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Post the things that really drive you up a wall. I will start.
Mr. drops his second set of wheels off to have winter tires swapped on and then decides when he comes back to have you put them on. You already flagged the job and got paid for it. Now you have to take your place out of line for a new RO with more work to earn a living off of to pull this jackasses car in, for free, and take his old wheels off and put the ones you just put tires on and then pack up the ones you just took off all for free. All the while watching a nice gravy RO go to the guy in line behind you. It’s even worse when you are actually working on a car and have to stop while you are on a good pace to make money to do it.
I also hate when you are working on a car that is paying out 14 hours of work and it’s a Saturday and you need that 14 hours to make a week and you are down to the wire and someone comes in for a waiter oil change that pays 0.3 and 0.3 for a rotate and you end up not finishing the good paying job for a measly 0.6.
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i just moved here to WV from GA and that seems to be the trend, just replace them don’t turn them. half of the shops in town don’t even own a lathe. what kind of crap is that? i never heard of such a thing. some rotors are very costly, why not turn them instead. when i had my shop turning the rotors was included in the labor for the brake job. we didn’t replace them unless they were out of specs or too rusted to turn.
Customers leaving their car right outside my shutters, especially when they can see me bringing one off my bay.
Customers removing service books/locking wheel nut keys from their car, losing them and not telling me, leaving me to search their car for half an hour. The service book only needs to be removed by me or another tech. The locking wheel nut key lives in your car, if you really have a genuine reason to remove it, then FFS put it back
Kids/pets in cars…both leave nasty smells and mess
When supervisors ask “Is it done yet?” when the car is still in bits, and I am still wrenching…does it look like its done yet? It’ll be done when its done and not a second f***ing sooner!
People losing my tools, returning them dirty or just dumping them in a pile in my bay, tool thieves but worst of all when I lose a tool and have nobody to blame but myself.
When somebody volunteers to hold my light for me and then promptly shines it so they can see what I am doing, but I cannot.
Customers that think they know better.
Customers that wan to watch, up close in my bay, suggesting things for me to do.
Customers that insist on a specific time because they can only come at that time, and then show up an hour late.
But really not much gets on my nerves and I am usually a pleasure to work with 🙂
We had almost like a combo of that going on at the Chevy dealer I used to work at. Rotor turning was included in the brake job labor and we were supposed to turn them assuming there was reasonable expectation that they would be in spec after turning. The most annoying thing to me was guys who were too lazy to turn them would convince themselves that there was no way the rotor would turn out and would just sell replacement rotors…..but then would still expect to get the full brake job labor even though they didn’t turn a single rotor.
My two big ones are:
When people who leave tool box drawers open after they finish grabbing tools, i hate walking into a bay and almost sacking, or smashing my legs on open drawers.
Supervisors telling me how to do my job. A lot of the time i don’t need them to explain the job they are giving me, i tend to learn very fast and if i have trouble i either RYFM or ask a leadhand.
Customers who have there car towed in with a motor that has had its piston blown through the bottom and ask “Can it be rebuilt?” No…Actually why yes, yes I can rebuild it. But it wont do any good.
Customers who insist that there car had its oil changed “Just the other day” when the service sticker in the window clearly shows it has not been done in…>YEARS< and they wonder why there hearing knocking, and there engine is struggling to give any power what so ever. Customers who do there own oil change and never bother to change there oil filter. Customers who never check there coolant or worse yet put straight tap water in there with no anti freeze then in the winter show up complaining about over heating, and a blown radiator. Customers who change out there perfectly good stock radiator cap with a after market one with a pressure release valve that brakes faster then you can say "Can I get a return?" Customers who insist they just replaced the fuel filter a month ago, and then it turns out its the stock filter on a 1981 dodge! (Yeah..jee wonder why your ole rig couldnt hardly move...) When I put guards over the fenders and some one comes along and removes them along with the tools. Anyone working on a rig without said guards mentioned above. Anyone who puts a lift kit on there car, I dont have a lift, I only have a floor jack and a few bottle jacks, and some jack stands.. How ON EARTH am I post to work on your truck you got lifted three feet off the ground?? (I use cribbing...crude but works.) Um lets see...People who insist there 1993 chevy uses DOT 5 brake fluid, when it uses DOT 3 and get mad when I put the correct fluid in the system. If you want your brakes to fail I can always just go ahead and cut the dang lines for ya... Edit: IF you cant tell I worked at a lube shop... I dont do any mechanical work on any one elses rigs now but my own, and I think my lil list of complaints shows why...My god I feel sorry for you people who do full auto maintnence.lol
my thing for awhile was this one newbie kid, looked like he was straight outta tech school, didnt have a dime to his name. im generally a big hearted person (get me in a lot of trouble) and would lend him tools he didnt have, only to either have them returned looking like they came out of an horses butt, or not have them returned at all. ive since then made kind of a “contractual obligation”, if you borrow a tool ill barrow your phone, smokes, car keys ect. needless to say things are alot better now.
