, because there is so much pushback against doing these videos, believe me, I've been there, that service managers are like, what the fuck? Why do they battle me tooth and nail to not do them? Well, it's because you're not paying them, okay. And you as a service manager, as a puppet member of a fucking auto group or a fucking owner, are gonna echo the same message that they that they put out, which is oh, we're not gonna pay for the video. Okay, maybe, maybe you feel like it's unfair, but as as a service manager, as a member of the management team, you have to fall in line with what they say and not insist that they get paid for them and just tell them you got to do them. That's it. And basically what it comes down to is fuck you, just do them. But if a technician rolls in, a future, a few a guy who's looking for a job, he's a tech, he just graduated from UTI or WildTech or something like that, Lincoln Tech, any any of these technicians, any one of these places where they train technicians, and the manager is looking at his resume, and he says to him, He says, Well, he says, you know, what sets you apart from all the other students? You go, Well, I do pretty good videos. The manager's gonna spit up his fucking Starbucks and look at you and go, What? You did videos at tech school? Yeah, they taught us how to do videos. Very high quality, good videos. Are you serious? Yeah, absolutely. It's a new era, it's a new day. This is a new standard for technicians, right? Yeah. He's gonna agree, but he's gonna be like, here's a kid who's willing to do them already. I haven't even hired him yet. He's willing to do them when I can't get the old fucking bastards, the goats out back to fucking do them. I can't beat them hard enough to get them to do it. And here's a kid who's willing to do it. So then he says, Well, flip it over. We put a flow code on the back, and it's one of my videos. And so you look in his video as maybe it's not perfect, maybe it's not even really all that good, but it's still a video and it shows the car and it shows the owner what's going on with the car, and you're blown away as a service manager, right? Yeah. So you hire the kid and you tell him, Well, you know, we're not gonna pay you for the videos. And he goes, Yeah, they told me at tech school that you fucking people were gonna fucking try to jip me out of paying me for them. But you know what, it's part of the job. So so until a whole new generation of students comes out of tech schools where they train them before they get out into the field how to do a video and why they would need to do a video, and then oh, by the way, they're not gonna get paid for them. Until that happens, they're gonna have to pay the old guys like me to do them because otherwise we're not gonna do them. And if you come out with a cat of nine tails or a baseball bat and beat us senseless until we do them, then we're gonna do a shitty fucking job at it. That's how a lot of people respond to it. And if you go up to them and say, you know, your videos aren't that good, well, then take back the money you paid me for them. Oh, wait, wait a second. You didn't pay me for them. So why don't you just go fuck yourself? Why don't you just go and fuck yourself? You're getting the video you're gonna get if you're not gonna pay for it. Suck my dick. What this guy writes, this is the author, what is now a new process adaption to existing team members will be a standard for new technicians. I do agree with that. If you can get students at technical schools to understand why they need to do the video and then train them how to do them and kind of insist on quality and let them know what the end result is for the video, then you're not gonna have a problem getting them to do them out in the field when they start working for Joe Blow Chevrolet or fucking uh stooge Nissan or something like that, okay? And I they're just they're just gonna go, oh, okay, they told us you were gonna want to do this. Okay, so we'll do this. But us old motherfuckers, and there's a lot of us by the way, 63% of technicians are above the age of 45. Holy fuck, this business is gonna be so fucked if our management and our owners and the people who are in charge don't pull their head out of their ass. It's gonna be a bloodbath. There's gonna be three guys in a shop that normally has 10 because seven of them either quit or retired, and the three guys left are not gonna know what to do, not gonna have anyone to ask, and they're just gonna do what they have to do wrong or badly. It's not looking good, folks. It really isn't looking good. I'm sorry, I hate to I hate to to shit on this occupation of ours, but the kids who are coming up that I've seen, eh, they just don't seem like they're gonna cut it to me. I would love it if they could change my mind. But here's the here's the response to that particular response, because this went on for quite a ways. I mean, this guy who authored this post, he was tenacious, he was relentless. If that is the new standard, then the standard of pay needs to change too. And then, of course, the response to that. That's where I struggle with the argument. This is the author. When I was a technician, we were taught to top off fluids, crease servables serviceable suspension components, which shows you how long it's been since he's been in the shop, clean fingerprints off the vehicle, clean the windshield, etc. I took pride in contributing to the customer's overall experience as our