In reply to RacetruckRon :
It sounds a lot like our system. I'm salaried so I can work as many hours as needed for the same rate, but swipe in five minutes late and they take comp time. If my schedule gets changed and it doesn't get entered in the time keeping system I get nothing for the day I was there and lose a comp day for the day I wasn't. Overnights and weekends can get more confounding as our schedules start Sundays and the payroll starts Saturday.
Where I now work, the employer is trying a new thing. We are salary, no bonuses or anything. No time clocks, no workflow micromanagement. I get the same check every week.
He doesn't like the way flat rate pay encourages people to take shortcuts and he doesn't like the micromanagement of time clocks. It's entirely on the honor system and the focus is on quality over quantity.
Because I am honorable, I try to ensure that I am there and working at least as many hours as I am expected to be there. Because he's a low stress cool guy, he tells me I work too hard. He's also very happy with how the business is performing since I started and I'm happy with the low stress to perform, which actually makes getting work done easier.
Duke said:In reply to gixxeropa :
Yesterday was a day for shiny happy drivers. I had a 25-minute trip into the local small city and had probably 10 WTF moments. And it was the middle of the day, so traffic wasn't even heavy.
Quoted for truth. I'm not sure what's in the air / water the past few days but I've seen more stupid E36 M3 on the road this week than in the past 3 months combined.
Pete. (l33t FS) said:...He doesn't like the way flat rate pay encourages people to take shortcuts and he doesn't like the micromanagement of time clocks. It's entirely on the honor system and the focus is on quality over quantity...
Tell him that I love his approach.
The_Jed said:That's very kind of you and I greatly appreciate it but, it wouldn't feel right.
Man, it also doesn't feel right watching someone else struggle when we have the power to help.
The following minor rant can be applied to your situation or can be a minor rant on its own:
All my life, I've been the guy who helps somebody else and then doesn't ask for help when I really could use it. I have always been asked and expected to chip in, but never learned to ask for or accept help. As a result, my life is now in suspended animation. I live in a state of sustainable disarray. My spirit animal is the pack mule. People come to me because I don't say 'no'. But I never go to them for help. I could really use a good slap to get my off the couch and about forty man-hours of assistance, but I don't have it, and am either too proud or too timid to ask for help from anyone in a position to give it.
Don't be like me. This way of living sucks. It is a lonesome, hopeless suckage of my own making, and it is entirely avoidable.
If people eagerly volunteer to make your life a little easier, take it. If you have the opportunity, you can pay it forward later - and if you don't, then you really needed that help after all.
eastpark said:Pete. (l33t FS) said:...He doesn't like the way flat rate pay encourages people to take shortcuts and he doesn't like the micromanagement of time clocks. It's entirely on the honor system and the focus is on quality over quantity...
Tell him that I love his approach.
I see it this way. For the right employee for his business, it's an excellent form of reverse psychology 
The drive to perform and keep yourself useful and relevant comes from within, rather than agonizing over statistics.
My last employer was huge on metrics. He probably had to spend the whole week just looking at last week's numbers.
From my perspective, my work output is almost entirely dependent on what comes into the door and how willing/able they are to spend money with us. These are things entirely beyond my control, all I can do is ensure that their expectations are at least met if not exceeded... and those expectations are also managed by forces outside my control. He's very good at managing expectations, which ALSO helps greatly - no promising 5hr of work by the end of the day when he makes the sale three hours to closing, like some service advisors I've had (whose pay was also based on performance metrics, giving an incentive to overpromise to make a sale...)
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
The dealerships around our area are really pushing things on those they perceive as mechanically naive right now. My daughter gets her oil changes at the local Ford dealer because it's been convenient and pretty competitive price wise. She also drives a 1.0 Ecoboost (I'm aware), bought it there as a CPO and Dad encourages this just in case there's ever an issue down the road. I'm hoping that because the 6 speed manual like hers is wasn't part of the recall it's somehow different but time will tell.
She got an oil change a couple weeks ago and the service writer quoted 4 spark plugs / 1 hour labor at just under $300 bucks. Well first of all, I'm pretty sure it's only 3 and holy freaking shop rates ($199.95 / hour) plus $40 for miscellaneous shop and environmental charges... Oh and your rear shocks are "blown" that'll be another $600 bucks.... While she was a bit upset, she's not clueless and told them to stick to the oil change and she'd get back to them.
