Got a bad apple in your Repair Shop? Remove it!

[Joe Marconi]

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[Jay Huh]

Very very true. Had to get rid of my best tech at the time because he was bringing everyone else down. I was afraid to do it but ended up never regretting up. Shop production went up after!

[UsedTireShop]

I am in this predicament right now. This tech is loyal, honest and willing to do what he is told to. I love him as a friend and truly care about his well being but he has to go. 

The issues I have with him is:
Massive procrastinator
Weak production. Under 50%
Messy
Every vehicle aggravates him and is a piece of crap. He will yell and swear when working on cars while stating that he needs to find another career.

So why is he still there? I have put off letting him go because his 18 year old daughter was killed in a car crash 2 weeks before Christmas.

Now that I think about it he has always had the issues I mentioned above and shame on me for being a chicken. He should have been gone years ago.

The lesson to be learned here is. As soon as you know someone is NOT right for your shop then let them go. Nothing is gained by hanging onto the wrong people. Do not let your emotions block the proper decisions for the company.

 

[Joe Marconi]

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[Jay Huh]

2 hours ago, UsedTireShop said:

I am in this predicament right now. This tech is loyal, honest and willing to do what he is told to. I love him as a friend and truly care about his well being but he has to go. 

The issues I have with him is:
Massive procrastinator
Weak production. Under 50%
Messy
Every vehicle aggravates him and is a piece of crap. He will yell and swear when working on cars while stating that he needs to find another career.

So why is he still there? I have put off letting him go because his 18 year old daughter was killed in a car crash 2 weeks before Christmas.

Now that I think about it he has always had the issues I mentioned above and shame on me for being a chicken. He should have been gone years ago.

The lesson to be learned here is. As soon as you know someone is NOT right for your shop then let them go. Nothing is gained by hanging onto the wrong people. Do not let your emotions block the proper decisions for the company.

 

After reading your post I thought: "Just let him go!" But I am in the same predicament! It's always easier said then done.

I have a "tech" that is not really good. Probably a C tech-GS level. Have had several comebacks- one being loose caliper bracket bolt (actually missing when he came back) and no oil cap after oil change.  Hanging onto him because he was diagnosed with lung cancer after his wife and 2 yr old son died in a car crash last year and he was the lone survivor.

[xrac]

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[Jay Huh]

2 hours ago, xrac said:

Is his name Joe?  I have a guy who sounds a lot like that without the deaths. His name is Joe. 

He's a Matt lol

[AndersonAuto]

I let a tech go that was a consistent 65 hour a week producer. That certainly hurt.

But.... 

He threw temper tantrums. The other techs hated working with him. His diagnostics sucked. He always had an excuse for why his diag was wrong, or why it wasn't his fault.

The shop is better without him.

[HarrytheCarGeek]

2 hours ago, AndersonAuto said:

I let a tech go that was a consistent 65 hour a week producer. That certainly hurt.

But.... 

He threw temper tantrums. The other techs hated working with him. His diagnostics sucked. He always had an excuse for why his diag was wrong, or why it wasn't his fault.

The shop is better without him.

Good for you.

I had a yes man that didn't seem the part, he would mirror my attitude and tell me what I wanted to hear, I thought that he was a damn good employee. Until one day, one of my slackers but extremely loyal guys said to my face, "Boss, he is nothing at all like he shows you he is", needless to say I was baffled. Numbers weren't the best at his shop but they would barely meet my minimum goals. After installing a new security system and auditing the tapes, I found out that he knew what were my acceptable numbers, he was stealing from me by using a parallel copy of the POS program. After finding several recordings of him abusing the techs and bragging about how he knew better how to run the shops I called him in, I made him pay me back what I could find he stole from me and got rid of him.

Very painful experience.

[Jay Huh]

1 minute ago, HarrytheCarGeek said:

Good for you.

I had a yes man that didn't seem the part, he would mirror my attitude and tell me what I wanted to hear, I thought that he was a damn good employee. Until one day, one of my slackers but extremely loyal guys said to my face, "Boss, he is nothing at all like he shows you he is", needless to say I was baffled. Numbers weren't the best at his shop but they would barely meet my minimum goals. After installing a new security system and auditing the tapes, I found out that he knew what were my acceptable numbers, he was stealing from me by using a parallel copy of the POS program. After finding several recordings of him abusing the techs and bragging about how he knew better how to run the shops I called him in, I made him pay me back what I could find he stole from me and got rid of him.

Very painful experience.

Geez! Sorry to hear that. That's got to be a stab in the back feeling. I have 1 of my 8 cameras pointed straight at the cash register/computer monitor. Havent checked the feed in a while.... hoping I won't have too.

[AndersonAuto]

I'm fortunate enough to have a large enough operation to have checks and balances that most shops don't have. My bookkeeper is on top of the numbers constantly and cracks the whip if anything is off. If an advisor does anything that doesn't make sense she sees it in the morning and calls them on it. Then her and I audit books once a month. My biggest exposure is the bookkeeper, so going over the books monthly limits my exposure as much as possible.

In an accounting class I took many years ago the instructor talked a bit about best practices. The one thing that stuck was that if someone wants to steal $100, three people should need to lose their job for it. It's hard to find three people who are willing to give up their job for $33 a piece. I'm not sure as independent repair shops we'll ever get to that point, but always keep it in mind whenever possible.

[xrac]

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[AndersonAuto]

Thanks!

 

[totalautocare]

I'm fortunate enough to have a large enough operation to have checks and balances that most shops don't have. My bookkeeper is on top of the numbers constantly and cracks the whip if anything is off. If an advisor does anything that doesn't make sense she sees it in the morning and calls them on it. Then her and I audit books once a month. My biggest exposure is the bookkeeper, so going over the books monthly limits my exposure as much as possible.

In an accounting class I took many years ago the instructor talked a bit about best practices. The one thing that stuck was that if someone wants to steal $100, three people should need to lose their job for it. It's hard to find three people who are willing to give up their job for $33 a piece. I'm not sure as independent repair shops we'll ever get to that point, but always keep it in mind whenever possible.

I'm falling to understand this. Could you elaborate please?

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[xrac]

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[AndersonAuto]

13 minutes ago, totalautocare said:

 

I'm falling to understand this. Could you elaborate please?

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Ideally, if someone needed to order a part there would be three people involved. One person needs the part. The second person orders the part. The third person pays for the part.

The person paying for the part doesn't pay for the part until they can see that the person who needed the part got the part, and checks the paperwork from the second person to make sure there was a legitimate reason to have the part.

I don't know anyone who has reached this level of separation, but at my shop we're close, every single part that gets ordered must be input into the shop management system. Even shop supplies that the advisors order from a part store. That data is imported to QB every day by the bookkeeper. If the bookkeeper gets a part bill that doesn't have a corresponding entry into the management system, she raises hell. Same is true with returns. RO Writer has a great built in return system. Any part that needs to be returned gets returned through ROW. A part return slip is printed and ROW keeps track of what parts have been returned. We put the return slip in a bin for each vendor, and require that the drivers check their bin and return any parts immediately. The driver signs our return slip, in addition to filling out the one he does for the parts store. When we get the credit slip, the advisors pull out the stack of return slips and match them to the credits, the mark them as being credited in ROW. The bookkeeper of course sees all of this when she imports the data, and everything better match or there's hell to pay. She really hates it when she has to fix errors in her books.

The bookkeeper has the greatest opportunity to steal from me. She and I go through all the books monthly, and of course I just have a glance at the bank account every few days. Still, she could clean me out and be gone to Mexico before I knew what happened. Good thing I trust her.