The Jaded Mechanic Podcast

David Kline [00:00:06]:
I did 236 hours in one week, six days. I did it because everything had fell together. And when my boss realized where we were going, he was just like, here's another one. Here's another one. Here's another one. Like, I'm either gonna have a heart attack and die or we're gonna end this out. And it was so many hours that our corporate had to do, like, an audit because they were like, what in the hel.

Jeff Compton [00:00:35]:
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to another exciting, albeit sweaty and hot episode of the Jaded Mechanic podcast. We're up in Canada. We're in the middle of a heat wave, and people like, oh, in Canada, frozen north, it's been 105 with humidity, you know, for the people. So the people that want to use the Celsius thing, because half my friends use one and have to use the other 40 Celsius. It's like 104 degrees Fahrenheit with humidity. So it's hot up here, and it's a very wet heat. You know, everybody's like, oh, it's not a dry heat. No, it's not a dry.

Jeff Compton [00:01:13]:
We live next to a very large body of water, so there is no lack of humidity all year long. The cold is very damp cold, and the heat is a very humid heat. So with that being said, I'm with a friend of mine, David Klein. David, how's the weather where you are, man?

David Kline [00:01:31]:
I don't think it could be any hotter. I think when I locked everything up and left work, it was 91 degrees standing in my toolbox in the shop. Yeah, so we've been. We've been right there in it in this heat wave with you guys. You know, you get in a car, it's 110, 115 on the dash, and it is just.

Jeff Compton [00:01:50]:
I know, I know. I. I got into a Buick Rendezvous yesterday, and it has the pleather Lionel vinyl, and the steering wheel hop like, I couldn't put my hands on it. It was that hot sitting out in the sun. I understand when Cody Gatti was talking about, like, you can't necessarily even put your laptop on a hood in Arizona most of the year because of the heat. I didn't really believe them until yesterday. So, David, whereabouts. When you say where it's hot, where are you from?

David Kline [00:02:20]:
Born and raised in Virginia. Just here my whole life. About 45 minutes from Virginia beach. Seems to be what everybody knows. Two and a half hours from D.C. cool. So lived here my whole life. And, you know, we're.

David Kline [00:02:34]:
We're not that far south, but man, the humidity just cranks.

Jeff Compton [00:02:38]:
Yeah.

David Kline [00:02:39]:
And. And we're in it. Yeah. So. But yeah, yeah, it's, it's been a, it's been an uncomfortable few days, that's for sure. I think we got one or two more days left and then it's gonna hopefully like they're.

Jeff Compton [00:02:53]:
We're coming up on our long weekend up here because we're gonna have Canada day on the 1st. Right. July 1st is our. Then you guys have, you know, the 4th for you. So we're coming up on a, it's going to be a four day weekend for me because the holiday falls next Tuesday and the shop owner said why don't we just take Monday off? And I'm like, hey, twist my arm. One more day to fit. Right.

David Kline [00:03:14]:
So yeah, we, we rotate Saturdays and. And we got the short straw. So we're closed Friday for the fourth and open Saturday.

Jeff Compton [00:03:21]:
Right.

David Kline [00:03:22]:
And it's my Saturday. So. Yeah.

Jeff Compton [00:03:24]:
Now when you, when you say, you're like, give me some idea about what. How's the setup where you work?

David Kline [00:03:32]:
Let's see. I work for a Honda dealership.

Jeff Compton [00:03:34]:
Okay.

David Kline [00:03:35]:
Currently there's maybe 12 techs, 15, 16 bays. You know, typical dealership set up one alignment rack, a whole bunch of lifts. The building's old. I think it was originally a Chrysler store. So it's been, it's been a bunch. Part of a, of a dealership group that encompasses a whole bunch of brands. You know, it's sort of the norm here. Yeah.

David Kline [00:04:07]:
It's a, it's a busy shop. I mean we, you know, we run for, for our size. Pretty much wide open all day. I mean a slow day is, is rare. Seems to be an increasing thing here lately. We've been real pogo up and down, but.

Jeff Compton [00:04:24]:
Right.

David Kline [00:04:24]:
You know, with all the, all the crazy stuff going on in the world. Graduations and back to school and you know.

Jeff Compton [00:04:30]:
Yeah.

David Kline [00:04:31]:
You know, or graduations and holidays and summer and you know how that goes. Yeah.

Jeff Compton [00:04:36]:
I always used to say, you know, and I, I don't know whether the political thing, you know, there was a lot of talking to groups. You probably saw right. How people were holding on to their money during election times until whatever. And then it swings a certain way. I don't know. Up here in Canada it's been crappy for so long that, you know, nobody has any money. It's just everybody keeps going up. But I do remember in the summertime at the dealer it seemed to taper off, you know, going into Canada day.

Jeff Compton [00:05:04]:
You know, Independence Day kind of thing. And then it would ramp back up August, people would start to get their cars ready for driving. Junior, you know, the daughter off to university or something or giving the car to them to take the university and make sure that it's okay. I remember those weeks being pretty lucrative sometimes.

David Kline [00:05:23]:
Oh yeah, well, we, you know, we're, we're located like three of the largest military bases. Okay. Period. And you know, we had a ship that just came back in. So usually when, when that happens we see an uptick in work because, you know, husbands, wives, whatever, coming home and it's like, oh well, we need to, we need to do stuff. And there's such a huge military presence here. We sort of have to ride that wave along with, you know, with everything else. And working for Honda, we're pretty much a stable brand.

David Kline [00:05:53]:
So. Yes, you know, a lot of households are two car households and both of them are Hondas. So, you know, the husband's been gone, the wife's, you know, ignored it for four months and now they're back. And we have to do annual safety inspections here. So you know, those that are expired are coming due and. Right.

Jeff Compton [00:06:13]:
What's that encompass in, in Virgin, like Maryland, Virginia, kind of. Because I can, I can tell you what, ours is very thorough. When we have to do, we don't have to do like an annual inspection, but we have to do an inspection when we prep one for sale. Right. So if a customer wants to purchase a vehicle, there's quite a, quite an in depth inspection that has to be done. What's it like for you guys? Like, is it, is it to keep the cars safe or is it just kind of a. Yeah, I mean the.

David Kline [00:06:40]:
You know, at the core of it, they, they fought, you know, to do away with it, to change it. Some people argue it's a, you know, it's a cash grab for the dealers and it's unfair. And you know, man, we see, you see some horrible things. I mean, you know, it's nothing. You get a car in with belts hanging out, the brakes are gone, the lights don't work and you know, sometimes the people are surprised and take care of it. Sometimes they, they get their rejection sticker and going about their way. We're far enough away from dc, Maryland, we don't do emissions testing okay there, but for us it's pretty straightforward. You know, pull the wheels, inspect the brakes.

David Kline [00:07:16]:
You know, we've got a huge manual that gives us state, you know, minimums for everything and you know, tie rod play and your horn has to work, your lights have to work. You know, all the basic stuff. Most of it's, most of it's pretty reasonable. You know, there, there's a little gray area that, you know, sometimes people might take advantage of, I guess. But the, the, you know, the goal, quite frankly, I mean, I'm of the opinion that some of these cars we should be able to, to tag out and not let back on the road that kind of, you know, we can't. But, you know, they're out there on the roads with, with you, me and our families and everyone else, and they should not be.

Jeff Compton [00:07:55]:
So we've, we've had that kind of conversation before for years in this industry. Right. And it's. I think if we hadn't maybe mucked that up so many years ago with some of the really aggressive tactics and stuff that people have used to sell work, we might have been able to be trusted to actually, you know, have some power that way. But you know what I mean, there's a local chain here. I'm not going to name their names, but everybody I talked to was being told for a long time, you cannot, I can't let you drive this out of here. It's too unsafe. And that's illegal to do.

Jeff Compton [00:08:29]:
Firstly, like, if they drive in, they have to be allowed to drive back out, even if you, if you were to render the car almost like, unable to drive technically. Like, for instance, we had a Chevy truck, I remember, not me, but another shop lifted it and the frame broke when they lifted it. Now, technically, that truck probably should be scrap, right? His frame's broken. But in the litigation of it all, technically, if they wanted to be real, you know, aggressive about it, they could have made them repair that because it.

David Kline [00:09:04]:
Happened while they were doing it happened when they were working.

Jeff Compton [00:09:07]:
So that was a sales tactic that one of the local people used forever was to say, I can't let you drive that out of here.

David Kline [00:09:12]:
And, you know, it could have been.

Jeff Compton [00:09:13]:
Anything from a loose tie rod to breaks metal on metal. And I'm not saying that, you know, one is more bad than the other. I mean, we should be, if we could be trusted, have the ability to say, no, I can't. You know, I can't. I can't. Just, I should be able to flash a barcode scanner across it and put the VIN into a, you know, cannot be used status.

David Kline [00:09:36]:
Some sort of blacklist database. Yeah.

Jeff Compton [00:09:38]:
And then let them go if they want. So choose to go. But recognize that if your plates scanned or pulled over or you go through a drive through camera. Like it's getting very popular up here in communist Canada for catching speeders that immediately it's like somebody can say, hey, that thing's not supposed to be drive, you know, right on the road. But we've screwed it up. You know, we don't. We're not trustworthy enough as an industry yet, I think to be able to say we can do that.

David Kline [00:10:05]:
Totally agree. I mean that would absolutely be a. The latest sales tool for some people in places. Yeah. With, with power comes responsibility.

Jeff Compton [00:10:13]:
Right now it's not only dealers that can do those inspections where you are.

David Kline [00:10:18]:
Right. Correct. Independent scan. You have to be, you know, licensed by the state and it's, you know, they require certain minimum equipment and you have to have a certain shop set up and you know, all that to ensure the integrity of it. And they take it pretty seriously. You know, the stickers are tracked. If you mess one up, you have a void or something like that, you have to put it in the system. The state trooper shows up to get it.

David Kline [00:10:41]:
Like it's, you know, I've seen abuses of the system that have, have gotten people and, and shops in a lot of trouble. So it's, it's certainly not, you know, it's not something to be taken lightly. And it is, you know, we do, you know, every like used car that we sell, you know, past the state inspection for the dealer sell, it has no state inspections. So that sort of ties in. You know, of course all the dealerships do their own version of like a used car checkover, but that's, you know, that's a state requirement and I'm fairly certain it's requirement for any licensed dealer to sell a car like it. You know, you can't sell something that isn't safe to be out there.

Jeff Compton [00:11:20]:
Yeah.

David Kline [00:11:21]:
As it should be.

Jeff Compton [00:11:22]:
Yeah, I agree. I agree for sure. Now, did you say you've been there quite a while? The Honda dealer?