industry evolves, some processes become the new standard. I don't think every new standard automatically requires a new pay plan. I wish MPVI was around when I was a tech, I would have taken full advantage of it. No, you wouldn't have. I'm imagining that if you were a technician, he says he was a technician probably around 2008, if they were going to make you do a video with whatever fucking cell phone you had at that time, they wouldn't have paid you and you would have been like, well, why aren't you gonna pay me to use my phone to make a video for the customer? But now that you're on the other side of the fence, when you you're part of management somewhere, automotive operations leader. I'm not sure where on earth there is a job description like that, actually, but whatever. I'm I'm not disputing that he's work, he's working for somebody, I think. I don't know, trying to beat this mantra into all of us. And that's part of the problem with this, folks. Our bosses, our shops, our owners, they want us to use our own phone for this. I I'm having I'm having enormous problems with that. I don't like that at all. I don't even like having a phone at all. I'm a really old guy, it drives me wild, it rings all the fucking time. There's always text messages coming in. Most of the text messages that I get are just declines from the estimates that I spent 20 and 30 minutes making two hours earlier. I get a fuckload of declines. It has actually tapered off in about the last six months or so, but for a while there, the ratio was fucking 20 to 1. It was terrible. Nobody was selling anything, nobody was making any effort, nobody was asking for the sale. Nobody. They've been getting a little better incrementally in a decimal point kind of a way. But I don't like the phone, and I really dislike the fact that I have to have 12 different apps on my phone for work, and I pay the bill 100%. So I think that if you're in management, if you're a fixed ops, you know, in fixed ops of any kind, if you're the fixed op leader, the fixed ops manager or whatever you are, the service manager, the owner, the general manager, I don't give a shit what you do. If you're not in the shop turning wrenches and you expect me to continue to use my phone to do this, man, it's a fucking problem. They should be paying half my bill. It's not that much anyway. But here again, oh well, you know, we don't want to spend any more money. We're just gonna tell you you have to do it. Does that sound like fucking capitalism to you? It doesn't to me. Here's another person who chimed in on all of that after this guy said, Oh, I wish multi-point video inspection was around when I was a technician. Yeah, okay, jump up and down like a cheerleader, dumb fuck. Here's what it's here's here's what somebody wrote after that. And this is a guy who calls himself a culture leader, sales leader, automotive leader. Fucking a leader of cola. Uh when you were a technician, I was back in 2006, he writes, the world was way different. I made 70 to 90k as a B tech at 19 years old. I was getting crazy bonuses on having my OEM training at 100%. At times, it was a thousand or fifteen hundred dollars a month. And then that was taken away. Warranty pay was reduced to nothing, and the quality of work had to be reduced in order to beat times. Also, generationally, there are way there are way different priorities of humans in addition to company priorities. It's called work-life balance. We have 90 ways to measure numbers, and rarely do we see anyone measuring actual behaviors of people. That's because there's no metrics to that, really. The absolute best operation I ever saw on behavior and numbers was at a dealer that paid salary for all their techs, and the director purely looked at productivity at 6 a.m. every morning. No one complained about cleaning, videos, customer ride-along, or helping anyone. Times have changed, and in automotive, they are still far behind. And it should be obvious since the technician shortage shows no signs of stopping, as the average age in the shop is probably close to 50 with no backfilling occurring. And it's one of the highest turnover positions at a dealership nationwide. This guy has it nailed. This guy pretty much has it nailed. Look, you're not going to have anybody to come in and do this job. So by all means, alienate and piss off the people who are doing it. And believe me, you have all of you out there who are managing any kind of shop, any kind of dealership, whether you're the general manager or the service manager, the fixed ops manager, whatever you are. Not paying for these things, you're adding to a roaring fire of discontent. Okay. There's not one log in that fire that is the main reason for that fire. That fire is being fed by all kinds of different things. And it is a fucking bonfire. And this is one of the things you add to that bonfire to make it burn with rage. And it's one of the reasons. And then they went on to say this some more in this particular feed, okay, for this for this comment. This really, I mean, it went on for it, it went on and on and on. And I'm going to have to revisit it some more because there's some more good stuff in here that I would like for you guys to hear. If if you wanted to find it, I think you probably can. Uh it like I said, it's on LinkedIn if you're not on there. I still think you can get on there. They really they keep they keep beating my brains out to have me pay for it so that I can be a