Sunday, April 28, 2013

NOBODY GETS JUSTICE.


PEOPLE ONLY GET GOOD LUCK OR BAD LUCK.

Orson Welles


Good Sunday Morning Body Shop Fans!  Bon Jour Mon Amis!  Lets reflect upon the people of the shop life, the customers, applicants and employees.  The last two weeks, after several weeks of not being able to light fires under certain employees, I decided the old motto of, "change your people, or change your people." was in order. 

I have learned the art of pissing someone off and having them quit, which is much better than going through the HR motions of warnings and finally firing them and then arguing with Unemployment, the State Department of Morons who love to spend your money.  Did you know if you come to work drunk and get fired, the state will pay you to stay home and drink more.  The scenarios are endless.  I had a young man get pinched and not show up for work for a week.  His fiancee called and said he was in jail and she was not paying the bail, so it was unknown when he is coming back.  I replaced him and when he finally called, his job was gone.  He was way past the legal "job abandonment" laws .  Yet he was paid unemployment!  Now I am a little smarter...I piss them off and they leave.  Usually, it takes very little to anger (spoiled and lazy Neanderthals) employees of a certain mentality.  Just asking them to pick up something usually does the trick, or ask them to hang up their cell phone and look at what they are doing. 

Thus, three employees are gone.  Now am trying to find replacements who want to work.  I interviewed a young man, who came to me, and we talked for quite a while.  We agreed he was experienced, wanted the job and was to call Friday and tell me how much notice he had to give at his present job.  He did not call, so I called him Saturday.  He answered the phone and hung up on me!  It seems they ignore teaching any kind of professionalism in school anymore, along with ethics.  If high school is the only schooling some people get anymore, it seems they need to teach young people how to behave in employment positions.  I am only obligated to employee them and pay them.  It is not up to me to teach them to get up in the morning and at least fake coming to work.

So, the customers.  Had an adult man leave his car for a repair to a door which was hit and needed replaced.  The work and price was agreed upon.  There was a small dent on the rear of the SUV that the customer did not want to pay for or fix.  Upon his picking it up, the first words out of his mouth was, "You were not able to fix that dent??"  Does this sound as offensive to you as it always does to me????  I had my Hot water heater replaced a month ago, I did not ask the plumber when he was done why he did not replace my furnace too!!!!!    

A father/son duo came in a while back with an old mustang they were flipping.  It was a mess, but they were all over cheap.  Did not want to pay for ANYTHING except paint.  Were told and told of the issues that may not look good.  Cried poor, did not care, just wanted it to look better.  It ended up looking better than it had a right to.  They came in screaming about how unhappy they were and pointed out areas of body work repair that we did not do.  I reminding them that they did not want it.  I ended the argument. He said, why didn't you just fix that part on the bumper, it would have taken 10 minutes.  I said, funny thing about employees, they won't work for free.  It would take two hours, and obviously you do not know anything about body work.  He said, well, if you had called I would have paid for it.  I said, Son, you came in all about budget, budget, budget (meaning cheap) and if you wanted a steak dinner, you should not have ordered a hamburger.  They paid and left with smiles on their faces.  Sometimes, I believe it is all a well planned act to try to get money back.  Woe to the business man who falls for it. 

We have not been making the magic number lately.  The number which means we can pay all the bills each week.  It is so tough on me, I get tied up in knots.  I just keep watching my 401K go into payroll.  The reason is the dead weight we were carrying.  Got rid of dead weight now need to find live weight.  It never ends, it is day to day, life or death and I am getting very weary.  There are more changes in the wind. 

I watched Chef Ramsey and saw the difference it made when the Chef was fired and a good one hired.  Say Goodnight Gracie, Frazier has left the building.



1 comment:

  1. Thanks for this post. Its a shame that people act like this. I remember working for an auto body shop in Boston a couple of years back and experiencing the same things. Best of luck!

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