David Kline [00:11:26]:
I've been with Honda for a while. I guess we could take it all the way back to the beginning if you want. Let's see. So I've been working on cars for 25, 26 years. I started right out of high school. My mom will tell you I started when I was 10. She had a little Honda Accord that the starter had gone bad in and, and you know, money was tight and we could afford the starter, but couldn't afford the, you know, 600. And I got my little book out and I put a starter in it.

David Kline [00:11:58]:
So nice it was, that was kind of the start. I was always super Mechanical, loved cars, you know. So I, when I was in high school, my summer job was a lot attendant slash car wash guy for Saturn. Okay. You know, they washed every service car you worked on. Got a car wash and it was hand done. No car wash, you know, no, no robo wash. So that was my, my entrance into the car business, so to speak.

David Kline [00:12:22]:
And let's see, I did that for summer, graduated high school, you know, did well in school, college wasn't in the cards, you know, financially it didn't work and I was, I was done. You know, I was ready to get out there and do something. Went back to Saturn, said I want to work on cars. They said, well, you don't know how to work on cars, but you know how to wash them. So here, you know, here's a bucket and hose. So I did that for probably six months, seven months, maybe a little longer. And the opportunity presented itself and they moved me into the shop as, as an apprentice. And you know, I followed a path there that, that doesn't really exist for guys much anymore.

David Kline [00:13:06]:
One of my biggest gripes about the industry, you know, I came in as an apprentice. It was a young company, it was a young group of guys, they had a program in place that would, you know, would compensate my, my mentor and the dealership and incentivize him to put me to work. And boy, I wanted to work. You know, I, I, you know, I, I, before I ever started, my dad took me to Home Depot. We bought me a little toolbox and some little tools, some of which I still have in my toolbox today. And you know, we, we, we went. My mentor was, you know, he was young and he was hungry and we didn't always get along. You know, there were some, there were some moments there.

David Kline [00:13:51]:
He had to pay my hourly paycheck or part of my hourly paycheck, but he got paid my hours, right? So, you know, he didn't want me there making overtime if I wasn't making him money. And that was a rub here and there. But you know, Saturn, as corny as it sounds, they did things different. You know, it's a, I was an apprentice for a year. You know, we had school and online training and all of that stuff and I did everything I could get my hands on. You know, I, you always, you always hear like the overeager. I mean, I was overeager. You know, I wanted it.

David Kline [00:14:27]:
And my mentor was hard on me in a way that I probably needed, but was probably, you know, sadistic on his part too. But you know, he was young. My service manager was young. My general manager was young. I mean, how industry, you know, with regards to Saturn was young. I mean, our training was at Spring Hill at the Saturn factory in Tennessee.

Jeff Compton [00:14:49]:
Yeah, it's not like when that, when that brand hit that all of a sudden there was a whole bunch of guys that, you know, had been working for Chrysler since the 70s is my example. Right. So, you know, when I walked into a dealer in 2000, there was still a couple guys that had been there since the early 80s, you know what I mean? Like they'd seen the first K car, so pattern when it came along. There wasn't anything like that. It was like, what's your background? Well, I've been, I've been a mechanic. Well, try this new brand out, right? See what you learn.

David Kline [00:15:15]:
Yeah. And that's most of the guys there, you know, we had one, you know, one master tech, as I call him, who was, was probably one of the best mechanics I've ever had the privilege of working with. You know, he was, he was the guy, you know, he was older than us. He just was very level headed, was very competent. You know, he trained the guy that trained me.

Jeff Compton [00:15:35]:
Yeah.

David Kline [00:15:36]:
And you know, as, as time went on and my mentor realized that, you know, there was, there was value in bringing me along with him. You know, we did it and I was an apprentice for a year, came into the shop making I think like $13 an hour, you know, as, as a flat rate. There's that horrible word tech. And you know, I was there, I was there 11 years and I left as the foreman. Okay. And it was, you know, didn't realize it when we were in it, but it was, I mean, the best of times. You know, the customers loved the cars. The, the manufacturer stood behind the product.

David Kline [00:16:14]:
Our warranty times were fair, our labor policies were fair. And you know, you could come in there and do an honest day's work and make really good money doing it. And there was opportunity to learn as you went. GM got involved at the end and kind of screwed that all up. But when GM came in, they opened us up to all of their training catalog. So you're gonna give it to me, I want to know it. And so I did that. And when they started, you know, the, the writing hit the wall that that Saturn was going to become no more, you know, toolbox has wheels on it.

David Kline [00:16:47]:
And I left and went to work for General Motors. Cadillac did that for five or six years. Oh no, let me back that up. When I first left Saturn, I went to work for Acura. I walked into a shop and three days in, I knew it wasn't the shop for me. My last year at Saturn, I made, I don't know, over six figures, you know, 125, 000, something like that, making 18 an hour. I mean, we were burning it. You were once, you know, it was nothing to be in that place till midnight.

David Kline [00:17:17]:
I had a key to the building. Like that's just what we did. And I was young and I wanted the money. We were trying to buy a house. So let's go. And I went to work for Acura. I walked into a shop that didn't want me there and didn't really provide a whole hell of a lot of opportunity. I was there a year.

David Kline [00:17:34]:
I made $36,000.

Jeff Compton [00:17:37]:
Can we just stop there for a minute and talk about that? How it was so poignant what you said because, like, obviously you answered an ad and yet you say the dealership didn't want you there. And I mean, and I think that's so telling because so many times we see that story repeated where, you know, I've alluded it to. It's like the new gunfighter walking into town, right. You see the guy walk through the shop and he's got maybe somebody else's uniform on or he's got a snap on shirt or coat on, but he don't work there. You know what he's there for. Or she, they're there applying for the job. That's been forever. Right.

Jeff Compton [00:18:11]:
But yet we already. Everybody in the shop is looking at it going, there ain't enough work. Right. Like, what are we bringing somebody else for? Or who's. Whose head's going.

David Kline [00:18:19]:
Right.

Jeff Compton [00:18:19]:
And then we all, like, I hope it's that guy over there. Every time, tired of fixing this. Is that what you mean when you.

David Kline [00:18:26]:
Said sort of so, you know, I walked into a shop and there were some good guys in there. I don't, I don't want to. I don't want to paint them in a bad light, but I walked into a shop that had a dispatcher that dispatched work to an established bunch of guys.

Jeff Compton [00:18:40]:
Sure.

David Kline [00:18:41]:
That dispatcher, around the time I was hired, they decided we can't afford to pay this position. So they left the guy in charge of dispatching the work and they let him go back in the shop and turn wrenches. So you can imagine how that went. First of all, I wasn't in the club. Yeah. And second of all, the guy that ran the club was giving all the work to his Buddies. And you know, I, I want to know how to do everything. You know, it's just who I am, that's my nature.

David Kline [00:19:08]:
That's why I do what I do for a living. And these guys, you know, they wanted to gatekeep. I had a ton of experience. I had a ton of Honda experience. I mean, I drag race Hondas, I build them in my garage. But when you get into the dealership, you get into a lot of, a lot of, you know, pattern failures. I like to call it muscle memory. And you know, there's some quid pro CRO there to, to share and they didn't want to share.

David Kline [00:19:31]:
Yeah, and I had a MDX that had come in that had a VTM4 all wheel drive system problem. I'll never forget it. And the foreman guy, you know, he comes over and, and it was an older one. So the, you know, service history or the service guides weren't really that great. You know, nobody ever keeps up with the stuff once the cars age. And so he walks me through this whole diagnostic process and he says, well, it needs VTM4 module. I said, all right. So he orders the module, car comes back a couple days later, gives it to me, I put the module in module doesn't fix it.

Jeff Compton [00:20:06]:
Yeah.

David Kline [00:20:07]:
Said, okay, well what do we do now? You know, he's in the general, the service manager's office and they're calling me and telling me, well, you know, we're, we're taking this $600 module out of your check. And I said, well, we're not gonna do that. So the week before that I had been at, I was out to lunch with, you know, somebody and I had a Saturn hat on and this guy's in line behind me. We were at Arby's and he goes, hey, I see your Saturn hat, Jonah Saturn. And I said, yeah, you know, something like that. And he said, well, I'm the service manager of the, the local Chevy dealer. We took over servicing all the Saturns. You know, if you ever need any work done, come by.

David Kline [00:20:45]:
And I said, well, to be fair, you know, I'm worked on Saturn's my whole life. Like, I'm not, I don't need that, I'm good. And he was like, is your name David? And I said, yeah. And he said, come see me when you get off work. And I said, okay, let's go. So I get off work and go over there and they've got a backlot full of broken Saturns, right? And you know, they, they invited me in. GM was a Whole lot different than Saturn. Yeah.

David Kline [00:21:10]:
But I wasn't. I wasn't having a very good time at, you know, at the Acura dealership. I wasn't making the money I wanted. I had stuck it out long enough to feel like I had given it my shot. Yeah. So.

Jeff Compton [00:21:22]:
Yeah.

David Kline [00:21:22]:
Yep. So I sat down with my service manager. I said, this isn't working. You know, it's not you, it's me. Whatever. I'm out. And I went to work for. For Chevy, and it was a big transition.

David Kline [00:21:34]:
You know, it was kind of like all the bad parts of Saturn there at the end. Yeah. The work was. Was hard. You know, I didn't have a whole lot of experience with. With big trucks, and I'm a big guy, so, you know, the big tires and rotates and all that. But. But I, you know, I figured it out and was there a couple years.

David Kline [00:21:55]:
My service manager left. I went, followed him to the other Chevrolet store and worked there for three or four years, I guess, and was kind of going through some. Some personal stuff. And this just isn't a great job to do when your head's not where it needs to be. Amen. Yeah.

Jeff Compton [00:22:13]:
And it's really hard to. Like, everybody talks about, you know, don't bring your work home. And I get that. But I.

David Kline [00:22:20]:
Bringing your home to work is.

Jeff Compton [00:22:22]:
It's right there with it to concentrate. Right. Like, it's.

David Kline [00:22:26]:
I don't.

Jeff Compton [00:22:26]:
And I listen. Of all the mechanics I've talked to, and it's been a lot now they struggle with that. Right. Because it's like, you have to seem to be able to. Like, you talked earlier about muscle memory, but, man, if my head's not in it, there's so many days I just go home because I just. There's something. Because somebody could die, you know, like, somebody could die, or you're gonna do something absolutely stupid, and you're gonna be like, what was I thinking? You weren't thinking, Jeff.

David Kline [00:22:52]:
Those are always the mistakes that get you. I can't tell you how many days I've come into work and been, you know, not sick, but not, you know, not great. And you're just trudging through the day, and, you know, a week later, you're. You're back on your feet and everything's good. And it's like, oh, my God, you know, this comes back or that comes back, and it's like, yeah, yeah. I don't know what the hell I was doing. I just, you know, you're. You're.

