The Hardest Job at the Dealership: A List
This is a conversational YouTube video (hosts: Chris Collins, Mia, Christian) where Mia ranks dealership jobs from easiest (10) to hardest (1) and the hosts debate the list. Mia's ranking (easiest → hardest): 10) Owner; 9) General Manager; 8) Sales Manager & Finance; 7) Parts (counter/back/manager); 5) Service Manager; 4) Porters & Shuttle Drivers; 3) Lube Techs; 2) Technicians; 1) Service Advisors. The discussion centers on customer-facing stress being a major difficulty driver, differences in pay/commission structures (salespeople), and owner-level financial/stress responsibilities. Multiple personal anecdotes illustrate why roles were placed where they were.
Chapters
Mia, you're ranking dealership jobs hardest to easiest or easiest to hardest?
Easiest to hardest?
Easiest to hardest. So which jobs in a dealership? This transcends all departments.
Yes.
So detail parts. Is there a body shop in this dealership?
No.
No. Body shop. F. And I kind of.
I'm not including every single, like, position. I'm just doing, like, the top ten, I think so. The top ten, and then down to.
One from easiest to hardest.
Yes.
Okay. What's number ten?
Number ten is the owner.
So does that mean that's the easiest or the hardest?
Number 10 is the easiest. And so number 10 would be the owner.
Interesting.
Okay, number nine.
Number nine is the general manager.
Do you see where I'm going with this? I think you know where I'm going with this. He's like, oh, great. Here we go. Number eight, I have the sales manager.
It's two stages higher than the owner.
Wait, is the owner's idiot kid on there?
No.
Well, clearly, this is a owner's idiot kid.
Is number 14. Actually owner's gardener comes. No, I'm kidding. Yeah. Number eight is sales managers and finance.
Okay, seven.
I have parts.
What part of parts?
The parts people.
Anyone in parts is number seven, including the manager.
It's like when people say all. All guys with beards look the same.
All parts people. It doesn't matter.
Well, they do all answer the phone the same way.
They do Parts hold. It's so true. Oh, man.
Parts hold.
Yep.
So you. You think that the parts manager is different than the guy in the back?
The poor guy schlepping course, or the.
Counter guy or the whole system?
They're all the same.
They're all the same. In your eyes. They're all created equal.
They're all created equal.
Great.
Keep in mind this comes from personal experience, so got to keep that in mind. Okay, Number.
Evaluate your list. This thing's solid. Run with it.
Yeah, you know what? You're right. I'm right. You're wrong. All of you are wrong.
It's a damn fine list.
Number five is the service manager.
Okay, wow. So the fifth easiest job.
Fifth hardest.
Hardest service manager.
Okay.
Number four, I have porters and shuttle drivers.
Just scoring at home. So being a porter or a shuttle driver is harder than being service manager. Continue on.
I knew this was gonna say. Oh, I knew this was gonna tell you.
Are you trying to push people's buttons?
Yeah.
That's the purpose here. I mean, it's honest Mia's little evil side.
Yeah. I am a Gemini.
And that means you're on the dual side.
The Gemini symbol is a twin. You have dual personalities.
Does that mean I have another personality?
Do you really feel like you have a dual personality?
When I say dual personality, I don't mean that I am like two different people. It just means that I'm adaptable and I can be very nice or I can be not nice.
There's this. Oh, man, I wish I knew the name of it. But there's this crazy documentary on. I think it's on Showtime. And this lady.
Studied serial killers for a long time, like, her life, I guess. And she shows how most of them have for. As a protection mechanism. She says this thing that. That is crazy. And I think I told you this the other day, that the.
Graphic nature of their crimes and murder has a direct correlation with their abuse as kids. And so she shows this one guy that murdered this couple and literally, like, took their body parts, was drawing on the wall or whatever, like, just super graphic and crazy. And you think in your head, like, how could this human ever do this? And then they show the guy, and he.
Just kind of this unassuming guy. His back literally looks like a motocross track. And I think at 3 or 4, I might be getting that part wrong. But either way, his mom would throw boiling water on his back and whip him.