[quote=”wrencher1″ post=41224]How about filthy cars, especially when you have to do interior work on a car that is someones trash dump. Not only is it nasty, but you have to work around it and I’ve seen somethings that have scared me for life haha.[/quote]
this is something that always irritated me, i will take a shower it old transmission fluid, motor oil, but when you have species of mold growing in your car i have never seen before, coffee stains spilled all over, cigarrette smoke stained interior, it smells like someone died in your car, thats where i sort of became irritated too. i quickly got used to this however working at Stap Brothers… the people using the vehicle had absoluetly no reguard for the interior or exterior condition of there vehicle and the stuff you would find… just another day in the shop…
as a general pet peeve of mine is when another technitian tries too tell me how something works and they have no idea.. my very shop manager once told me that the higher the octane of Gasoline the faster it burns, and i had to look it up too prove to him, the higher the octane the slower the burn, part of what makes it so knock resistant! but i have dealt with other technitians worse and it would drive me nuts, what are these people telling there customers!?
but putting up with things is part of being a tech… rule number 1, its always the technicians fault, never the engineers, never the customer… not even the manager or job owner, the technician. as bullcrap as it is, its often the way it is in many peoples eyes beacuse people like too play the blame game to worm out of there own crap…
we had one lady who’s car stank so bad you could smell it in the entire 14 bay shop!! i refused to get in it and made the servce writed pull it on and off the rack and put the LOF sticker in the window. it smelled like dead bodies and rotten ass!! i had a student the other day refuse to work on a car at his job because there was soiled underwear on the shifter! wtf! nasty! i worked on a company’s fleet van one time and the guy drove it put his cigarettes out on the floor and threw all his trash on the floor, it took me a half an hour (which i billed them for) to clear enough room to remove the dog box to see the engine! nasty! one time i repaired a rain water leak on a catering van that had living roaches and combat roach bait things all through it! glad they never catered an event i went to! :sick:
Hey Eric…Our shop never asks for wheel lock keys and it really P***es me off. So now if i can’t find it within a few minutes i tell the advisor and he or she looks for it.
Now…they usually call me stupid or asks if i’m blind but insults are insults but time is money.
I took my ride to the dealer for warranty work and the second thing they said after getting my info was to put my lock key in the cup holder. I did it gladly.
Service writer not providing information needed to diagnose the car correctly. Handed a bad diagnosis to install parts and find out the lighting control module didn’t fix it. Then spend 4hrs chasing down electrical problem find out it just came from the body shop. It was rear ended wiring harness pinched left rear causing wired dash problems.
Spending 6hours diagnosing using lab scopes key cycles and making my own wiring diagram and research to prove a bad turbo VGT on a 5.9 Cummings then find out your boss is buying insight software and give you crap about it.
Customers bring In a car for a drivability with no gas in the tank!
Old moldy dog smell cars that sat forever.
Changing a battery and not having the radio code
Doing a job three times on similar or same make and model and have the service writer not catch on to parts needed?
Be told “I don’t know your the tech” we’ll no ****!
Service writer “my car has ……” This isn’t your car not even the same make!
.4 for an oil change when a write up takes .75 and a new fresh customer
Listening to the service writer describe in detail over the phone a diagnosis when he clearly does not understand what’s been tested or wrong and make up some bs story when the customer asks a question.
Agree with many of the above and could add many more. The biggest one not mentioned so far is state safety inspections (VA in my case). Rant follows…
-Inspection stations are only allowed to charge $16 for a passenger car, but most dealers do them for free if the vehicle was purchased there. We see many cars only 1x a year for their free inspection & these ‘customers’ never buy anything.
-We are paid .3 per inspection. To actually check everything you are supposed to + enter the information in the system + write the sticker, in addition to the courtesy inspection, service pricing, etc. takes an absolute minimum of half-an-hour. One must risk getting in trouble with the state police or lose one’s shirt doing things properly.
-There is almost no enforcement/penalty for expired inspections, even though they are all in the database – the state police know if your safety approval expired. Either make it required and enforce it or get rid of it.
-My #1 source of negative surveys is customers whose cars fail state inspection. Customers often go to another, less-scrupulous inspection station and pass, after I have told them $xxx.xx in work is needed. I never fail a car for a bogus reason to make a sale, and everyone has 15 days to make repairs at any shop they choose. When another shop passes a car I have failed, w/o requiring any repair, it reflects poorly on both me and the inspection system.
-The state inspection code has many arbitrary and illogical provisions. There are things that I do not perceive as an actual safety threat that are supposed to fail and several things I believe are dangerous that are allowed.
-Inspection stations are allowed to inspect by appointment, but must always have a ‘first-come, first-serve’ inspection lane open. Read: waiters all day, every day. Oh, and we have to inspect whatever comes in (any make/model, motorcycles, trailers) even if we don’t generally work on it.
-Vehicles should be serviced a minimum of 2x a year. Safety inspection is required at least 1x a year, but can be done at any requested interval. Customers come in one day for an oil change, then 4-1/2 weeks later for a state inspection (just long enough we have to fill out the MPI again).
-I hate telling people they have to do something. There are dangerous cars on the road with or without the inspection program. I am in the business to fix and maintain cars, not to enforce the law. With inspections on a solid third of service orders, one is forced to walk the line.
Before the state, thankfully, did away with the state safety inspection for motor vehicles here they were a royal, pain in the neck, money losing deal for the mechanic.
The state said an inspection should take about a full hour and required the car be on a lift.
The mechanic was paid 1 dollar for this inspection and eventually, after the price of the inspection went up due to pressure from the state troopers pension fund, the mechanic got a whopping 2 bucks.Guess what kind of inspection most cars got? Flash the lights, honk the horn, and out she goes with a new sticker.
The program was a total joke even when it was done correctly.
When doing tune ups, maintenance service on Dodge Grand Caravans. To check the spare tire pressure you have to unwind a bolt from inside the van which takes 5 minutes cause it’s so damn slow, then you have to get the tire out from under the van, and wind it back up. God forbid Dodge puts the spare tire in the trunk. That’d just be insane and unreasonable!
Hoarders cars…. enough said.
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