LinkedIn premium member, but I'm not going to do that. I don't I don't see the value of it, to be honest with you. To have this kind of back and forth with an idiot who thinks it's okay to not pay somebody for doing something. That's just wrong. And I don't, I don't, I don't need to read that stuff. And quite frankly, I mean, for me to bring it to you, what I'm trying to do is just to have you shore up our side of it. This gentleman said here, and the author responded to this guy, I don't disagree that our industry has changed. I started professionally turning wrenches in 2008. Okay, and I agree leadership has to evolve with it. Where we differ is that I don't believe there's a universal compensation model. Actually, there is a universal compensation model. It's called paying somebody to do something. That is pretty much fucking universal. He says, I've seen salary work, I've seen flat rate work, I've also seen both fail miserably. In my experience, the success of either depends far more on leadership, operations, and accountability than the pay plan itself. A great process will outperform a great pay plan every time. No, no, it won't. A great process? What is the process? What are you talking about? A great process. What is that process? Is that process not paying people? No. Here's what somebody else wrote to respond to that. And this one, I gotta say, I I loved the uh job title that he put in here for himself. His job title is just a stranger living in a strange land, witness to the glory of, and I don't know what it is, but I don't care. It's just it just sounds great. He writes, video MPIs mean nothing to the average customer. I disagree with that uh and are a waste of time. Well, I don't I don't honestly see them as a waste of time because I'll and I'll tell you honestly, I get an extraordinary amount of feedback on my videos. An extraordinary amount. Everybody is always telling me how much the customers love my videos, and I'm doing and I have a folks, I'm not doing anything extraordinary either. I am simply using this, I'm using the same voice I'm using to talk to you right now, and I'm using the same kind of confidence that shoots out of my fucking mouth, and I show them the shit on their car, and if it's good, I let them know that it's good. And if it's bad, I let them know that it's bad, and I give them an estimate for repairing it. And I know that I could make 10 videos and show 10 people that 10 things are wrong with their car, and I'm only gonna get two fucking sales. And one of the reasons is the parts are super expensive and the labor is super expensive, and nobody, nobody out there wants to spend money on their car. Nobody. I think I'm the only idiot who likes spending money on his car. I have a whole separate bank account for it. I really do. I put my daily operations money in one account, I have a savings account, and then I have a whole separate account just for buying shit for the car or cars, because I have many. Video MPIs mean nothing to the average customer and are a waste of time. Nope. They are valuable because people can go back and say, oh, you have an oil leak since we did your oil change. Let's go to the video. And we can show that we were doing an oil change and that oil was leaking from the oil pan as we were doing the oil change. So your oil pan leaking, guess what? It was there before we did your oil change. And we quoted you for it. So there. Video should only be used to help explain an obvious area of concern to the customer. No, no. Uh, I don't agree with that at all. Um, video is excellent for showing and explaining an obvious area of concern to the customer. But in my experience, and in what I came up with, I did this from the very beginning too, folks. I want to show people what's right with their car. And there isn't anybody out there who wants to see a video of what's wrong with their car. They want to see a video of what's right with their car, what they don't have to worry about. That's what makes my videos get all kinds of feedback, is because I go through and go, hey, tires are good, brakes are good, suspension's good, everything's good. And then I remind them, hey, your tires and brakes are consumables, and your car will consume them. And at some point you are gonna need them, but for right now, you're in good shape. And then I send them on their way. It's as if I patted them on the top of the head and sent them on their way. You're good. And I don't know if there's anybody out there who goes, Oh, okay. So I thought I was gonna need tires, but I don't, at least not right now. That's what Uncle Jimmy says. Uncle Jimmy said my brakes are good, at least for another five to ten thousand miles. Great. So now you can you can ease up on the anxiety you might have over the condition of your automobile and get on with your life. And then the next time you come in and go, Hey, remember last time I told you the brakes were not that great, but they were okay? They're not okay anymore. You really need to have some pads and rotors installed in this car so your car will stop properly. So I'm gonna send you an estimate. I don't do any selling. I don't do any selling. The one thing I say to people, and I've I've told you this before, if you've listened to this before, one of the things I say is, you know what, your brakes are low and you're gonna need them soon. You don't need them immediately. You don't need them today, but you're gonna need them soon. Then I move on. And