Oh, my gosh.
Like, over and over again. Like, the guy and he had two personalities. And she would show her interviews, how they.
Would come in and out, and she could talk to the other one and summons.
Yeah.
And those personalities are for a protection mechanism where the. The one is kind of protecting the real person. And then she shows at the end how Ted Bundy had it, but nobody else but her caught it in one time in court, Ted Bundy flipped into the other one, and nobody caught it, but she caught that because Bundy was abused by his grandfather or something in graphic ways. So that's what I thought of when he said split personalities. But that isn't what you mean.
I said dual personality. Dual personality. Split personality is different. Dual personality just means that I. I have an adaptable or adaptive personality.
So you can adapt to different situations.
Yes.
And is. Is that, like, because you're a very, like, social.
Inviting, you know, person? Is that a part of that? Yeah, like, more extrovert.
Yeah, I'm definitely.
Do you consider yourself an extrovert? Yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah, but.
Okay, well, go ahead with your dual personality.
I can flip that and scare people, too. So there you have it. So, yeah, number four was porters and shuttle drivers.
One More thing I want to say about Porter. Porters and shuttle drivers are the best source of information in the whole dealership. They know who doesn't call their customers back. They know who's sleeping with who. They know who's stealing. They know stuff that nobody else knows.
They are the word on the street.
They know like the shuttle driver.
Oh. Especially because the customers are probably venting to the shuttle driver. So the shuttle driver.
Yeah, they're like, knows like, how long have you worked there, Mia? And you're like, oh, I've been here a couple years. Is it normal for the service advisor to ask me to pay cash up front to get.
And then to not mention anything?
Yeah, it's just weird. Shouldn't there have been paperwork?
Right. Is it weird to not get a receipt when I give cash or something?
We underestimate.
They only take cash.
You have to just. You have to put it in my pocket. I don't want to touch it.
Yeah, yeah.
All right. Number three, lube text.
So now, did you catch what she's doing? So she is looking at us to see what kind of response we're going to give her when she says the ridiculous things. I mean, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say.
So this list is meant to provoke.
It is, but it's honest too. Like, I genuinely do feel this way.
So this is really how you would classify everything?
So we're saying that a lube tech.
And by lube tech, we're assuming we're not talking about a 50 year old lube tech. We're talking about an early 20 year old kid on the lube rack. Has a harder job. It's harder. It's more pressure, more stress than a dealer or a general manager.
I will get to why. Because there is a common denominator between all of these, which you're probably already kind of picking up that. But I will get to it and you'll probably still disagree. But that's okay. That's okay.
You know, we're talking a lot about psychology and the mental part of this and everything like that. I've actually got a joke out there for all my mind readers.
You can't just tell that you're gonna.
Yes, I can. I'm doing it right now.
That's really creepy.
For those listening, he's just staring into the camera. You know, a lot of people just listen to the show, Christian.
Yeah, but they know the silence. The mind readers hear it. It's not silent to them. Continue on.
Mia, can we recap? Dealer, general Manager.
Sales managers in finance, parts salespeople, service manager, porters and shuttle drivers. Number three is lube techs. Number two. This is where it's getting real spicy. This is where it's really going to rile people up.
You're going to say shop foreman.
No, he's not on the list. Well, I guess he could kind of be looped into number two. Number two is technicians.
Okay.
And could we guess what number one might be?
It's going to, it's. Yeah, it's going to be service environment.
Number one is service advisors.
See the man with a hammer. The world is a nail.
Sure. Exactly. So the reason that my list is the way that it is is because in my mind, the less you have to deal with customers, the easier your job is. And I know that sounds super pessimistic and like negative towards the customer, but I feel like a lot of people underestimate how difficult that can be.
I think that is the hardest part of any job is customer service.
Man, for the longest time I have thought that the hardest job in a dealership is a salesperson.
Why?