David Kline [00:23:15]:
You're. You're in your head or you're sick, your stamina is down, and that, that kind of autopilot takes over. But, but it's a, you know, it, it's not always, it's not always the way.

Jeff Compton [00:23:27]:
Yeah. So I, I can, I can assume that you didn't pay them the 600 for the misdiagnosed module.

David Kline [00:23:34]:
I did not. I said, you know, if, if this is, if this is it, you know, I had your foreman helping me on this, and he led me down this path. And if I can't trust the advice that this guy who's worked here for 30 years gave me, you know, when I was, I was young and I was, I was, I was in it, you know, I was, I was cocky. I was, you know, all the things that you got to be to do this job, sometimes to be. And I felt like, you know, that the guy that had run me down that path really didn't want me around. So I had no problem going in there and just lighting him up, you know, like it's gonna be what it's going to be. But I am a firm believer then, I'm a firm believer. Now if you're a dealership and you can't absorb the occasional part mistake or whatever, then you're not a dealership.

David Kline [00:24:19]:
You know, you're charging 200 on a door rate, you're paying a tech $25. It's just gonna happen. If I wanted to bear 100 of the liability, I'd open my garage door at home and I'd just do it all here myself. And that was the case I made to him. And I didn't have comeback. Like, this was a, this was a, you know, a standout event. Like, you know, I've worked with plenty of people that I think they get it wrong more than they get it right. Right.

David Kline [00:24:44]:
And in those situations, you know, people use tools like that to get rid of somebody. And I don't think that's what they were trying to do. I think that the situation had been misrepresented to him and he was reacting to what his guy told him. And I wouldn't, I'm not the guy. Like, that wasn't going to be it. That was gonna be my last day if that was what they wanted to do. So.

Jeff Compton [00:25:07]:
Yeah, so onward, onward to General Motors.

David Kline [00:25:09]:
Yep. I went to gm. I did, me and one other guy, we, we did most of the, the big tear down stuff, you know, camshafts, lifters, transmissions, you know, Saturn. We, we rebuilt everything. Yeah, you know, it's not like component replacement. Like, you know, I have my own set of Saturn transmission counterweights sitting in a Kentmore case in my garage. Like, you know, we did it. And so once I got my feet under me and got running there, you know, that, that's what we did there.

David Kline [00:25:40]:
You know, I, I, I like to stay busy. Whether it's, you know, doing two sets of camshaft enlisters in a day or doing 100 oil changes. Give me the lifters all day. And I work next to a guy that was, you know, he was hungry and you know, iron sharpens iron, right? So, so we went. But I, I had taken a job that was a long way away from where I lived. So my commute had gone way up. My son was really young and you know, my wife works full time. So it was leaving early to go get him from school.

David Kline [00:26:13]:
And he was actually a preemie when he was born. So we went through a whole bunch of health stuff. I missed a whole bunch of work and, you know, I wasn't in the right headspace. They were kind of tired of me. And I actually got in a car accident on a test drive we had. These little ladies came in with a North Star transmission. Solenoids had crapped out. I fixed it.

David Kline [00:26:34]:
I'm test driving it down the road from the, the dealers and a lady drunk, three o' clock in the afternoon, blows a stoplight and I t bone her right in the driver's door. Total, both cars. You know, I go to the hospital, the whole nine yards. And it was kind of a, you know, I don't say a wake up call, but it was, it was the moment, you know, like I was ready to, I was, I wasn't happy there. I wasn't happy with a lot of things. And I, you know, I, I had had a really, we had a really shady snap on dealer and so he had, he had oversold a bunch of stuff. And Hatton, you know, wasn't putting people's payments where they were supposed to go. So about three months, two months before the car accident, I come into work one day, my toolbox is gone.

David Kline [00:27:20]:
And so that was a nightmare. And the, the car wreck was a nightmare. And the dealership wasn't. The service manager that I like, you know, he was, he was leaving and I was just ready to go. I was done. I had, you know, 15 years in this business and I thought, if there's ever been a sign from above, it's time to go, it's time to go. And so I put everything in storage. I You know, and I was out, and I stayed out for six months.

David Kline [00:27:50]:
I worked out of my house, I did this or that. Lived out of savings, tried to get my, you know, my life back to where I wanted it to be. And a buddy calls me and goes, hey, man, you want to come work for Hank? And I said, well, no, not really. And he said, well, you know, I'm at this dealership. He was an advisor. He said, and, you know, you could do real well here. We need. We need some guys.

David Kline [00:28:14]:
You know, he's new. He wants to bring in somebody that he knows. And I worked on this guy's car in my private time, like, he knew that I could be trusted and he wanted someone he could trust. So I talked it over with the wife. The dealership is not the one I'm at now. It's a different dealer. And so we decided, let's do it. So I went back there, and I was there six and a half, almost seven years.

David Kline [00:28:38]:
And it was the quintessential dealership. All the bad things you hear, a few of the good things you hear. We made a lot of money, but you made a lot of sacrifice for it. You know, you were. You had guys in there that would just, you know, if you had to be there at 5 o' clock in the morning, they were there at 5 o' clock in the morning. And you show up at your normal working time. And this jackass has already done have to work for the day.

Jeff Compton [00:29:03]:
That's right.

David Kline [00:29:04]:
So if you're gonna get there at five, I'm gonna get there at five.

Jeff Compton [00:29:06]:
Yep.

David Kline [00:29:06]:
And I spent seven years there. I missed a ton of my son growing up because of it. I made a shitload of money, but I was just. I was burned out. And we had a bunch of guys in there. Not a bunch, but there were guys in there that would, you know, they. They were trash can flushing cars. They were signing off on recalls they weren't doing.

Jeff Compton [00:29:28]:
Yeah.

David Kline [00:29:29]:
And it was just. It was infuriate. I mean, it was infuriating because I don't give a damn whose name's on the ticket. The dealership's name is the one that I don't. I'm not me. I'm that dealership. Right. And.

David Kline [00:29:42]:
And my service manager's take on it was, I don't know what you're in here complaining about. You make a lot of money go away. And we. We had it. We had a recall the Hondas did on the seats and the minivans to where the. The reclining mechanisms would Fail. And so this van comes in, the guy beside me gets it, and he opens the door. It's got two car seats in it.

David Kline [00:30:04]:
He's like, ah, hell with this. Throws the recall in the trash, parks car, signs off on it that he did it. Now, I don't know about you, but if there's a van that needs the damn recall down on the seats. It's the seats that have car seats in. Yeah.

Jeff Compton [00:30:18]:
100%. Yeah. I can remember Chrysler out of policy. And I don't know if it ever went to other brands or not. Somebody else probably can chime in at some point, but any seat belt anchor bolt that we had to put in the floor pan for a child seat, right. Always was done for free. And they never charge the customer. And I saw some where they were done.

Jeff Compton [00:30:47]:
Very questionable.

David Kline [00:30:52]:
How about now?

Jeff Compton [00:30:53]:
Yeah, you're back.

David Kline [00:30:54]:
Okay, there we go.

Jeff Compton [00:30:55]:
So I was talking. I was talking about child seed anchor bolts. And I was talking at the Chrysler store. They were always done for free. They never charged a customer because it was such a liability thing that if they just. And it was pretty good because if you went to the big chain store, player up here is Canadian Tire. So if you went to Canadian Tire and said, we just had a baby, we just got a child seat, you know, we need a seat anchor put in the floor, they would tell everybody, like, if it was Chrysler, go over to the Chrysler dealer because they put them in for free. There was literally like a whole map that you lay it on the floor that shows exactly where the approved places were to, you know, screw down through.

Jeff Compton [00:31:29]:
So you're grabbing a structural member with it. And, you know, it can't rip off because, you know, imagine that the child see going, you know, not staying.

David Kline [00:31:37]:
Oh, yeah.

Jeff Compton [00:31:39]:
Well, you wouldn't believe the amount of people that would get frustrated with you when you tried to explain to them, I can only put it in certain places. And no, I can put three. You know, I can only put two. Like, it was. It was a whole thing. Those were. Some of. I remember they always seem to come in on a Saturday.

David Kline [00:31:55]:
Oh, of course.

Jeff Compton [00:31:56]:
Always a very difficult conversation to have because it doesn't necessarily exactly go where they want. And why not? And you try to explain to them. It's like, I'm sure there's a whole bunch of seats that went in. People had, you know, Uncle Bob put a seat anchor bolt in the floor pan and probably nothing ever happened. But I mean, I did see some ones where I watched them where they ratcheted it down and it Pulled the bolt, radio, floor pan.

David Kline [00:32:20]:
Oh, yeah. I'm sure that doesn't surprise me at all.

Jeff Compton [00:32:24]:
The safety thing and the recall thing. I watched a guy. There was a recall on a cooling fan in a Grand Cherokee. It was a Saturday morning now. He was our number one producing tech. And I watched him take the thing, take it out of the cardboard box that came in. Complete cooling fan for. Because it paid crap to do.

Jeff Compton [00:32:45]:
And it's Saturday morning. He didn't want to be there in the first place. And he threw the brand new part right in the dumpster and threw the cardboard in the cardboard recycling bin and punched off that. It was done because the cooling fan in the Jeep was working. So there was no complaint with the customer. They're just showing up for the recall. Right. And I thought, I'm sitting there looking at that, going, I'm never gonna be that.

Jeff Compton [00:33:06]:
Never gonna be that guy.

David Kline [00:33:10]:
You know, poisonous to work beside it.

Jeff Compton [00:33:12]:
Yeah. I would watch. I would watch guys go home at night. And we used to do injection services. Right. And you get a little can from. First it was wins and then it was vg. And you wouldn't believe the amount, Dave, that you could see the full can sitting on the.

Jeff Compton [00:33:26]:
On the bench when they went home at night.

David Kline [00:33:28]:
Oh, yeah.

Jeff Compton [00:33:29]:
Never got run through the car.

David Kline [00:33:32]:
Oh, yeah. And it paid an hour, right? Yep. We do them now. That's the same thing.

Jeff Compton [00:33:37]:
And I'm like. So, you know, I just. I would go scoop them up and if I had one that had a misfire that the customer couldn't afford to pay for it or didn't pay for it, and I wasn't 100 sure it was not necessarily misfire, but, you know, whatever.

David Kline [00:33:53]:
Right.

Jeff Compton [00:33:54]:
Hesitation I'd run it through while I was doing something else.

David Kline [00:33:58]:
Yeah.

Jeff Compton [00:33:58]:
Because it can't hurt it. You know, like, it's not what's the.

David Kline [00:34:00]:
Worst thing that happened.

Jeff Compton [00:34:02]:
And I just was amazed that text would do that. You know, we were talking Justin Connor, arm. Justin Cole and I were just talking about how a former dealer tech said to me, my. One of my first mentors, when you wear this, the uniform or you wear the shirt, or you tell somebody that like, you know, you work at a certain whatever, garage shop, dealer doesn't matter when their car leaves screwed up or not fixed or something like that. They don't. The customer doesn't drive away and say, text 7309 effed up my car. They go, those guys at whatever store effed up my car.

