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A drifting off topic post caused me to remember working in the shop of a friend of mine for a while when I was between jobs for about 6 weeks. I did brake jobs and small repairs and helped him generally and in trade he let me use the shop and helped me to rebuild the engine in my car and do some other work. When I ent back to work, I continue to do it at night or on weekends sometimes because I needed his shop and/or his help with my car.
It was a blast.
We always had great music playing, snacks handy. Lots of joking around and comraderie with the mechanics. Various friends would stop by from time to time and chat for a while while we worked. Women of various levels of hotness would occaisonally drop in to have their cars (or their boyfrind/husbands) fixed and he would try to get them to dance with or for us while we worked. Some did, it was just in fun, nobody cared. I got to test drive a lot of awesome exotic cars to make sure that they were repaired and working properly. I also got to learn a lot about fixing cars and got exposure to all kinds of neat cars that I had never heard of.
We could clean up the shop once in a while and he woudl have big parties in it at night. Mostly for his customers and friends. Being in an industrial park, loud loud music and a raucous party did not draw any attention or complaints.
He had some funny practices. I answered the phone and a guy was yelling about his car not being done for more than a week. I was told to tell him that the parts were back ordered and had not come in yet. When I hung up I was told to call the distributor and order the parts and tell them to hurry please. One of the workers left a bolt inside a cylinder head and damaged the head. He not only rpelaced the head, but he made the worker rebuild the guys transmission for free. ( I am not sure I would want that idiot rebuilding my transmission not even for free). People would leave their cars at his shop for months. Sometimes he was just supposed to get it ready for the next car show.
He had lots of ticked off customers because of his business practices, but they kept coming because his diagnostic skills were amazing and he did not charge as much as dealers and others for work on exotic cars. Not only a lower hourly rate, but he charged actual time, not book rates and he was real efficient. (Eventually he went out of business, he probably was not charging enough).
While my car was down, he let me drive customers cars for a while. One Older porsche 911 I drove for over two weeks becuse Dr. Marufu (or whatever) was one vacation out of the country. When it was close to time for him to come back, my friend asked me to do a brake job on it. "Wait a minute, you had me driving around in a $60,000 car with bad brakes?" "Well they still worked, didn't you notice that they were a little soft?" (Having never driven a Porsche before I did not notice).
I got to test drive all kinds of exotic cars that I could never afford. Lambos, Ferraris, Masaratis, Packards, Aston Martin, Jensen Interceptor, Allard, Rolls Royce/Bently, several Italian cars that I have not heard of ever again. Lots of classic British Roadsters.
Anyway it wsa a blast. If the pay was good, it would be a much better job than being a trial lawyer. UNfotunately his guys got paid very little.
Is it that fun everywhere?
Maybe insurance and lawyers have since killed the fun. That was a long time ago.
Indepedant shops can be like that if you work for the right person. Dealerships and franchise type repair shops like Midas, aamaco, etc try to come across as more professional so out come the uniforms, time clocks, tight estimates on the work to be competative etc... I worked for a guy like you did and we made money and had a good time also. He was an excellent mechanic and was always there to solve problems and make sure things went smooth
You cant make money to pay the bills if you are playing.Playing and fixing are 2 differant things
Not necessarily. I never worked a day in my life, because I was always paid to do things that I found to be either fun or easy to do. In a way, I got paid to play.
Not necessarily. I never worked a day in my life, because I was always paid to do things that I found to be either fun or easy to do. In a way, I got paid to play.
Are you a hooker? Not that there is anything wrong with that.
No, it's not that much fun everywhere. Most dealer and other major shops are pretty buttoned down places and the mechanics tend to be compete with each other.
I think it would depend upon the shop. I have a 2009 Nissan Rogue. I was bringing it to the dealership until I realized that they were always trying to sell me service I didn't need and they treated their mech's like crap. The Mech's brought in work orders a couple of times while I was there and I noticed the bad relationship between the service writers and them. The mech's looked pissed off all the time and they would argue right in front of me.
After that, I decided to just take it to Tires Plus for the maintenance and it's going good.
Disclaimer: Never compare a tuning, stereo or tint shop to a production repair shop.
The first few years I was a mechanic was fun. I looked forward to going to work everyday, but by the end of the third year I was burnt out both mentally and physically. The stress levels in a high production shop are crazy sometimes, but the weird thing is you crave that stress if you’re winning the flat rate game. There are times you feel like a trader on the stock exchange when you’re losing your butt on a job. I once had a ticket that paid 9 hours and I was 13 hours into this piece of crap car. I don’t know how anyone else would feel working four more hours for free. The flat rate game can be so brutal that new techs are sometimes paid hourly for a while.
I’ve seen a lot of people come into this field trying to kid themselves that it’s like working on a car at home. It’s nothing like that. There are days you find yourself cherry picking tickets to get the meaty jobs. There are some days where you hide for a while in the bathroom hoping that POS car that just rolled into the service drive does not get assigned to you. Some cars have a history of just being a major pain in the butt to work on. A few years ago I read a BLS article that the average tenure of a mechanic is now down to seven years. I’m not surprised that it’s that low. I would even go out on a limb and say that alcoholism in this line of work might be pretty high.
My 1st story
I was still in high school and working part time in a gas station with a few of my buddies back when they still had full service gas pumps. The building sat in front of a little strip shopping center. This particular station wasn't all that busy so we'd have to find ways to keep ourselves amused at night. One night we pulled the service vehicle, a '66 Dodge station wagon with a slant 6 inside and raised it up on the lift to where the tires were just barely touching the floor. One of us got in it, started it and put it in drive and started doing a burnout. Not bad but could be better. Then one of us got the idea to put a little 10w40 under the tires to see what would happen. That did it. The world's biggest and best indoor burnout.
The entire building filled up with smoke and we were laughing so hard I guess we didn't hear the car pull up to the pump for gas til he started blowing his horn. One of us waited on the customer and when he left we did it again. Except this time it wasn't a car at the pumps. It was a siren on the fire truck coming to put out the fire. Someone from the shopping center called the fire department. All they could see was the back of the building and smoke coming from somewhere and assumed the building was on fire.
It took a lot of explaining to the fire fighters but after a while they couldn't resist and wanted to see just how we could make so much smoke.
Not a problem. Climbed back in that old Dodge wagon an showed them what we did. They weren't all that impressed and made us stop.
I co-managed a shop for about 2 1/2 years after I graduated from college because good jobs were hard to come by back then. It was generally all maintenance with some light repairs. The stories are too long to list here, but I do remember making the biggest smoke cloud we could with some of our chemicals. (no fire dept though) I've been in engineering & construction mgmt for the past 6 years and a small part of me wishes I was still working there. I can still smell it. Unfortunately playing games doesn't pay the bills anymore. Oh well, maybe post-retirement I can play around again.
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Not that there is anything wrong with that.