I find I can't even tell you why it works, but it does. I I sell more brakes and tires that way than anything. Hey, your tires are not so good. You don't need them right this second. Because they obviously drove in on them. They're gonna drive off with them if they don't have the money or they don't have the time or they just don't want them, period, because they're fucking stupid. Well, it doesn't matter either way. I'm gonna tell them you need tires. Do you need them right this minute? Nah, you got another couple thousand miles before you have a blowout and hit a school bus full of cheerleaders. If they have real detrimental problems, I'll hit them with it, okay? Now, let me uh let me just I want to kind of wrap this up because I've been going on for a while here, and I'm gonna probably revisit this one next week because I think that this is very interesting. Uh, this gentleman says that the video should be just showing obvious concerns. Obviously, I disagree with that, but I appreciate that input. And then another guy writes here again, seven to ten minutes per car, three, four cars a day. That adds up. He's right. And then, of course, the author chimes in. If it's taking seven to ten minutes of additional time to press record and show the customer what you're looking at, that's a process issue and potential training opportunity. Well, that's a bullshit answer. Have you ever made a video? No. Have you have you ever made a video? Then really what you should do is shut the fuck up about it, asshole. I'm sorry, there it is. I didn't want to I didn't want to call this guy names. I didn't want to say anything, but he's like, oh, you should be able to do that in no time, but you've never done it. So you are another one of those so-called experts that I'm always complaining about. Oh, I know exactly what a video should look like. Have you ever done one? Well, no, but then shut your fucking face. Then here's the answer from that guy. I know of recalls that pay 0.1. You are referring to. Why can't the MPI pay it too? Now, if you're looking for 0.1, here again, if you're making the median $40,000 a year, and you know, you're gonna make uh $1,000 at the end of the year and you just pay 0.1 instead, you're gonna make $500. That's still better than nothing. And I'll bet you there's some shops out there that go, okay, you made X number of videos. We'll give you a quarter for each one. Here's a check for who even knows how much? Three, four, five hundred bucks. That's better than nothing. Okay, and if you wanted to do it that way, that'd be all right too. But don't sit there up on your fucking pedestal, you know, from your spot on a totem pole above us and say, Oh, we're not gonna pay for those. Never. We're never gonna pay for those. We should never have to. You should just do them and shut the fuck up. Well, maybe what you ought to do is shut the fuck up. Because we're gonna take away an hour every day for you to chop a deuce, bitch. See how you fucking like it. Cox sucker. Oh, there we go. I picked another, I called him another name. I'm sorry. This got me hot. This got me real fucking hot. And I don't I don't like this whole attitude that management has, the fixed operator, operations leaders have, the fucking owners have, where they're like, oh, we're not gonna pay for that, you're gonna do it anyway. No, actually, we're not. I think we should we should pick a day. Let's call it Halloween. Let's say Halloween, October 31st. And on October 31st, we don't do anybody who's listening, we don't do any videos. We just beg off on it. Fuck the goddamn, the goddamn chart where they have you at 100% for doing every video. Just go one day where we don't do any videos and see what happens. How come you didn't do a video? It's no video day. It's to grease the wheels. Uncle Jimmy says no video day on Halloween. And they can from that, they can look at their fucking KPIs and see, wow, we did a lot less sales that day. We didn't sell anything that day. Yeah. Now you start to see the fucking value of it, don't you? You fucking dicks. Bunch of fucking money grubbing corporate greed fucks. I'm telling you, it makes me hot. And then and reading this whole thing and all of these I mean, literally, there was hundreds of responses here. And I'm gonna I'm gonna revisit it next week. There's no question about it, because some of the stuff was really good. Here was the answer. The response from the author about getting point one for a uh recall. And this sh-I believe this shows what a bonehead this guy is. Because a recall operation is a separately defined labor operation with a manufacturer/slash established labor time, a video MPI isn't a separate repair. What? That's like comparing apples to fucking asteroids. Idiot. It's an evolution of an inspection that's already part of many service processes. There are two very different things. I'd also add this. If we were debating 0.1 to 0.2 hours, we're ignoring the 0.5, 1.5 hours that the video often helps generate. Focusing on the investment without considering return paints an incomplete picture. Dude, we know that the video generates sales. Who profits from those sales? Who profits the most from those sales? Yeah, not us. Sure. I've never liked that argument where, oh, the video creates more sales. That's good for you. It's also really fucking good for you. It's also really good for the dealership. It's also really good for the shop. It's really good for the service manager. Is it