David Kline [00:34:42]:
It says in the Google review. Right, Right.

Jeff Compton [00:34:45]:
So I It. Some things like that, like you had some things very early in my career kind of set me on a. And I'm not perfect, but I sent me on a thing like, I know what is okay and what is not okay, right? A lot of stuff that's not okay as by the sounds of what you did too.

David Kline [00:35:05]:
Yeah, well, I, I went to my service manager when that happened and I said, you know, he just parked this car, man, he didn't even do the recall. Like, this is crazy. And my service manager was response was, well, if it bothers you so bad, go get it and do it yourself. And, and I'd be lying if I didn't say I had one foot out the door before that. But. And he was like, and I was like, you know, this is ridiculous. You know, I'm in there arguing with him and he says, well, you know, if you don't like it, leave. He's like, but we both know you're not gonna do that.

David Kline [00:35:33]:
And I had a friend that worked at an independent that had been telling me it was the best thing since sliced bread. And I said, well, I guess we're gonna figure it out. So the next morning I came in, sat down and said, well, I'm done. I'll give you my two weeks. This isn't, this isn't the place I want to work anymore. It's not good for my mental health. It's not good for, for anything, you know, so we're gonna try this.

Jeff Compton [00:35:54]:
Why do you think the manager acted like that, said that, like, if you don't, if you don't think, go do it yourself. Like, why, why be such a poor leader?

David Kline [00:36:02]:
Well, so the tech that did it had been there forever and he was a cantankerous old guy. And, you know, I don't, I don't begin to understand what goes through people's minds sometimes, but I definitely do understand, you know, the squeaky wheel gets the grease and he's got 10,000 things to do. And I'm in there making, you know, big money bitching over something that's not my problem, and I'm making it his problem. And so for him, it's like, well, you know, I'm going to show I'm the manager and handle it in the complete wrong way. And sometimes, you know, sometimes it's a knee jerk reaction. You know, he was one foot out the door himself. He was ready to retire. He had actually retired and came back to be the manager there to fill a void, right? And you know, like I said, I, I Think, you know, I think.

David Kline [00:36:53]:
And this is going to be a. This is going to be a thing, but I think dealer principals, service managers, I think deep down they resent the out of us. I think they resent what they pay us. I think they resent how much they need us. Yeah. And I think sometimes, you know, that, that bubbles to the surface. And if he catches me on a bad day and I catch him on a bad day, you've got an ego running up against somebody that resents the hell out of that ego. And that's what you get.

Jeff Compton [00:37:20]:
Yeah.

David Kline [00:37:20]:
And sometimes they're right. You know, I bite my nose off despite my face. You know, that's, that's just, that's how it goes. And, and that was it. I literally walked out of his office, was like, cool. Walked out in the parking lot, called this place and said, how about tonight we get together and talk? Let's go. And I had no idea what to expect. But I knew at that moment that my vision didn't align with his.

David Kline [00:37:43]:
And he's the captain of the ship, and I wanted the hell off of it. Yeah. And I left friends, I left people that I really enjoyed working with. It was a great building. The shop was only five or six years old. Yeah. You know, and it, it certainly had its upside. And maybe that was an isolated incident.

David Kline [00:38:01]:
Maybe I was in my feelings, it took it too far. But for me, that was my, that was my moment. And I'm pretty sure the guy's still there. So obviously maybe he got straight or maybe, you know, he's still doing what he does. I don't know.

Jeff Compton [00:38:15]:
He's still doing what he does.

David Kline [00:38:17]:
Neither nor there. But I went to work for an independent, and I did what I think every dealership tech that goes to work for an independent did. I didn't. I felt like a fish out of water, man. You know, I was doing 150 hours a week, 130 hours a week at the dealership. I go to the independent. It's more money, but Jesus Christ, it was just like, let's just sit around and work on three cars a day. And, you know, I'm.

David Kline [00:38:46]:
I'm pushing my service manager there to, you know, more. I want more. I want to do more. And I had a salary slash guarantee, and the work was slow. So, you know, he's telling me, well, I'm not going to give you the work. We need to give it to the guys that need to turn their hours. You're getting paid anyway. I'm going over his head.

David Kline [00:39:06]:
To the owner. Like, I'm not, I don't even feel like I'm, I'm worth a damn here. Like I'm not doing anything I need to do. And it was just, you know, I just felt like I was, you know, I'm a, I'm a bull tied to the fence, you know, like I just want to go. And that shop had hired me to be a foreman, but they had a, A, a high producing tech that was young and was hot headed. He's great, dude. I'm friends with him today, but he didn't want me there. So there was this constant, like, he's gonna prove that he doesn't need me.

David Kline [00:39:38]:
And I'm over here dealing with a service manager that's trying to look out for him because they're bo. So it was, it was a very tumultuous entrance. Now, culture wise, it was a huge 180. You know, the owner and his son run the business. They're great guys, you know, and everybody always, you know, we're all family. Right. But it was, there was definitely an effort made to, to make you feel welcome. But for me it was like all this money an hour, doesn't matter if I can't turn any hours and I'm groomed that 100 hours a week.

David Kline [00:40:15]:
And I'm in there explaining why, you know, why I'm not living up to my expectation and I'm going in here and doing 35. And I was just crawling the walls.

Jeff Compton [00:40:25]:
When he told you that he had other guys that had to make their hours. Like, do they have to make their hours just to show production or were they flat rate and you were selling?

David Kline [00:40:33]:
No, they were flat rate. Yeah. And you know, I think they may have had some sort of guarantees, but you know, all the guarantee really is, is it's a worst case scenario for the people you like and it's an exit strategy for the people you don't. You know, the, the, the fact of the matter is, you know, no trained professional working in a skilled business should have to come in and fight tooth and nail to earn a damn paycheck. You know, when, and I know your feelings on the flat rate thing, but you know, I've been doing this 25 years. I shouldn't have to come to work and fight the lube tech guy for a stupid oil change so that I know the money. I think it's absurd. It's by far the worst part of this business and it's, it's foolish.

David Kline [00:41:16]:
If I make 125 150, whatever thousand dollars a year. And I'm in here every day on time, doing my job to the best of my ability. That's my value. And for me to have to come in and prove it every single Monday, it's a blank slate. Is, is absurd. And you know, I got in a big tirade about this on Facebook, actually, in a response to sharing a video clip that you had posted. But you know, you got a bunch of corporate, you know, whether they be manufacturer or dealer principles, whatever, you know, at 2 o' clock on a Thursday on the golf course, talking about how you can't pay tax salary because they're lazy, you know, and it's like, get the hell out of here. You know, if I showed up to work with a guaranteed income, you would take away 50% of my stress and I'd do any damn thing you asked me to do.

Jeff Compton [00:42:05]:
That's 100%. Yeah.

David Kline [00:42:06]:
You know, and most of the good techs I know want to work. I want to work. I want to do everything that comes in the door most days.

Jeff Compton [00:42:14]:
The whole idea that they say tax are lazy is so stupid because the same ones say are such proponents for flat rate. Flat rate doesn't work. If you're lazy, you can't make money. So the idea that they go off, I take flat rate away, they'll be lazy. No, they know how to hustle. They know how to find shortcuts and efficient manners to get jobs done faster than what they were engineered to be done in that time. That's not lazy, that's. That's skill, right? And I've said it before, it does not matter.

Jeff Compton [00:42:48]:
I told I go back to my. The best day ever had in my life, in my career. I made 28 hours in one day. It was a Saturday, right? Never one in the dealer history had ever hit that number in a day. And everybody, like when I went home on Saturday, five o' clock at night, started at eight in the morning, there was no carryover. I was hustling that day. Everything just perfect, stars aligned. You know how that goes once in a career, right? I come in Monday and the first thing they hand me is four tires on a waiter.

Jeff Compton [00:43:17]:
And I thought like, your head wants to, you just want to like rip your ears off your side of your head. It's. I liken it to like, I've had so many times where I've fixed so many complicated diags and they would all come together, everything. I'd be cleaning up the end of my week and I'd have All this Monday morning, I'd walk in, they'd hand me tires, and I was just like, you guys not get it. Like, I'm not. And see, they say, oh, you think you're too good for that? I'm not saying I'm too good for it, but I'm better utilized, right. Doing something else. It wasn't about the money.

Jeff Compton [00:43:51]:
It was about, you're gonna give me tires. Now there's a waiter oil or waiter check engine light. I know there is because I saw the route sheet.

David Kline [00:44:00]:
Mm.

Jeff Compton [00:44:01]:
The guy that's gonna come in, you know, because waiters went flagged ahead of everything. Didn't matter what your skill set was. You grabbed the waiter. It was what you had to do. That guy that shouldn't be doing a driveability problem. He's gonna get that waiter drivability problem. I'll be over here doing tires. He's gonna eff it up.

Jeff Compton [00:44:18]:
I'll fix it tomorrow, next week, end of day, whenever, when he can't get through it or it comes back. Just give it to me now. Well, if I gave you all of it, the drivability, some guys would have no work.

David Kline [00:44:32]:
Right? But. But then, but then you're, you're, you're egotistical and you're not a team player. That's right. So my best. When I worked for Saturn, I was. I think I was 21. I did 236 hours in one week, six days. And I did it because everything had fell together.

David Kline [00:44:53]:
And when my boss realized where we were going, he was just like, here's another one. Here's another one, here's another one. Like, I'm either gonna have a heart attack and die or we're gonna end this out. And it was so many hours that our corporate had to do, like, an audit, because they were like, what in the hell is this?

Jeff Compton [00:45:11]:
Yeah.

David Kline [00:45:11]:
And I've never done it since. I probably couldn't do it now if I had the perfect scenario, you know, those cars were. Were easy. And. And I, you know, I mean, I was in there 20 hours. You know, it was. It was stupid. But, you know, you get.

David Kline [00:45:25]:
You get feeling some kind of way, and you're gonna go for it. Yep. And. And that was just, you know, that's the way now when It's. When it's 4:30 and it's hot and I'm ready to go home, and I'm like, there's still keys up there. Let's keep going. And I would be that way if I had a guarantee I would be that way, if I was salary, like, I want to work, and as far as I'm concerned, my responsibility is to show up and ring the bell. Everything after that's the dealer's responsibility.

David Kline [00:45:50]:
If I show up and ring the bell and you can't provide me with enough work to turn enough hours, that's your failure, not mine. Yeah. And in that case, why should I be penalized? Like, am I worth what I'm worth? Great. Does. Does a CEO come in and they go, oh, well, hey, there's not a lot going on in the boardroom today. We're just not going to pay you? Like, no, it's stupid. You know, and the level of. Of training and knowledge and experience and sometimes just.

