The True Value of Your Technicians

Welcome, everybody, to Service Drive Revolution. I'm Chris Collins and this is Mia. The bright red hair and the incredible personality and not Christian Lafferty, who we miss dearly.

You miss him?

I do. I miss him. I don't like it when he's on the road.

Only one of us.

I like having him in the office.

I miss you too, Christian. Don't worry.

But he's out working hard in a drive somewhere, and we're here in the lap of luxury having fun. But the topic today, Mia, is really fun. Okay, we first of all, are going to talk about technicians and the idea of how do you recruit and retain them. And we have a fascinating guest, Casey Morris, who we fell upon because she had a post on LinkedIn about getting terminated.

Right.

And then our conversation goes into, you know, females in the auto industry.

Favorite topic?

Yeah.

Few.

Few other things that are fascinating and interesting.

And it's just a great conversation. You're going to love it. You're going to learn a lot. And, you know, in an industry where we're losing more technicians that are coming in, I want everybody to go into this with an open mind and a point of view of how do we get better at retaining technicians and creating an environment that they want to stay and thrive, and how do we recruit more techs in. And females would be an option, encouraging females to come into the industry also. So go into it with that. Lots of things for you to think about and learn. So that and much more. Coming up on Service Drive Revolution.

Casey, how are you today?

I am great. I'm so happy to be here.

You. You're so sweet to come on with us. So you worked today, right?

I did. I worked hard.

How many hours did you flag today?

I flagged about 12 hours.

Oh, you're. You're a rock star. That's awesome. So we. We saw a post that you did. I believe it was on Facebook.

And.

We'Ll. We'll put this up in. In this so everybody can see, but tell us kind of the. The story. So what happened was you were a technician at a BMW store, right?

Right.

And then you posted something on social media and then you were let go.

Yes.

Tell me the story.

The story.

Well, I'd been at this particular BMW dealership for about a year and a half. Never had any problems there. I was always, you know, a good employee. They need somebody to work on Saturdays. I'd volunteer. Always came in with a smile on my face. Always willing to go above and beyond my job title, you know, to get things done. I'M a team player. So I've been working on this Mini because our dealership was a BMW Mini dealership. I had been working on it for about a week. Did some maintenance to it did, I think I did some, I did a windshield, I did an alignment and I think, don't remember. It's been a while. I think I did a strut and the customer left, came the, the car came back about a week later with a complaint of pulling. So we had put it back up on the alignment rack to make sure that the alignment was straight. And it was like, I mean, you couldn't get any more spot on than what it was. So we started doing some investigating. We pulled the wheels off the front of the vehicle, and we immediately noticed that three of the lug nut holes had been cross threaded. Basically, somebody took a lug nut and hammered it in. Now, I'm not saying that I've never done this before. Technicians, you know, getting the bind and, you know, there might be one look that they got hammered in, but to me, when we were going over it, I was like, this is not something I would do. My shop foreman, he was talking to me about it and I just swallowed my pride and fixed it because we got to get the car back out of here. And I kept thinking about it over and over in my head. I was like, this isn't something I did. But you can't prove it. You know, I was the last person on the history to touch the car. So how long did it been? It had been a week. A week, Okay, A week between the car leaving and coming back. So I, I, I fixed the, the holes, I rethreaded them and cleaned them out. Got it. Perfect. I was going to put the wheel lock key back in the glove compartment when a receipt for discount tire fell out. The date and time on that Receipt was literally 10 minutes after they picked up their vehicle from our shop the very first time. And it was for the front right tire. It had gotten replaced, which was exactly the wheel that was having the issues. So, you know, I don't know. I know in my world of technicians, you can never prove to a shop foreman that you're. And this was like, you know, I found the, you know, the holy of smoking gun. Yeah, I found the smoking gun. So I took the receipt to my foreman, who immediately, you know, he was like, well, this customer's dumb, you know, excuse me. And he was like, oh. So they took it somewhere else. And he was totally on my side. Like, he even came back about an hour later and apologized to me for, you know, kind of sticking me with the problem. And I was like, well, at that point, you know, I had been in a wreck the week before I got T boned in my car. And I was like, maybe my mind wasn't there. Maybe, you know, maybe I did this, but I just swallowed my pride and fixed it anyway because there's not much I could do about it. So after he apologized, let me, let me back up a little bit. After I found the receipt, I made a post on Facebook. I said, there's very often times when a technician can prove that they're right. And.

