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I’ve been learning something about the dealership that I work for that I do not like. The manager of the service department is one of the worst managers I have ever seen. He is only there two days a week, and I never see him. I’ve only seen him on the shop floor 3 times the whole time I have worked for the company. We’re constantly running out of vital supplies such as tire patches, the shop is having very bad plumbing issues that cause mini floods almost daily, yet the guy is nowhere to be found. Instead the shops lead tech does most of his job, and he is only on flat rate. He spends maybe 15 hours a week dealing with BS that has nothing to do with automotive repair. He ended up stopping the flooding temporarily, and HE is the one who now orders shop supplies. I hear him constantly muttering F (insert name of service department manager here). Without the lead tech our shop would be hosed, and it does not seem like the owners care one bit.
Not only that he keeps bringing in new people without even interviewing them (myself included). We got 7 guys working the Lube racks on any given day, and there are only TWO bays that we can use. Most of them just stand around with their mouths open, while the rest of us bust our asses. One guy that he hired is the most inept worker I have ever had the pleasure of working with. He takes off one lugnut at a time, and then moves to the next wheel. He ends up going around the car 5-8 times (depending on if a big truck comes in) to get the wheels off. In the time it took him to get the wheels off me, and the A-tech I worked with finished an inspection, and completed an oil change.
Does the manager care? Not one bit. Hell… I still do not have a schedule. I went in for 54 hours one week (I’m supposed to be part time) just to test a theory and nobody said a thing to me even though I collected overtime. Conversely the guy that takes ages to just get the wheels off of the vehicle was 4 hours late one day, and nothing was said.
The shop looks like it is about ready to fall apart, and the manager does not even care. What are your experiences with bad shop managers?
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I’ve worked for a few, heading out of my current job for just that reason. I’ve found in recent years that the automotive repair world has changed ALOT. Nowadays its more and more about the allmighty dollar and “wallet flushing”.
Most of us have had the experience of working with a bad shop manager. From the way it sounds there is not much you can do. You can bring up your concerns as you would do in any job. But my suggestion would be start looking for a new shop. Sounds like something shady is going on. My worst was working at a Honda dealer and was just breaking 40 on flat rate, then for some reason they hired another tech. Killed all of us. Not much you can do about it. That’s why our tool boxes have wheels. Easier to move them to a new shop. Hope it works out or you find another that is a good shop.
I have had my share of horrible managers in the last 20+ years. Some were clueless, some were stealing from the shop, some from the customers, some were busy snorting stuff up their nose even, lol. Even a couple who were down right degrading and verbally abusive, even by auto repair shop standards. As was said, this industry changes, and changes often. The technology in the industry constantly evolves, with big leaps in technology about every 5-7 years. The shop side of things must adapt to this as well, for it to survive and succeed. If management doesn’t stay on it, they fall behind and so does the shop. There is money to be made, good money at the shops that stay towards the edge of the curve, when it is implemented correctly.
Wallet Flushing is something that is somewhat commonplace now. However it wasn’t the case, say 25 years ago. I had a run in with a shop about that time that was taking customers for all they were worth. They Ripped off a senior citizen and I was basically an neutral arbitrator for this situation. Shop basically took him took this nice old gent to the cleaners on a little XJ Cherokee. This was back when they had 2.8 Gm v6 engines, yuck. I don’t necessarily believe in, or condone karma, or what comes around types of things, but this crooked shop owner, had been cheating people for years. He was out on his Harley one day and got in an accident with some kind of trailer. Think he rode under it. Yes, he died, but only after the surgeons trying to patch him back together because his upper body was actually drawn into the running gear of this trailer, or truck. Something for every cheating shop owner should think about, in my opinion.
[quote=”lpdwntnd” post=125402]Most of us have had the experience of working with a bad shop manager. From the way it sounds there is not much you can do. You can bring up your concerns as you would do in any job. But my suggestion would be start looking for a new shop. Sounds like something shady is going on. My worst was working at a Honda dealer and was just breaking 40 on flat rate, then for some reason they hired another tech. Killed all of us. Not much you can do about it. That’s why our tool boxes have wheels. Easier to move them to a new shop. Hope it works out or you find another that is a good shop.[/quote]
I work hourly so its not much of an issue for me, I’m just amazed by the inefficiency of the shop, and the lack of leadership on the part of management. There is no structure, everything is chaotic, our manager cares more about firing service writers than doing anything else — because that is pretty much all he does. Every day time a service writer sees our manager they all hide, because it seems like he fires one every week.What gets me is the EMPTY bays more than anything. On Saturdays and Mondays we have, no joke 7 or more empty bays and cars just waiting to be serviced. We had a Supra from the 90s come in for service and finally get serviced a week and a half later. I see some technicians sitting around with nothing to do when there are cars that need to be serviced but they never get the RO, or the go ahead to service them from the service writers.
I’ve seen poor management in my life. And I’ve seen some amazing management. I’ll condense it down to my last two jobs to make it easy to follow, because I have a tendency to ramble.
Last job: We had a manager and assistant manager. The assistant manager was in charge one day a week and tried to skate out of work the other 4 he was supposed to be a lead tech. All sorts of hypocritical double standards, racist comments, incredible superiority complex.
After being promised a promotion to mechanic three different times in three weeks I answered an ad to start at a new shop. And I honestly couldn’t be happier. There will always be good and bad supervisors, but where I am now has taken pro-active measures to remove toxic leaders, bad service writers, toxic employees over the last three years. That tells me I’m at a good place.
Sometimes you have to move on, sometimes you have to stick things out. I’d start by talking with the A-tech that’s running things, then go to the owners
The good ones are in the very distinct minority. Most should be tied up and thrown into an empty boxcar leaving town.
When I went to work at one large dealership I noticed a few days in that a guy in the parts department would just start reaming this one guy back there who was very tall and twice his size. He cussed him and called him everything in the book. I found out the tall guy was the parts manager who was so overwhelmed he would just go into a trance and stand there staring through the wall for 5 minutes. The guy yelling was a very, very sharp mechanic who agreed to go into parts to help out. I also found out that the tall guy was the brother of the owner of the dealership.
After some time the service manager left and the tall guy was made the service manager also. He was clueless enough in the parts dept. and became a total fool in service. A book could be written about the stupidity this guy inflicted on the service department and even the factory zone reps despised him. One rep said he was the stupidest son xx x xxxxx on earth and hated to even make a monthly round there because his first act was going into the office and tearing him apart over the latest pile of botched warranty claims; many of which the company wound up eating. This manager would be told in advance warranty will not pay for something and he would give it to the customer anyway followed by eating the parts and labor later.
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