David Kline [00:46:16]:
Just unbridled stick to itness that this job takes. It's crazy that you have to come in every single Monday and go, jesus Christ, am I going to make anything? And I've worked through it, man. I mean, I've had paychecks that were $2,000 different from one week to the next, thankfully. Dear Lord above, you know, my wife's always been a salaried person. She's always had a consistent check. And I work with a lot of guys that don't have that. And I don't know how in the hell you do it.

Jeff Compton [00:46:45]:
Yeah.

David Kline [00:46:46]:
And. And it's. It's crazy. But anyway, all that to say I. I did the independent thing. I love the culture. I had a really hard time adjusting to the workload. I didn't really like my service manager.

David Kline [00:46:58]:
He ended up getting out the door, and they gave me the opportunity to be the serviceman manager. And I thought, this is it, right? I'm. I'm in. I'm 40 years old or 30, whatever. Like, I'm gonna put my tools down, I'm gonna walk away. And, man, did that suck. You know, I. I wasn't.

David Kline [00:47:16]:
I wasn't in a super great headspace there because I. I was pretty burned out with this outgoing service manager. And, you know, they. They were. They were doing a lot of, you know, they were kind of. The company was trying to find its way, you know, to. And I, you know, I probably wasn't the best. You know, I went in the best headspace to do it.

David Kline [00:47:38]:
I did it for a year. We had some really good months, but we really struggled to find a technician to replace me. The guy that had been the head guy before I got there, he left, went and opened his own shop.

Jeff Compton [00:47:51]:
Okay.

David Kline [00:47:51]:
And we really struggled with, you know, a. Like a foreman, a shop leader position, and you know, of course I'm arrogant. I've been doing this a long time. I'm sitting behind a desk watching these, these guys come in and just fail. Yeah. And I'm like, God, you know, and it's so frustrating. I'm going home telling my wife, you know, I'm sitting at this desk watching these cars go out, not fixed. I should be the one fixing them.

David Kline [00:48:17]:
And I would, I'd stay late, I'd help them, I'd come in early and I'd get in trouble for, you know, not doing my position and doing their position.

Jeff Compton [00:48:26]:
Right.

David Kline [00:48:26]:
And I'm super close with my service advisor there and I would send him a message and be like, hey, if so. And so comes up here and tells you that there's anything wrong with this car other than this, tell him he's wrong and send it. Because it was just, it's self preservation.

Jeff Compton [00:48:42]:
Right.

David Kline [00:48:43]:
And it was, it was difficult and I was frustrated and I'm trying to, to focus on the skill problem and they're trying to focus on whatever number we didn't hit that month.

Jeff Compton [00:48:57]:
Yeah.

David Kline [00:48:57]:
And I was just like, nope.

Jeff Compton [00:49:00]:
That's what's so stupid. I was talking earlier, before we got on about how, you know, they were talking about the, the dealer level now this, the aptitude at the dealer level is so low. And they said that, you know, there used to be some real craftsmen and artists at dealers 10 years ago and now that's all gone. And they said it's because they've done three things with them, they've retired them, they've quit and left to go do something else somewhere else. Not normally means stepping out of the industry or they took them and they made it into a management position where all of a sudden now they're in a salary, in an office not being able to lead, not being able to be mentoring the younger people because in your situation, they lost their foreman and then they lost you to it. So they lost two really strong tax in one swoop. For the shop owners that are listening and I know there's a lot of, some of you don't listen, but you should, don't ever do that because it's stupid. It's hard enough to replace one technician, let alone two, especially when they're both high performing now.

Jeff Compton [00:50:03]:
And I mean high performing, like high skill and high performing production. You can't, you can't, you can't do that. You can't get rid of two and expect that next month just because you hired somebody that you're going to hit the number that you hit the month before, it's not going to happen. Guys, there's, it's impossible. I don't care where you go, it doesn't. They take longer than that to adapt, to get comfortable, to hit their stride, to hit their flow, whatever you want to call it. And let's be real, you take somebody like you, that could turn those kind of hours and you put them in the, in the thing and you're that involved and you know what the car, when it's there for what it probably is going to need. You know, you're watching these cars leave not fixed.

Jeff Compton [00:50:42]:
Or watching somebody say, I think it needs a mass airflow. And you're like, no, it's got a vacuum leak. Because I know, because I fix it a hundred times.

David Kline [00:50:48]:
Or it needs a pcm because nothing ever needs a pcm.

Jeff Compton [00:50:53]:
And you're sitting there watching this and it's like. And the management is just sitting there staring at the numbers. People are listening. Stop staring at the numbers. And I know you're sick of hearing me say that, but like, look at it at a car at a time. Did the car get fixed properly? Yes. Charge as fuck as much as you can for that and then rinse, wash, repeat, and go on and go on and go on. And it will take care of a lot of your numbers problems.

Jeff Compton [00:51:20]:
Right?

David Kline [00:51:21]:
Well, to their credit, when I went to work there, they had a tiered, like a tiered diagnostic. So you'd get like a level one, level two, level three dealerships never did that. You got an hour, that was it. Pass or fail. Good, good luck. Sometimes you don't even get that. And so that was an awakening and they had a huge focus on, on training. They opened me up to like the Carquest Institute and a whole bunch of other stuff that in the dealership, you know, they only want you to be smart enough to do what they need you to do.

Jeff Compton [00:51:47]:
That's right.

David Kline [00:51:48]:
And so that was a huge eye opening thing. If I had it all to do over again, I'd go right back to that place and be a tech and just produce for them. You know, when Covid hit while I was there, the owner came in and said, we're gonna guarantee everybody their checks. We just need you guys to do whatever you can around here in the absence of work. And I mean we, we cut bushes, we painted buildings. We did, you know, I did whatever. If you're gonna pay me, I'm gonna do whatever you asked me to do. When I was an apprentice at Saturn, I would get on the roof with a damn trash can and clean the gutters because I needed money.

David Kline [00:52:21]:
And I knew one day I would be the one sending the kid up there to clean the gutters. Right. And. And so we made it through Covid. We come out the other side, and I'm. I'm just. I'm just burned out. I'm just burned out.

David Kline [00:52:34]:
We were having. You know, we were doing the best we could. We were putting up numbers that seemed really good. And, you know, me and my advisor, we'd go out and have dinner at the end of the month, be like, oh, my God, I can't believe we managed to do what we did with what we had. And then Monday morning, here's the email, you know, and it's like, I just. I was just. I was done. And it was really.

David Kline [00:52:56]:
It was really starting to weigh on me. I was talking about it with my wife. I. I had a friend that was at the Honda dealership that I'm at now that was saying, come in here. Let's. Let's make money. And I just thought, I'm just. I.

David Kline [00:53:09]:
I don't do it anymore. And so we had a meeting, and I was just like, you know, I know you guys have all this vision. I'm not in the headspace for this. I'm not. I'm not with this place needs. And I left. I parted on good terms. I think the world of those guys, I think they run a hell of an operation.

David Kline [00:53:25]:
I mean, they. Their goal is to be the dealer alternative, and they really put their money and their time where their mouth is. They treat their guys right. You know, maybe I'll end up back there one day. Who knows? But the, you know, it was a glimpse into, you know, sort of like the 180 of the. The. The social structure that the dealerships just don't have. Yeah.

David Kline [00:53:48]:
And, you know, at the time, I was. I was choosing, you know, personal reward and money when I left. And here we are. I've been where I'm at now for four years. I guess when I came in, we were on team pay, which is probably the worst thing that anyone had ever come up with, ever. And that sucked. But I was with a guy I had worked with at the other Honda dealership, Another guy that was super hungry and one guy that was kind of not. And in some ways, you know, in a vacuum, I understand how it can be explained to somebody how it could work.

David Kline [00:54:27]:
Right. You've got a bunch of guys hauling ass, doing the good stuff. You've got some guy Losing his ass. At the end of the week, y' all divvy up. And it's fair until it's not. No. And there was a lot of not. I was there about six months, and one of the team leaders on one of the other teams was out, so they wanted me to go run this team.

David Kline [00:54:48]:
And I did, begrudgingly. And, man, it took a toll on me. And, you know, the place now is. You know, it's profitable. We have a lot of work. I work hard. My direct supervisor is a great guy. He's probably one of the most, from a leadership standpoint, compassionate people I've worked with.

David Kline [00:55:13]:
My old boss, it was like, hey, I need to take tonight off, you know, this evening off to go wherever. Well, you know, too bad we got a truck in. You know, this is your job, that kind of thing. And my boss now is not. You know, my son just two weeks ago, now, a week ago, graduated high school, and he was in the marching band, and we did all that stuff. And anytime I needed to leave, I was able to leave. And I just, you know, in. In the corporate world, that's not always the case.

David Kline [00:55:39]:
Hasn't been the case other places I'd worked at the dealership level. And, you know, he's great for that. And that helped sort of restore some of the life balance. But it also made me realize, you know, he's. He's about to turn 18. He's leaving to go to college. And my wife scrapbooks. She goes through all these scrapbooks of all this stuff.

David Kline [00:55:59]:
And I'm like, I don't remember that. And it's like, yeah, well, you weren't there.

Jeff Compton [00:56:01]:
Yeah, that's.

David Kline [00:56:02]:
You know, and I wasn't there because I was the number one guy or the number two guy, fighting the number one guy or the number 2 guy for dominance. And the service manager kept us, you know, like two cats with their tails tied together, thrown over a fence because it made him a shitload of money. And, you know, like I said, five o' clock there till ten o', clock, you got PDIs. We're gonna stay here all night and do PDIs. Because I'll be damned if you're gonna work harder than I'm working. Yeah. And at the end of it, I bought a bunch of cool that I don't even have anymore. But I missed that.

David Kline [00:56:36]:
And, you know, as a. As a father, looking back, man, those are some. That's some. That's some hard truth to swallow sometimes. And.

Jeff Compton [00:56:44]:
And going to that thing you're talking about how It's. Well, it's your job. And, you know, you're gonna miss your son's band recital or something like that. And again, I'm not throwing a bunch of hate on shop owners or managers in places like this, but we all know that, like the management staff in a dealership or in a shop or the owners, when they have something like that important coming up in their lives, they go. They go. Oh, yeah, there's no question about it.

David Kline [00:57:11]:
They.

Jeff Compton [00:57:11]:
They're not missing it. They're not missing. Hell, some of them want to work from home, you know.

David Kline [00:57:18]:
Oh, yeah.

Jeff Compton [00:57:19]:
To homeschool home, raise and. And draw a company paycheck. I'm not saying you shouldn't. Can't like it. I'm not the person to ask about that. But let's realize that. That when somebody comes to you and say, and I understand not every place is the same. When somebody comes to you and says, I have to leave tonight for, you know, my son's got a wrestling meet or, you know, whatever, don't say to them, well, there's a truck sitting there.