That'S kind of basically what I said. I was like, haha, Mr. Foreman, you know, it wasn't anything mean. It was just me telling a story to my friends on Facebook. Basically what happened. And hey, I got, you know, I proved myself right. I'm getting paid now for the job. And I got an apology from my shop foreman. You know, I didn't belittle anybody. I didn't call anybody names. I definitely didn't tag any names. I left my dealership out. I left any name that was involved with the situation out. It was me relaying a story to my friends on Facebook. That was it. So I made my second job later on that day. I worked for. I also work for a vinyl wrap company. I go in and tear down the cars so they can wrap the vehicles and then I put them back together. So I'm sitting there at my second job when I get a call from my shop foreman saying, I can't believe you posted that. You think that was appropriate? You need to take it down right away. And of course immediately I took it down and I was like, this doesn't sound good at all. I was like. I remember telling one of my friends, I was like, I think I lost my job. Oh no. Yeah, I just got that, that, that tone that was in that phone call. It wasn't very nice. So you know, I went in the next morning, I went up to my foreman. I was like, you ready to talk? And he was like, no, we're going to wait till the general manager gets here. I was like, okay, so then did.

You get a job and start working?

I worked all the way up till noon that day. I was in the middle of a job when they pulled me off and took me into the GM's office and sat me down. And she just slid the letter of termination over to me and said, we are letting you go. You've been terminated. This isn't up for Discussion and I had kind of already prepped for the worst. I didn't think that that was going to happen. I thought more or less I would get written up, you know, maybe a slap on the hand because I really didn't feel like the post was negative. It was just me speaking to my friends.

So this, the, the funny part about this, when I get overwhelmed or frustrated or something like this happens, I usually immediately just tear up because that's, that's just who I am. I'm just. I don't hold my tears back. But I did not cry. I just got up and left and didn't even fight it. I was like, if somebody wants to go on my Facebook page and go through it and pick something out and go through the, I guess, process of firing me, they want me gone that bad. I don't want to stay where I'm not wanted. So I literally. I remember leaving. They walked me out. I actually went with my foreman and told them everything that I had done on this vehicle that they stopped me in the middle of working on. I had about five other repair orders that I told them exactly what I had worked on and what I'd done. I was. Didn't have any problem with them, you know, I'm leaving, that's fine, whatever. I left. I remember going to my parents house to tell them, hey, you know, I lost my job kind of sucks. And then I went home and I sat down for about 20 minutes before it could really just sink in. I was like, you know, I have all these Ford certifications and I haven't used any of them. So I called my buddy who I knew worked at Ford. I was like, you guys hiring? He was like, yeah, yeah, come on down. And I told him. I was like, you know, I'm certified. I went through Ford fact. I just never really used it outside of Quicklane because that's what I was working on when I was going through school. He was like, oh, you're certified. He's like, the manager said, come down here right now. I literally had the job on the phone. I walked in, sat down, talked to the GM and the service director for about 15 minutes. I was hired on the spot with. I think that was a $5 raise at that time. And I really, like, I was pushing to work and specialize either in engines or transmissions. I really wanted to work with transmissions, which is what they told me I would do. So I started working at this new dealership and it was almost. It's probably the worst dealership I've ever worked at in my life. It was completely unorganized.

Unproductive. We had service advisors that didn't know anything about cars at all. Like, they didn't know any. They came from the detail shop, if that helps anything. And.

It was just. It was the worst experience of my life. So I made one more phone call, and I called the service manager, where I'm at now, where I used to take my car, because I have a Mustang, so it was under warranty, and I would always take it to this dealership. And I told him. I was like, I'm at this dealership. I feel like I'm in hell. Get me out of here. He was like, come on over. So I went and spoke with this service director, and I told him what I wanted to do. And I wanted to kind of be clear on this part, because this is what really made me want to leave that first Ford dealership. I was. All our Ford dealerships are about three months behind in transmission work. Their transmission guys are burnt out. The one that I was actually at, he was tired. He just didn't want to do any transmissions at all. And I'm sitting here like, I'm certified in transmissions. I want to do it. But they didn't want to train me. And I remember speaking to the owner, and I was like, you know, I really want to do transmissions. You know, put me in over here. And he told me he did not want to pay for the training, which to me is the biggest mistake you could tell a tech at a dealership is like, you're unwilling to put money up front now to train a tech so you can make double the money down the road with two techs working on transmissions, I mean, you're literally double.

It's like 100 times the money.

I couldn't believe he said that, because they had gotten so far behind at that dealership that if you did not buy your vehicle from that dealership, they weren't even going to see you. So it was right. It was just when he said that to me, I was like, I have got to get out of here. Because they're unwilling to, you know, make room to make more money.

So I made that call to the dealership I'm at now and walked right in. And he was like, we want transmission people. We need transmission people. We will put you on, and we will make sure, you know, transmissions.