really good for us? Well, yeah, it can be. But if I sell two hours of work at $40 an hour, I get $80. How much do you get for two hours? Well, you got $200 an hour, so it's $400. So I'm making $80, you make $400. So you don't feel like you have to pay for the video that sold that water pump job or whatever it was that was two hours? You don't have to pay. Fuck you. Break your wallet out. Break it out. Or I'll take a crowbar and break it out. Here was another response to the author after that one. Because that that was really, I gotta say, that was a that was an idiotic response in my opinion. Okay. It's an evolution of an inspection that's already part of many processes. Okay. Well, if evolution works, and it is, and it will be, there will be AI-powered kiosks in every dealership, and they will have they will be able to do away with human service advisors. And once they do that, they will be able to invent a service kiosk that manages the fucking place, too. Because every job in the in a dealership, and I mean this sincerely, folks, every job in a dealership can be replaced by AI except for us. Except for the technicians. Because AI is not going to be able to look into an engine bay and see that everything is all fucked up. It's only going to know what it should look like. Well, yeah, as a technician, I know what it should look like. I also know why it doesn't look the way it's supposed to. Is AI gonna be able to figure that out? Maybe. How are they gonna fix it? With robots, trust me, robots are not gonna be able to fix cars for a very, very, very long time. Okay, because what they will have to do, I'm not even gonna get into it, just it's just too much. Here was a response from a technician at a Christian Brothers. And I gotta tell you, I love the name of that shop so much because it indicates that these are people who are are children of God and they're working on cars. So does that mean that there's no swearing in this shop or that they have a great big jar where they put a dollar in every time they swear? So you drop a bolt. Oh, here's another dollar for the jar. I'm sorry, that may not be funny to some of you. Uh, this is this is a gentleman who works at Christian Brothers. He says, that's seven to ten minutes of work and time that the tech is still not getting paid. Why is it okay to expect the flat rate techs to perform tasks for free? It's not. I believe it is legally not. It says it's illegal to have someone to work off the clock in every other industry. He is absolutely right. If somebody checks with a state labor board and says, hey, where I work, they're asking me to do stuff and telling me that they're not gonna pay me for it. Where's the legality of that? They're gonna say, hold on, here, this is the phone number for the ACLU. They're actually violating your human rights. Uh, and here comes the answer. Here comes the answer. Because I gotta tell you, this guy I I admire. I do admire his tenacity, even if I hate his point of view and I hate the fact that he thinks he's better than all of us. Of course, I'm assuming that part, but if it's taking seven to ten minutes, I'd argue the process needs to be evaluated. The process should have been evaluated a long time ago before you fucking came down from your fucking high mount and decided that we all have to do videos using, oh, by the way, our own phone. Should have evaluated it then. Somebody should have asked you, hey man, tapped you on the shoulder and said, You're gonna go tell them they got to do a video, which is gonna be somewhere between two and five minutes, and that you're not gonna pay them for doing it, and you're gonna ask them to use their own phone? Good luck with that, asshole. I'd argue the process needs to be evaluated. In a well-implemented workflow, it shouldn't take that long. Okay, it shouldn't take that long. Here again, you've never fucking done one, moron. How long should a video take? What should you take a video of? Really? That's part of the equation, too. Holy shit. I've had cars that come in where there's just so much shit wrong that I've done two videos to try to point it all out. And in the video, I say, listen, I'm a technician. It's my job to point out what's wrong with a vehicle. As an owner, you can make the decision to repair whatever you want, if anything at all. It's sort of a disclaimer saying, hey, I'm gonna point out everything's wrong with this fucking pile of shit. You're gonna laugh and roll out the door with your free inspection, and I'm just gonna lose time. Which in my world is money. Right? But I do it anyway. I've made seven, eight, nine-minute videos on a pile of shit, pointed out absolutely everything that's wrong, tires bald, breaks bad, strut's leaking, windshield broken, needs an oil change, valve cover's leaking, oil pan's leaking, fucking oil filter housing's leaking, coolant leaking. I have done it. I have I have done it. I've got to, and and our like I said, our video's timeout at five minutes. I've gotten the end of five minutes and said, Hey, there's gonna be a second video. Hang on for that. Here we go. Pick up where I left off and finish it off and show them everything's wrong with the car, and then I put it outside and let them wash it. Hopefully, the car doesn't take on too much water because it's that big of a pile of shit, and then never hear from them again. And nobody comes back and says, Well, thanks for doing an eight-minute video on a car that isn't worth eight fucking