Who is EricTheCarGuy?
“Then one day a funny thing happened, this is where the story gets complicated…”
I ended up working at that dealer for a little over 8 years in all and did pretty well there. I got restless at one point and took another job that I thought had better prospects. I left the dealer for about 2 years, but ended up coming back because that didn’t work out the way I expected, but it was all on good terms. Something about that dealership just drew me in, and I was used to the place I guess. It wasn’t all great though. The thing about a dealership is that it’s a large organization and nothing like the mom and pop operation I had come from in Pittsburgh. There was paperwork and responsibility, politics and other technicians that I didn’t always see eye to eye with. There was also the flat rate system, and to top it off it was a team flat rate system, and that presented its own set of challenges. I also noticed that I didn’t know my customers any more. They were just numbers on a work order, and life was about racking up the flag times as if it were some kind of competition. The entire place seemed to be addicted to 
money, and somehow the customer came second in so many instances that it was sometimes hard to even admit that I worked there. I learned to live with it, and did the best I could to maintain a certain amount of integrity while still trying to make a living, which is not as easy as you might think if I’m honest. But working on and driving around in the latest models does have its appeal. I ended up getting married during that time (to a different girl, long story there too, but it all worked out for everybody in the end) and having 2 more kids. Life seemed fairly predictable, and for the most part, happy. Then, one day, a funny thing happened. This is where the story gets complicated so I’m sorry if this part of the story is short on detail. A car came into the shop that a coworker of mine ended up accidentally damaging. In short, he blew the engine. It was an older car owned by a good customer, and I made the suggestion to offer to take full trade in on the car and offer the customer a new car in its place. At first, management didn’t go for it, and they wanted to fix the car, so they got a new engine for it and we were going to install it, but it didn’t turn out that way. They ended up selling the customer a new car and taking his in on trade. This is where it gets really complicated. At the time, I knew of a woman that needed a new car and didn’t have a lot of money, so I proposed to the people I worked for that I could come in on a weekend, put the new engine in the car, and the dealership could sell her the car. I would get paid by her directly for putting the engine in, and the dealership would profit from the car sale and everybody would be happy. I got paid 
for the job, and the dealership got out of a bad situation and didn’t have to pay the labor to put an engine in a damaged vehicle that they were now responsible for. They agreed, and I came in that weekend. I installed the engine, and it ran great. The car was in good shape really, and now had a new engine. I felt pretty good about how I handled the whole thing really. Then, shortly after she had bought the car, she came into the parts department to pay for the engine. I told you it was complicated, because apparently what the dealership had done was sold her the car separate from the engine because the engine was on the parts department’s books and the car was on the sales department’s books. When she came in to pay for the engine, there was no invoice for it. In fact, it had been closed out by someone that worked in the parts department, and it just so happened he went home sick that day and was not able to answer for why the invoice had been closed out. If that hadn’t happened, I might still be at that dealership. But, the next day when I came in, I was called into the office and fired along with the person from the parts department. They really didn’t have an interest in hearing what I had to say, and I left feeling… well, let’s just say it wasn’t my best day. I went looking for another job, and got one working as a manager at a ‘chain’ repair facility. It was OK, but slow, and the pay sucked. I spent a lot of time watching Oprah and daytime television on the TV in the waiting room. I then got a job at the ‘other’ Acura dealer in town, but it was slow as well, and when the work is slow and you’re a technician working on flat rate, you don’t get paid. In fact, I ended up filing for bankruptcy as it was my only choice, because I just couldn’t keep up. I lost my house, a couple of rental properties, my credit, and a life that seemed comfortable and happy. I wasn’t alone in this however, because a lot of people lost their jobs around that time. In fact, this was the fall of 2008 and not a good time for anyone in the US or in the rest of the world for that matter. So, this got me thinking…