Jeff Compton [00:57:43]:
Because I guarantee you, that's the. No matter what you try to build and develop in a culture and tell everybody that you're all family, you're immediately showing that we're not the same.

David Kline [00:57:54]:
No. Right.

Jeff Compton [00:57:54]:
I'm going as I want. And you can't. We rely on you. I rely on you, yet you're not me. Do you understand what I'm trying to get like?

David Kline [00:58:03]:
Absolutely.

Jeff Compton [00:58:04]:
This is. This is where so many of us that have worked with places that do that or treat us like that. It's what you're really saying when you're not saying it. That's what we remember. Right? It's. It's okay for YouTube. You're not that important that you the manager or you the owner aren't going to be there, but I have to be there. Who's really the most important to the customer at that point.

David Kline [00:58:29]:
Right. And, you know, I. I have a misplaced sometimes, you know, an innate sense of duty. Right. You know, it's like, yeah, I mean, I get it. You know, I'd take a week off a vacation, and I'd come back and be like, well, we're not gonna hit our projection this month. And it's like, I get it, but I. I understand that you're missing my 100 hours.

David Kline [00:58:50]:
But the real question is, is why can't you ring a few extra hours out of these other guys? Like, what in the hell? You know, I deserve, you know, I Certainly earned my time off. And the flip side of that is, the guys that don't produce anything, nobody gives a. If they're there. You know, it's like, oh, man, I need to go. My. I'm not feeling good. I'm gonna take a week off of work. No big deal.

David Kline [00:59:09]:
Nobody cares. You don't. You don't move the mark, you know, you don't move the needle anyway.

Jeff Compton [00:59:13]:
That's right.

David Kline [00:59:13]:
And so it's like. Well, you know, I like to call it failing successfully. You know, sort of like when you get the guy that, you know, every car he gets can't duplicate or you can't whatever, and it's like, oh, so we're not gonna give you that anymore because you suck at it. So you win, right? You won. You can do the flushes or the timing belts or the service, but, you know, you have instilled this, like, you know, this sense of dread that something's gonna go to you that you're not gonna be able to do. And really, you just don't want to put the time in that the next guy's gonna put in. And you're rewarded for it. It.

David Kline [00:59:45]:
You know, I. I work. I have worked with people. You know, you got guys that. That we're all equal until it's something that's on their list. You know, I can't do this. I can't do that. And, you know, there's lots of people do things they shouldn't do.

David Kline [01:00:02]:
Those don't ever seem to be the things that make the list. You know, you were talking about the comebacks, and it's like, you know, you see somebody walk across the shop with something, and you're just like, the car pusher is my favorite. Like, oh, God, why do they have. Whatever this it's going to be? And everyone in the room knows that they shouldn't have it, but they're going to have it. And when it, you know, when the wheels come off and it falls apart, it's like, well, you know, somebody's going to need to fix this. And it's like, we could have avoided that. Yeah. You know, from the beginning.

David Kline [01:00:29]:
And you get the. You know, you get the. Well, we. You know, they're here, you're here, and it's like, no, no, no. If. If I need to rely on something to be done right, the unfortunate truth is that person does not do it right. So you have two courses of action. Either you end the relationship with them because you can't count on them to do it right, or you put a plan in place to help them learn how to do it, right? And maybe they just don't know.

David Kline [01:00:57]:
And if they don't know, then you're failing them by not teaching them. And if they do know and they just don't care, then they don't need to be there.

Jeff Compton [01:01:04]:
That's right in the discussion, attitude versus aptitude. You know, absolutely. You can teach the, the, the aptitude if the attitude is right.

David Kline [01:01:13]:
Right.

Jeff Compton [01:01:14]:
If the attitude sucks, they're never going to reach that latitude that we want them to reach because they can't. They just won't apply it. And, and it's funny, man. It's the scan tool is the funny thing, right? You would see somebody and you're like, oh, what the is he doing with a DRV3 in his hand, right? Like, here goes. And it might have been because maybe he just caused a code. You know, he's coping, right?

David Kline [01:01:37]:
He's got to go clear it.

Jeff Compton [01:01:38]:
But then when he walks out the door, he comes back, he drives the car and you' right? And I tried not to be that kind of guy, but I tried to be. At the same time, I would maybe go over and just get, stick my nose in and be like, what? And you know, sometimes they'd see because I'll date myself here. Chrysler's, when they first went to the linear EGR valve, they didn't always give a code for GR valve. And the car would have like a funny, you know, chuggle, hesitation, right? Power misfire or something like that. But if it didn't have an egr, a lot of guys wouldn't catch it. And, and you know, they revised the software so that it would monitor a little better and throw code. But there was a lot of them. I come over there and I look at them be like, maybe just like block off that EGR and go drive around the block.

David Kline [01:02:22]:
Go get a business card. Like, it's not hard, you know, just.

Jeff Compton [01:02:25]:
Because otherwise it was going to get a tune up and a fuel system cleaning that they weren't going to do. And the next week when it comes back and he's, you know, ass deep in a brake job and some struts in the steering rack and he's too busy to get it done. Jeff, look at this. I'm gonna have over there and do an EGR valve on it right under warranty.

David Kline [01:02:47]:
And.

Jeff Compton [01:02:47]:
And he's made 4.5 on a fuel system cleaning and a tune up. That didn't fix this, this, you know, truck. But I'll get the 0.9 each.

David Kline [01:02:56]:
No. And, you know, it's funny, you say, jarva, when I worked for Saturn, my service manager comes to me one day and he says, I need you to look at this car. I said, okay. He said, it's come back three times, and the customer's pissed. You know, the. The guy working on it, he doesn't know what's wrong with it. So I go grab the ticket and I'm talking to the writer, and this guy replaced the EGR valve three times. He put it on the car, came back the next day.

David Kline [01:03:18]:
You know, code 32, EGR valve.

Jeff Compton [01:03:20]:
Yeah.

David Kline [01:03:20]:
And this guy had worked on cars longer than I had, and he did not have any idea what the hell the car was looking at to determine that the EGR valve was bad. He just thought, oh, I got a code. It needs a valve. And he had gotten paid multiple rounds diag he'd gotten all this stuff, you know, of course I get in it, and I'm like, oh, man, this thing runs like crap. Whack the EGR valve with a hammer fixed, you know, or not. And it's just like, well, so now I have to go in the. The customer's mad.

Jeff Compton [01:03:47]:
Yeah.

David Kline [01:03:47]:
You know, everyone's anxious. It's a top priority. Everything else going on be damned. And I have to sit there with the, you know, with the. The tech two and. And go on the test drives and figure out, oh, well, it's really this. And the problem was that the ports in the head were clogged.

Jeff Compton [01:04:01]:
Yes.

David Kline [01:04:02]:
And so nothing's happening when the valve opens. So the PCM assumes the valve's bad. Right. And it was, you know, it was simple. And then, of course, when it's time to fix it, the shop had to eat it. And, you know, I. I get paid what is fair to help the shop out. And it's like, well, what was fair to the guy that put three valves on it? You know? Yeah.

David Kline [01:04:22]:
And. And it's just, you know, it. It highlights probably what has permeated this culture. But it's really my biggest frustration at the dealership level now is there's very little in place to take a guy that is blissfully ignorant and show him the way without just utterly burdening everyone around it. You know, the dealerships, you hear it all the time. Unapplied labor. Right. If I'm gonna make you a foreman and you're producing 120 hours a week, and now suddenly you're producing 60, but you still expect me to pay you what you were making with 120.

David Kline [01:04:59]:
When I'm not getting it, well, it's like, no, you're not getting it. But the guy that up every car he works on is now not. So you've gained efficiency, and if you're not willing to pay me to help him, then obviously you see no value in anything I possess except the fact that I can. You can tie a chain to me and run me like a monkey. Yeah, you're.

Jeff Compton [01:05:21]:
You're a horse out in the field, but as soon as, like, put you in the stable, right, you know, you're just glued to me like, how dare you? You know how many furlongs plowed every day? And all of a sudden, I can't get that because you're up in the barn taking a nap is what they think. And that whole unapplied labor thing, to me, is the stupidest metric that they. They. They constantly throw back at you, like, because it becomes all perfect numbers, right? And there's no such thing as perfect numbers. So it's. Oh, it's unapplied. Like, come on, we fixed the car. Or somebody like you said that used to be weak at this.

Jeff Compton [01:05:58]:
They all of a sudden didn't up as much this week and. And next month and three months later. Remember when he used to screw up? That kind of. And now we can give it to him. That's a win, right?

David Kline [01:06:12]:
The same thing with a comeback. You know, if. If a car comes in and somebody gets it and they just. Just with it, you know, they just get it wrong and it comes back and the customer's mad, and now it's like, hey, can you go take a look at this? So and so just did this to me. That guy should have to come over and sit with me, and we're gonna figure it out. He's gonna learn what he did wrong. Because if I'm never intentionally gonna send a car out that I didn't do my best to fix, and if that car comes back not fixed, there's either a flaw in my process or there was a flaw in my work product. And either way, I want it back to figure it out.

David Kline [01:06:46]:
Because if I made a wrong assumption, I don't know if you get it, because you're gonna go up there and tell the boss I'm the dumbest thing ever, so. You look great. You know, that's another cultural problem in the dealership, you know, And. And. And with these guys, it's like, well, if he's not getting paid and being productive, he's penalized if I'm not getting paid. To be in productive, I'm penalized. So where's the growth? You know, I work with guys that, whose skill level hasn't improved in the entire four years I've worked with them. And it's like, why you have three, four really knowledgeable, talented people and you're not utilizing? Yeah, great.

David Kline [01:07:21]:
They turn a ton of hours. But I'm 44, I don't have that many years left and there's, there's nobody behind me, you know, and, and you bring in, you bring in a new guy who's an express tech. They show up, you pay them 13, 14, 15 an hour. They don't have any tools.

Jeff Compton [01:07:39]:
Yep.

David Kline [01:07:39]:
And they get dumped in the shop. And within a couple of weeks they're expected to be doing enough stuff to justify their existence. And when they don't, it's a problem. And when, so they're, they're pushed. Right. You've got a guy with, with no pattern remembrance, no muscle memory, and he's just, maybe he's just doing oil changes and rotates and dumb stuff, but, but he's constantly more, more, more. And then he leaves the drain plug loose, blows a motor up and he's fired. Yeah, well, whose failure is that? That's not his failure.