dollars. But you know what, folks, too, uh, and just to just to kind of balance this out every once in a while, and maybe every couple of years, I get a pile of shit, I make a video, I point out all the stuff it needs, and for some unknown reason, the customer says, Okay, do it all. It has happened. It is, I just recently I did $6,500 worth of work on a car that was worth $1,500. It is not my place to judge people or their cars or what they spend their money on. So I shut up and like a good soldier, I just do the work. And now I'm married to the car, which is going to be a subject of another podcast later down the road because, well, it had a check engine light, and I fixed that. And well, the check engine light came on again, so there was another thing that needed to be repaired. And guess what? The check engine light came on again, and it keeps getting pulled back into my pay. Like I'm doing something wrong. No. People need to realize that there's about three to five thousand reasons why a check engine light could come on. And when the car's got 197,000 miles, it is going to demonstrate to you all of those reasons, all three to five thousand of them. Again, this this gentleman from the Christian Brothers chimed back in again. Oh, there was more on that. This is the author. I'm sorry, let me back up. This is the author again. I'm gonna I'm gonna get off here pretty soon, uh, real quick here, okay, because I'm not finished with this subject. I want to rant some more about it. I think that next week it's probably gonna get more and more evil, and there may be more responses to it. I don't know. It's getting late, and I need to go for a walk and take a shower and go to bed, so we're gonna do that. Uh, but here's here was the rest of that response. Flat rate technicians are still employees with defined job responsibilities. Not every responsibility comes with its own labor operation. As a flat rate technician, it fucking should. That's true throughout the dealership. Now, he's he's calling out specific flat rate technicians. Now, my understanding is that flat rate technicians are supposed to get paid for what they do. We don't get paid for MBIs, we don't get paid for pulling the car in, we don't get paid for checking the tire pressures, we don't get paid for topping off the fluids, we don't get paid for looking the car over. I think all of us have bitten the bullet on all of that. And quite frankly, a lot of you don't do that. I've asked you and chided you and gently chastised you to do it, but you're still not doing it because you know what? Fuck that, Uncle Jimmy. I don't get paid for that, and I'm with you a thousand percent. Okay, there should be a basic fee for looking the car over. I feel like there should be a basic fee for looking the car over. I would call it a quality fee. It'd be two tents, maybe three, but you have to look the car over, make sure it's safe. You have to do the video, you have to check the tire pressures, you have to top off the fluids, you have to look the whole car over inside and out. You have to make a video of what's going on underneath. The rest of that stuff they can see. Fuck them. They don't need a video. They don't need a video on why a seatbelt might be twisted or why the shifter's covered with fucking, you know, fucking seven up from a fucking big gulp that's spilled. But underneath the car where they can't see, where all the important shit is hello, by the way, they need to see that stuff. And if it's working good, tell them it's working good. Hey, your tires are great. I say it all the time. Hey, you got some really good tires on this car. They're Michelin's, they're a good brand of tires, they're gonna last you a good long time. It was a good choice. I like to make people feel good about their car if it is indeed good. Because guess what? The next time they come in and something's not good, they're gonna remember, well, this is the same guy who told me everything was good last time and now something's not good. He must not be trying to rip me off. Here's what this guy goes on to say. This is the author. I think we're also talking past each other. The argument keeps coming back to working for free. Well, my question has always been whether video MPI is a new compensatable task or simply an evolution of an inspection that's already part of the process. Okay, so what you're admitting here is that it should be tacked on to some more shit that we're all by the way, also not getting fucking paid for. And if you're a flat rate technician, it very, very surely is working for free. You're a volunteer, you're a volunteer. You set the tire pressures, you're volunteering to do that. You top off the fluids, you're volunteering to do that because you don't get paid for it. And I'm friends and lovers and and neighbors and whatever else you are. I am not a volunteer. I need money. I need dough like anyone, as the jerky boys used to say. That guy needs to buy that fucking car. I'll smash his head into the hood. You buy this fucking car. I need dough like anyone. Uh here's the last comment I want to I want to relay to you. And then I'm gonna call it a day, call it a night, let you listen to this one and then get ready for a follow-up to this, and we'll call it done, okay? I promise. I promise. Maybe maybe you're tired of hearing about this. I think some of you are. And if you're doing videos and not getting paid for it, I'm with you. And I would also like to change our the people