Because they start off with, you know, they're 100% commission. They, they don't have built in traffic, they have to go, you know, a good salesperson has to go out and create business. They're always working seven days a week. They're there until 11 depending on the store. They don't have weekends. I mean it's not the kind of job where you raise a family in a normal way. Like in service, we have some, you know, some degree of normalcy. It's rare that service advisors work six days a week, every week. But salespeople, literally, unless the state mandates that they're closed on Sunday, they, they, they could be working seven days a week, constantly in commission.
I thought, I thought being an advisor was harder than being a salesperson. But there I don't think either job's easy.
And that's the thing. I'm not saying any of it's easy, it's just what's easier. But back to the whole sales person mindset. It just goes back to experience. Because every dealership I've worked at, advisors always work six days a week from open to close. So 12 hour days, six days a week, which is really difficult. So working, and it was even longer than 12 hours. I was used to 6:30 to 7:00 clock at night, 6:30am to 7:00 clock at night or later if I had to close the shop.
Yeah. But for the most part that's not. That's not the norm.
And man, I really just had a really negative experience these past 10 years.
Most sales people are just getting started when people are getting off work. And so it's not uncommon for a salesperson to be there until 11.
Yep. Especially if you got a deal. So the good thing about being a salesperson is that. So at the place that I worked, we closed at 9. I was super happy to take the person that came in at 8:55 because they were leaving with a car in most cases. But by golly, you could be there from 9am to 8:55 and do nothing that was productive. And if you don't put in that last three hours after closing, like you walked home with nothing, I think that's difficult. Yeah. Pay wise, I feel like salesperson's the hardest job because like it is. Absolutely. What have you done for me lately as a service advisor? There's a little more stability to the pay thing.
I agree.
But man, I saw so many Salespeople do that zero to hero thing where they would have like a 15 or 18 car month and then they would sell three the next month. And like they're trying to figure out how they're gonna pay their mortgage. So that part of it's pretty stressful. I would personally put the salespeople higher on the list than they are. But I still do think I'm with you on the advisor thing. It was pretty hard.
I didn't really take pay into consideration. And I know it seems like that because I think the farther down the list, the less they get paid. Well, not really. Techs and service advisors, you know, make more than some of the other people.
More than Porters when it comes to these lists aren't. It's not really fair because it's a different kind of stress. Like I can tell you when I.
Well, the first dealership that I owned, that was mine.
You know, in the beginning things were really, really rough and I literally had to put payroll on my Amex. And when you have 100 employees and you don't have the cash to make payroll, that's a stress and a feeling. Especially when you care about the people that work for you. Yeah, that I don't think any advisor or salesperson could ever endear endure that sort of stress. Like imagine you need 150 grand to make payroll and you only have 50.
Like, it's a. It's a different kind of stress. So I think it's all kind of relative, right?
It is.
These lists are fun, but at the end of the day.
It is relative. But it also once again depends on your experience because my experience of owners has been the complete opposite, where they're filthy loaded and they don't care about the dealership at all and they never even show their face. Sometimes you don't even know what they look like because they never even check in. You know what I mean? So it all just depends on what you've experienced.
That's exactly the kind of gig up want. I want to own a bunch of dealerships and nobody knows what I look like.
But you should also know what's going on with your dealership.
And if you don't, just cameras everywhere.
Not like visually.
I love, I've, I love sitting with dealers when they on their laptop. You're like, what are you doing you on Facebook like looking at dirty pictures and they're like no, 75 different cameras.
They're controlling drones.
Like, oh, what the wor the worst.
I don't know. I, I okay, just my opinion.
Thank you for doing the list. I thought that was very fun.
See how many people I upset with that.
We learned some things about you.
Thanks.
Thanks so much for watching this clip of Service Driver Revolution. We're uploading new stuff every day, so make sure you subscribe and click the bell icon so you don't miss out. If you have a question you'd like us to answer on the show, call 8333 Ask SDR and we'll answer your question on the show. That's 8333 Ask SDR. For special deals on our books and training, head over to offers.chriscollinsinc.com now that's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins and I'll see you in the next video.