David Kline [01:08:08]:
You know, was he called away? I mean, Jesus Christ, I, I've done not that thankfully, but you know, I've shipped something and had to come back the next day with a clunk. And then like, Jesus Christ, I didn't even put this away because you get distracted. And I have 25 years of muscle memory, you know, to, to help prevent that. And it's like, I understand you have to justify these guys existence, but you've got this, this kid who maybe had a ton of enthusiasm, who's getting smoked out six months in and he doesn't have any tools, so what does he do? He gets on the snap on truck. Well, a set of sockets on the snap on trucks. A thousand dollars. So that's absurd. And it's like, what do you do then? You know, he sees my tool collection, the guy beside him, tool collection, the guy across.

David Kline [01:08:55]:
And, and he thinks, well, that, I mean, that's what it takes. That's not what it takes. Some of the best techs I know had a crappy craftsman box and a crappy bunch of tools and they were able to do anything you put in front of them because they were trained, they were taught. And if you're not taught from a fundamental level, what the egr, what the PCM looks for when the EGR valve goes bad. You're the idiot that puts three valves on it and looks like.

Jeff Compton [01:09:22]:
Yeah. Just having an interesting conversation kind of on the tool thing tonight. My good friend Tommy was talking about. And again, snap on dealers and his struggle with one he's got in his area and whatnot. Because he has a young man that works with him that wants to buy a set of snap on wrenches, standard and metric. Now, of course, Tommy tried to talk him out of buying the standards because. What the.

David Kline [01:09:41]:
Yeah. What are you gonna use this for?

Jeff Compton [01:09:43]:
Whatever, you know, planes. What's the complete set? It's $2800 to buy the two sets. Now, I said to Tommy, I said, you gotta remember, I drive a 2015 Wrangler that I bought three years ago. Before that, I never spent $2800 on a vehicle. Now, do I have snap on wrenches? My toolbox? Yes, I do. I have a set. I have a metric set. I didn't pay fourteen hundred dollars for them.

Jeff Compton [01:10:07]:
I paid like eight hundred for them like five years ago because they're repo set. I said, you need to take that young man down to Harbor Freight and buy the icon tools. And this is not me pitching for Harbor Freight.

David Kline [01:10:18]:
Right.

Jeff Compton [01:10:18]:
I would love to have them as a sponsor of your listing. Hey, put your boy up. But my point is, is that it's been, I think it's been proven enough by now that you don't have to spend $2,800 on wrenches to get what a wrench will do for you there. It's been proven, you know, our friends at Sherwood at Royalty Auto service have proven that, that, that, that wrenched all the tests that it needs to do for 80 bucks.

David Kline [01:10:43]:
I love those guys.

Jeff Compton [01:10:44]:
Are they not awesome or what? They have been if, if YouTube would give out an award for the top new performer of the year, right, Whatever you want to call it, those guys should get it like by a large margin. The way they have hit YouTube and hit the industry and hit that demographic. They just came, they hit the ground running and have just like. But anyway, going back into the tool saying, so you're exactly right. Because your young person that at the shop sees $2,800 to buy basic tools.

David Kline [01:11:17]:
When they're making $500 a week and.

Jeff Compton [01:11:20]:
Then they go and do a simple mistake that we all can make and they get fired. That's the kind of tools that we joke about that like I bought them on the repo at the pawn shop, right? And we all joke, yeah, but all my tools, that's. We have to remember when we're buying tools like that that have been repoed or we see them on the truck, that's somebody's dream. Maybe that got shooken from them.

David Kline [01:11:44]:
Yeah.

Jeff Compton [01:11:44]:
Taken back just like your box got taken from you.

David Kline [01:11:47]:
Yep, yep. It was a terrible. Oh my God, I will never. I mean that was 20 years ago now, or 15 years. And I still remember the way I felt when I walked in and saw that empty spot. And I had no idea, like there was nothing. It was just him trying to do some shady. And thought, you know, hey, I'm gonna squeeze this guy because he thought I had money and he figured he'd just be like, oh well, there was a mistake.

David Kline [01:12:10]:
Haha, here's your money. And you know, we made it, right. And I got my stuff back. But yeah, and you know, you talk about, about royalty, talk about YouTube, you know, I can't. I'd be remiss if we didn't talk about tools. Talk about Dustin over at Toolbox Tours. Yes. I was lucky enough to, to, to, to meet him and he came out and, and shot an episode.

David Kline [01:12:31]:
I think it's got 300 some thousand views now. But I stumbled across him one day and man, I was hooked because you know, I'm, I'm a, I'm a, I love the shiny stuff, man. I've got four scan tools. I've got, you know, 22ft of toolbox. I've got, you know, I got. It's probably $250,000 worth of stuff in that thing. It is full. There's not a drawer that doesn't have stuff in it.

David Kline [01:12:56]:
And you know, it's 25 years of pool buying. And you know, I, I sat down and watched one of his episodes and the guy that was on the thing was a Honda Tech. And I'm like, oh yeah, you know, that's me. And I was like, what the hell does he use those for? Like this dude does the same thing I do and we use totally different stuff. And it was like, well, I think I need to buy that. Yeah. But you know, he does, he does a great job of taking, you know, somebody like me that has invested more than anyone would ever need to invest tools or you know, I know he had, he's had some guys on that, I mean, just have, you know, half million dollar epic setups and stuff like that. But he also has the guys on that are like, I've been doing this three years.

David Kline [01:13:37]:
Here's my icon toolbox, here's my, my whatever. And I, you know, I Think it's cool to, to fuel the passion because it takes passion to do this, but it's also cool to show the, you know, the, the dichotomy of like, this guy is a successful professional guy and he's not broke to buy tools, you know, And I tell my snap on guy who the current guy we have now, I've known since middle school, I'm like, dude, I never would have bought this stuff if it cost what it costs now. Then, like, hey, just hasn't kept up. I mean, I just bought a Triton D10 the other day and it took me. I actually bought it. It was a trade in because I just couldn't stomach the price of a new one.

Jeff Compton [01:14:16]:
Yeah.

David Kline [01:14:16]:
And I have one of those auto fix D2 lights, the little $300Amazon deal. And that's the best thing I've ever used my whole life is $300.

Jeff Compton [01:14:23]:
Isn't that amazing?

David Kline [01:14:24]:
Eh, and, and I think, you know, you got these guys that, that now with YouTube and Stuff. It's like, hey, you've got companies like Astro, you've got companies like Vim, you've got Harbor Freight. You know, the cost of admittance isn't what it is what it used to be, and it's, it's not what it needs to be now. Yeah, yeah. Somebody comes in, you know, customers come back in the shop and see these huge toolboxes and they think that guy really knows what. But I've worked with a lot of people that had a lot of stuff that didn't know how to use a damn bit of it. And so, you know, when I was an apprentice, my guys were like, hey, if you borrow this tool three times, you need to go on the truck and buy it. Yeah.

David Kline [01:15:00]:
And with the exception of torque wrenches and stuff like that, I'll pretty much let anybody use anything. Because this kid that's making 15 bucks an hour, that wants to try to grow a little bit in what he can do, but needs a tool, like, I'm gonna let him borrow it because I don't want him going on the tool truck, spending a thousand dollars on it to do it. Yeah. And it's, you know, it's an important lesson that, that these guys, you know, need to learn. I have a really good relationship with my Matco guy. If my $100,000 toolbox didn't tell you that. And, you know, we joke all the time, it's like, man, a new guy shows up, he goes on there, he gets a credit account, he buys Oakley sunglasses and beef Jerky?

Jeff Compton [01:15:38]:
Yeah.

David Kline [01:15:38]:
And it's like, man, you're paying interest on beef jerky, and you try to take those guys, and it's like, hey, look, man, you know, you can spend your money a little. A little better. Check the used tool drawer out. Check this out. You know, I used to hit the pawn shop on the corner up all the time on my lunch break. Because you get some good deals. Yeah. But it's, you know, it's hard and it's rough for.

David Kline [01:16:01]:
For me. You know, I'm very OCD about my stuff. So it's like, you know, man, I paid a lot of money for this. I'm just gonna hand it to you. You better damn well bring it back. Like you got it it. And if you do, we're great. If you don't, well, you.

David Kline [01:16:13]:
You burned your bridge. Like, it's over.

Jeff Compton [01:16:16]:
You'll find out. You'll find a way to do it with a claw hammer and a pair of. Because, you know, like, that's. That's all you have. I remember there was. This would be one of my less flattering moments I can remember I was working with a young apprentice a few years back, and we were taking a Degas bottle off of a Power Stroke, and we were trying to move it to do, I think, get the fan shrouded. And he grabs this pair of pliers and I'm not watching, and he. It was like this old pair of slip joint pliers, and he's trying to get the hose off the Degas bottle to move the Degas bottle, which he didn't.

Jeff Compton [01:16:53]:
Again, I wasn't. I was busy doing something else, and I wasn't watching. He could have taken it off the radiator and much easier, but he thought I would get the Degas bottle off, right? And he goes and grabs it with these pair of slip joint pliers, and he crunches it too hard and he breaks the Degas bottle. Little nip off side of it, right? I was already so frustrated with everything else he'd ever done that I took those pair of pliers and I chucked them through the shop out into the parking lot somewhere, right? And I said, if you ever effing bring those back near me again, I'm gonna, you know, not shove them in the parking lot, shove them somewhere else. They were a pair of pliers that his grandpa had given them.

David Kline [01:17:29]:
Oh, that's rough.

Jeff Compton [01:17:33]:
Yeah. So not my best all right.

David Kline [01:17:37]:
Moment.

Jeff Compton [01:17:38]:
My point was that they were not the correct tool. And he was a kid that had. I would say, okay, Kaylee, was his name. You need to buy this and you need to buy that and you need to buy this. Maybe every time I'd be showing them, well, this is a better tool for this and so on.

David Kline [01:17:55]:
So.

Jeff Compton [01:17:56]:
And he would have very limited budget and what he would spend. He walked out to the snap on show. So this is kind of my redeeming quality. He walked out to the snap on truck. Now he was hired mostly to do oil changes and tires. And he didn't have a torque wrench. I had a spare torque wrench and let him use. He didn't have a half inch gun.

Jeff Compton [01:18:12]:
I had a spare one of those. Let him use it. He comes into one day, gets off the snap on truck. He's got an electric ratchet, electric 3, 8 ratchet, 500 ratchet.

David Kline [01:18:22]:
Oh, yeah, like, are you, how are.

Jeff Compton [01:18:24]:
You going to do tires of that? He kind of looks at me and he kind of laughs. I said, no, seriously, how are you going to do tires with that? Because I said, like, let's be real, Kaylee, like, you're doing a lot of tires and you're using my tools and I don't own that 500 electric ratchet.

David Kline [01:18:40]:
Right?

Jeff Compton [01:18:41]:
When the dealer came back next week, I walked out with him. And I said to the dealer, Kelly's changed his mind about buying this ratchet. He'd like to return it. And he says, okay, no problem. And then Kaylee left the thing. And that dealer and I had a nice long talk about how there's too many dealers. They're not advocates for the kids that are coming in, right? That's where we don't say it enough in this industry. We have to advocate for how they're spending their money.