who run our shops and the people who own our shops, I would like to to somehow change their opinion on this. This is the gentleman from Christian Brothers again, and this is the last one I'm gonna read off for you here. I would argue that if a digital video inspection is taking seven to ten minutes, then your texts aren't being thorough in their inspections. Well, actually, if you do a uh digital video inspection and it takes seven to ten minutes, I would call that thorough if you take five to six-year-old vehicle with 70 to 90,000 miles, seven to ten minutes, is a disservice to your guests. And now he's talking about pulling wheels to check brakes. That takes seven minutes. A good DVI uh will take 30 minutes, pulling wheels, taking photos and videos, finding another set of hands to shake down the suspension so the tech can video that loose tie rod when writing the notes and the recommendation, then writing the notes and the recommendations, he's got a point there. How thorough should your video be? Now, I'm not gonna do any of that shit. I'm not taking the fucking wheels off. And I don't feel like I need other somebody else to shake a wheel so I can show a bad ball joint or a bad thrust arm bushing. I don't feel like I need to do that. If I'm doing the video and I'm using the same voice I'm using right now to explain to you why this is a fucking bad idea to not pay us, when I say, oh, yeah, this ball joint here, it's loose. If I push on the wheel and you can see it, it's good enough for me. If they don't want to, if they don't want to take my recommendations spoken in this voice with this confidence, and go to the bank and get the money to replace it, there's nothing else I can do. Nothing else I can do. I can't I am not going to berate people, you know. I have I have looked at many cars where there has been a very thorough inspection and also a very thorough estimate made for that car. And those services and those recommendations were declined previously, and now it's a month, maybe two months later, and they're back again with the same fucking complaint. Guess what? And I would be if I would be incredulous. Again, I would not make a good service advisor, but I would look at that and go, Well, so what you're complaining about is the fact that the car didn't fix itself, which it's not going to do. Okay, now am I supposed to go back in and look this all over again and give you the same fucking estimate and have you say the same fucking thing? Oh, uh I don't want it. I would say, if I was up front, I'd say, Well, I understand that you're trying to save money, but I'm trying to save your life. Which one's worth more to you? Because when you're dead, you can't spend any of the money that you saved. Okay. So you it's a choice that you're gonna make. Do you want to drive a car that's not safe, that's dangerous, where you're gonna hit something, you're gonna kill somebody, you're gonna meet hopefully just yourself. Hopefully, when your car fails for whatever is fucking bad on your car, that it just kills you and not somebody else. Getting back to the response from this gentleman, this Christian brother gentleman. To your point about the uh video MPI, should be a compensatable task. Yes, it should be. A good DVI will take longer than a carbon copy paper MPI. If the DVI takes 30 minutes, that is 30 minutes, the tech doesn't get paid. Then if you factor in if the tech is already working on a job, and then that set back sets back the tech 30 minutes on sold work, that's an hour of lost productivity. Now multiply that lost productivity over a year adds up. The fact that this has always been part of the process and accepted practice is one example why so many techs are frustrated with the industry and leaving. Bravo, Mr. Christian Brother. Bravo. And and like I said, the fire that is burning in all of us to quit this profession is not being stoked by one piece of wood. It's not being stoked by one gallon of gas or by anything flammable. It is being stoked by a thousand little things that catch fire and burn, and this is one of them. And for you to sit there and insist that we not get paid for this, and then in the same breath, in the same conversation, complain that there's a technician shortage, you're looking at the fucking reason why. All right. All right, that's enough about this for a week. Ugh. Hey, listen, hit me up on the Facebook page if you would, what your comments on this might be. If you want to go to LinkedIn and try to find this, I think you probably can. Um, I think I've given you enough information to figure it out. A lot of you have figured out things uh already. It's a feed that it goes it goes on and on and on and on and on. It's it's really long, and I want to kind of spend some more time uh looking at what some of the responses were. Uh so far, they seem to indicate that this person who started this post is is wrong, just basically wrong, and he keeps coming back with, well, we don't want to pay for it. Well, tough shit. Everywhere in a world where you go and you have to buy something, and if you buy more than one thing or more than two things or more than three things, you have to pay for everything. Why should this business be different? All right. All right. Like I said, I'm gonna jump off. Eric's gonna have to kind of edit this jumbled up mess of shit, and so we'll see what we'll see what comes out the other side. Uh, but for right now, I just want to say right here at the end See ya.