I ordered 3 genuine MotorCraft Iridium plugs ($15 bucks a pop retail at the FLAPS) and it took me under 20 minutes to change them while she watched and I explained the process. There's nothing wrong with the shocks either "shockingly". I'm probably being skeptical but maybe just maybe there's some correlation between the aggressive service writing and the lot full of very expensive trucks and SUVs sitting on their lot that no one is buying. I'm all for a business making a fair profit, I make my living doing just that but come on. If they had quoted a half hour and the total was $150 bucks they probably would have had a sale. Instead she paid for the plugs and brought Dad a package of really tasty steak tips to grill. I'll allow it.
In reply to 11GTCS :
They quote book time and that's that. Take that up with Ford
The labor rate at the indie where I used to work was $219 per hour. Most indie shops around here are $150-200. So from that perspective, that makes some sense.
As far as the shocks. Maybe they are weak, maybe not, but if her car is a Focus (100% of 1.0/6sp I have seen were Focuses, 100% of 1.0/auto were Fiestas, how weird is that?) the *mounts* fail long before the shocks do. Listen for knocking over bumps, look at them and see if they are hanging on by only one ear. Or the person inspecting was trying to get ahead of a failure before it happened and the service advisor misread it, or was trying to push a sale.
Or, because I tend to be overcharitable, the SA might have had her car mixed up with another one, which would explain the spark plug error. Generally service advisors go off of the VIN when building estimates and all that stuff is canned jobs, so it may have been the wrong car he was looking at.
I have heard of RX-8 owners getting pushed to get their timing belts replaced, or BMW dealers pushing for a preventive maintenance clutch replacement before they realized that the M3 had an automatic...
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
We all discussed that the SA had her car mixed up with someone else's so your thought may be spot on. She's at around 63 K, book says 100 K for the plugs but it's a '17 and not a difficult job so I removed that from the list of worries.
Thanks for the tip on the shock mounts, I'll take a drive and listen. I've driven it within the last month and didn't notice anything unusual, it always impresses me as being a decent little appliance. She loves it and really really loves the 6 speed stick so fingers crossed it continues to be the good car it's been so far.
Holy carp. If that was the cost when I was flat rate I'd be making $90/hr.
When I started my apprenticeship our shop rate was $18/hr, so in today's money a little under $70/hr. So while shop rate is over 10 times, mechanic's pay is only a little more than half that
*sigh*
The organizer of the fish fry sent out a group text talking about how a newspaper is coming tonight to take some video to share on their website and mentioned that he wanted us to all be in the limelight. I responded that while it is the universal dream, I'm in no Rush to be in the Moving Pictures. And none of them seem to get it. I'm going to respond with nothing but lyrics all night until someone figures it out.
In reply to wae :
You'll just have to put aside the alienation, and get on with the facination...
wearymicrobe said:Man I was stoned last night. Ativan and a sleeping pill did that.
At least it was coherent. I had a co-worker that used to bring his dog "Buddy" with him to work every day. My coworker was a bit of a workaholic. One night he took a prescription sleep medication and then decided to send out an email to our entire team. It was completely unintelligible. We all joked that "Buddy" had gotten hold of his laptop and sent the email.
dan0 said:In reply to Antihero :
I had a random older neighbor pull into my driveway a few months ago. Parked less than a foot away from one of my cars too. Got out and asked if I'd fix his car.
No sorry, I only work on my cars. I have no training, I just tinker. Still took a few repetitions before he said ok and left. I don't want the liability of something like that on me.
I agree with that, I very rarely work on anyone else's stuff except if it's incredibly dumb and easy.
Unfortunately most of my stuff is keeping the families fleet going, none of it fun and always under a tight deadline
dan0 said:In reply to Antihero :
No sorry, I only work on my cars. I have no training, I just tinker. I don't want the liability of something like that on me.
No job, no money relative stops over and I help tighten her battery and the loose cable.
Is this really the original air filter in a 10 year old Nissan? You have the original tires and they've never been rotated? Fronts are bald but the rears look good? (Until you get money)
Can you rotate them for me? No, cause it's 4pm and I'm not in the mood to deal with lug nuts that have never been removed since they left the factory a decade ago.
Hmm.... I guess that wasn't a slight shock rattle. It's fixed now though
The new ones are red, and that makes it stop fast right?
Peabody said:Holy carp. If that was the cost when I was flat rate I'd be making $90/hr.
When I started my apprenticeship our shop rate was $18/hr, so in today's money a little under $70/hr. So while shop rate is over 10 times, mechanic's pay is only a little more than half that
Based on the $70 in todays money, shop rate is up 2.5 to 3x. 10x would be $700.
Shop rate is over ten times what it was when I started, but the point was that mechanic wages has not increased at the same amount.
In reply to Peabody :
This is true.
On the flip side, I don't know how much those old racks and racks of Mitchell books used to cost, but service info may run you four figures per month depending on how many services you use. (Most shops use Alldata but there are advantages to also having Mitchell, and Identifix also costs money but is a great time saver in how it can vector you to known issues, I don't know how much a business account with iATN costs but I have a personal account that I pay out of pocket, etc)
Everyone likes digital inspections and billing and stuff. The billing software systems are leased, Autoserve and Auto Vitals and Bolt-on and TechMetric cost a lot of money, etc.
And then there are the scan tools that need $1500-2500 annual updates and occasionally they age out and can't be updated anymore so you have to buy new, and some vehicles like Chrysler require that you pay a subscription to access the car beyond the security module, no matter what scan tool you have. TPMS tools also require regular updates and if you don't have one of those then you can't do tires or tire rotations, which means sending your customers to someone else. Alignment racks, if you have them, require regular updates and service. And so on.
This is before you get to things that need a pay per vehicle fee like reflashes, or even just programming in a new transmission in a Ford, but I'm not counting those because those just get added as a separate item to a bill and don't generally get absorbed into general shop costs.
I was asked recently if I'd consider opening my own shop. NO THANKS. I'll be an employee and let someone else deal with all that!
The last time I was working flat rate, I was paid 40% of the labor rate. This was not at the place with a 219/hr rate though But they also kept to a 60% average profit margin on parts. Obviously this has to be flexible because you can't have that kind of margin on a $3000 transmission but you also don't want it on an air filter either.
There are a lot of reasons. I'm sure insurance hasn't gone down either. Those Chilton manuals were holy cow expensive in the day but I'm sure nothing compared to the prescription model that has you guys by the balls. Funny, your flat rate percentage and margins are just about exactly what they were when I started.
I did a quick search yesterday to see what local rates are, but didn't come up with anything. $200/hr seems awfully high to me, I would be really surprised if ours was that high.
I sat on the couch with my coffee to watch qualifying this morning. Right after I got myself settled, the dog decided he wanted attention and pawed at me with his big meaty paw. Except he pawed at my hand. That was holding the extremely full cup of fresh-from-the-pot coffee. And after he knocked all that scalding liquid into my crotch, he proceeded to lay on me so I couldn't get up.
Not a great part of the body to have burns, let me tell ya.
I Second, third, fourth, whatever the comments about E36 M3 driving. Went to pickup a wagon in MA, the drive there went smoothly. But holy hell the drive back was pretty terrible.
Trying to get the trailer returned and have people driving 20mph in 30-35 zones. Slow on the highway and cutting lanes.
Tried to stop at Harbor Freight and the parking lot was ridiculous, just ended up leaving.
Oh and berkeley U-Haul one last time. At least the price was correct but they changed locations on me again. Pickup was ok, but drop off was a cluster berkeley.
If I go by my promise of not buying more cars until an RS3 or SQ5 I won't have to worry. Well one exception might be trying to find a classic beetle body. But that could go on a utility trailer.
I'm tired of this E36 M3.
God I love concrete-itis. It's a term my dad coined for people that lose all reason when concrete is involved
A landscaper that I've known for years hands my number to a guy he works for year after year for a little patio. In concrete there are no "little" jobs, it's inaccessible by truck so it needs pumped, the grade is horrible so it needs 12 ton of fill added and it's on a muddy slick hillside so bringing down equipment is gonna be a bitch anyway although I guess my landscaper buddy is gonna get more work fixing that disaster.
But wait, no.....not really. Guy tells me he can't afford to have a landscaper come out and fix a few sprinkler lines this year, so my buddy that nicely tried to get me some work won't be getting any work from this guy.
Load limits are up so I can't pour concrete, or even probably bring a line pump on the roads anyway. So I tell the guy, even if he loves my figure I can't pour for at least a little while and that I'll get back to him in a few days.
Guess who is texting me a day later at 7:30 on Saturday? Yep, this guy.
Now why in the berkeley would I want to do a job that has an annoying customer that doesn't have any money? Sadly I'm very certain this is gonna be a " no one wants to work anymore" guy too so that fun.
Having a construction company would be so much easier without having to deal with people and having money airdropped to me.....
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