Jeff Compton [01:19:09]:
Because he goes, it's a promo. He makes his commission. And he's. He kind of says to me, he says, well, I don't tell them what to buy. And I go, I know you don't tell them what to buy, but you should be kind of maybe saying to them, okay, that's not a bad idea to buy that, but what do you really need more?

David Kline [01:19:27]:
Right?

Jeff Compton [01:19:28]:
And this is where like. So I've lost some of the love for the dealers is because it's like I've seen some shady. And you and I, probably a similar age, can remember the dealers weren't like that back then, set you up and say, this is what you're gonna need and this is what you should be buying. And are you doing a lot of this? Hey, these guys now, they don't care.

David Kline [01:19:48]:
Yeah, well. And Most of them don't know what the tools do. I mean, that's, you know, a lot of, I mean, my, you know, I had tool guys when I first started that were techs, you know, and they sell tools now. Yes. But, you know, I, I think the dealers are struggling. Especially, you know, these, the, the new guys coming in, they don't want to invest. You know, we made, I made so many sacrifices. Terrifyingly high tool bills and stuff.

David Kline [01:20:11]:
Because I thought one day I'm gonna reach the end of this and I'll have my tools and I'll be attack, right? And you know, you see it now that it's like, well, we're gonna put this flyer out with all this really cool shiny stuff and we're gonna lure these guys in because they're not interested in mainline tools. They're interested in, you know, electric impacts and stuff like that. Just had a conversation last week with my Matco guy. You know, Matt Co makes a torque wrench for torquing tires. It's all it's for. It's got like four or five presets, click style torque wrench. And express guys will come on the truck and he'll be like, hey, you're doing tires. You want a torque wrench? This is the one you want.

David Kline [01:20:46]:
No, no, I want the digital one. No, you don't want the digital one. You don't want to use the digital one for tires. You want this one. Well, with the digital one's cooler and it's like, well, yeah, I get that. And kudos to him for advocating for what they need because that one's like 125 bucks. The digital one's like six. But, you know, they come over and open my toolbox and they see the three piece, you know, $3,000 set of snap on torque wrenches.

David Kline [01:21:08]:
And they think, well, that's what I need. If you open the drawer a little further, you see the $150 one. One like, and, and it's, you know, you get these guys, they dig this hole with the tool guy and then they can't pay their bills and then they skip out, they sell the tools and it's like now they've, they've tainted the fun part of this. You know, I mean, I, I have tons of tools for that one thing or that two things. And it's like, yeah, yeah, it's stupid. You look at it, this guy doesn't need all these tools. But when I've got that bolt that takes you 20 minutes to get out. And I could do it in two minutes because of some dumb YouTube video I saw where some dude did this.

David Kline [01:21:45]:
Like it's absolutely worth it to me because I have all the other stuff. But when you've got especially express guys and some just full text are just using the janky his crap and they come get you and they're like, I can't get this bolt off. And it's like, well you've done rounded the thing off. Let me see your socket. And it's like, dude, what did you, you know, it's like from Walmart and it's like, I get you not going to spend a million dollars on a snap on truck and you shouldn't, but you're hurting yourself. And it's like, I get that there's an investment here, but if you want to do this, there has to be some commitment on your part. You got money for vapes or weed or whatever else. Like, you know, and, and then you get into the whole like, well, now I'm frustrated because now I've got to go help you.

David Kline [01:22:30]:
And you know, you, I'm helping you take my money too, because that's something I could be doing. And so it's rough. You know, my, my heart breaks for these express guys because you know, when I came into this industry, dude, it was, it was a dream. Like I get to show up every day, I get to work on cars. You know, I haven't felt that way in probably 10 years, 15, 25 years. But you know, there, there was this, there was this just environment that, that kind of fostered that culture. You know, there was training, there was mentors, there were guys that were like, like, I'm gonna help you, I'm gonna get looked out for while I do it, but we're gonna go on this journey together. And now it's just like they're just meat fed to the grinder, man.

David Kline [01:23:14]:
It's like, come in and be productive. You have to be productive. You don't know how to do anything. Be productive.

Jeff Compton [01:23:19]:
When I can think of back to the days of the dealer that for me one of the high or the good points was, was that we would talk about the pattern failure. And the muscle memory thing, right, is I can remember when the first rack and pinion took me like like five hours to do to where I could get them down to where I was doing them in 80 minutes, you know what I mean? Like, it was fast and that was something that like was pretty cool because as a team you're all motivating. Not necessarily like he's my teammate, right. Because I was the type of guy that, like, we were all trying to step on each other's neck. You know what I mean? Like, we were competitive. We didn't. Yeah, you knew who I didn't like, and I knew who didn't like me. And it was good.

Jeff Compton [01:23:55]:
We were good that way, but it was always, like, it pushed us. And the dealer. The dealer environment pushes you to become faster and better or better faster, at least. You know, I don't want to mix those two words. Always the same time, but you know what I mean? More efficient. Right. You still did the rack. This rack left.

Jeff Compton [01:24:13]:
It didn't leak. It didn't fall out. You got to where you're doing them in 80 minutes. It used to take you four hours. That's. That's progress. That's evolving. As a technician, sometimes we get into the aftermarket side, where it could be a long time before you get that same repair again, if at all.

Jeff Compton [01:24:30]:
It's so asinine to me to think that, like, a, we should expect them to hit the number the first time, and B, that, like, the next time they do it six months, a year, 18 months later, that they do it faster.

David Kline [01:24:43]:
Right.

Jeff Compton [01:24:44]:
Remember 18 days ago, what I did?

David Kline [01:24:47]:
Right.

Jeff Compton [01:24:47]:
Anymore?

David Kline [01:24:49]:
Yeah. Well, with Honda's, you know, we have the. The piston ring deal on the Odysseys and the pilots. The first one I did took me a day and a half. At the high point, I was doing two and a half a day because you just. I know what tools to grab. I know what to do. Everything's out.

David Kline [01:25:02]:
Pull one out, pull another one in. Let's go. And, you know, I had an apprentice. You bring the apprentice over and you go stand here and watch me. And then the next one, you go, here, you take this off. I'll do this. You do this. And now my apprentice that I had, there's a Honda Master Tech still working at that dealership.

David Kline [01:25:20]:
And it gives you a feeling of accomplishment. You know, I have 25 years in this industry. I'm. I'm. I'm reaching the end. You know, I'm. I'm a big guy. I've been a big guy my whole life.

David Kline [01:25:31]:
But, like, I'm wore out. You know, it's hard on the body. And it's like.

Jeff Compton [01:25:35]:
It is.

David Kline [01:25:36]:
What's next for me is that I throw my hands up and quit. I put $250,000 worth of tools in my garage at home, and I go do something with all of this experience and knowledge. It's just gone. And we've lost so much of that in this industry, and popular opinion, unpopular opinion, dealer greed's to blame for it. If you've. If you've got guys that have knowledge and you see that that knowledge is not being able to be conveyed, you're only getting half of your value out of this guy. And unfortunately, your only value as a technician is how many hours you turn today, period.

Jeff Compton [01:26:12]:
It doesn't what you can fix. You only matters what you did yesterday.

David Kline [01:26:18]:
And I actually listened to one of your. One of your shows earlier today, and you were talking to somebody about comebacks, which is a huge Jesus Christ thing with us. And it's like, you know, if a car comes in with eight things on it and it comes back for one of them, you had a failure. You didn't have a, you know, seven successes and one misstep.

Jeff Compton [01:26:36]:
Yeah.

David Kline [01:26:36]:
And. And we deal with that now. I had one this morning. Customer came in, had all these problems. We. We fixed the car. I come in this morning, the advisors stand at my toolbox, the car's not fixed. I said, okay, well, what's wrong with it? Well, I don't know.

David Kline [01:26:51]:
They said, it's not fixed. And I said, well, what's. What's not fixed? Like, the body computer was bad. It was killing the battery. The windows didn't work, the locks didn't work. Let's walk out to the car. So we walk out to the car, the windows work, the lock, or the car starts right up, everything's good. What.

David Kline [01:27:06]:
What's not fixed? Well, why. Why don't we know that? Like, what did we miss? And if. If we missed it, then at what point where was the ball dropped? And let's evaluate that, because if you come to me and you go, you messed something up, I'll be damned. You know, And. And it's. It's. Some of that's on me. Some of it's arrogance, some of it's just frustration.

David Kline [01:27:29]:
But it's like, you know, I. I had a car the other day that the customer said ever since I did this repair to it, their check engine light's been on. I'm like, okay, well, let's see. I pulled a ticket. I did that repair 14,000 miles ago. Now, how many levels of vetting did that ticket have to go through before somebody handed it to me and said, you screwed this up. Yeah. And my reaction is, get the hell out of my face.

David Kline [01:27:55]:
Like, you know, and what. What it really means is, is we want you to look at this, and we don't want to tell the customer, they have to pay for it. Yeah. And if I messed it up, if I legitimately messed it up, the customer should not have to pay for it. And I will absolutely take ownership of it and fix it. But as a prideful person that really tries to do the best job they can, that is 100 the wrong way to approach me, first of all. And second of all, it happens every day. You know, Honda has a ton of recalls.

David Kline [01:28:27]:
You do a recall to a car, now it's back. Now my air conditioner's not working. Come back. Well, I didn't work on the air conditioner. Well, yeah, but we need you to look at it why? And then you look at it and you go, hey, they hit something in the road and tore the condenser open. And they look at you like, oh, he's up here making excuses to get out of it being his fault. And it's like, no, no, it's not my fault.

Jeff Compton [01:28:47]:
Like, so are you like me? And you immediately jump to this that you need your creation is to the jump to the fact that the most advisors are pansies and don't really want to have the tough conversations and draw the hard line and say, sorry, ma', am, you're gonna pay, or, sir, oh, there. Initial inspection.

David Kline [01:29:04]:
They're terrified of the customer.

Jeff Compton [01:29:06]:
See, you'd be kicking your lunch bill down the road, as they used to tell me all the time if you did that. Because it's. You're literally hired to have tough conversations. That should be the number one thing that Brian. Brian Pollock says some people just got to do hard. And that's what an advisor is. Unfortunately, you have to have tough conversations. That is your job, to have tough conversations.

Jeff Compton [01:29:27]:
Now, I realize we as the industry have dropped the ball sometimes of what we pay them, and some of them a whole lot more. Some of them, though, are making over six figures a year. Still pulling that shady like, you're just talking about today. And those people. I'm not kidding when I said I used to be the type that I would, like, get very aggressive with advisors when they didn't want to do their work and get a little bit handsy almost with that, because it's like, I'm a bigger guy, too. And it's like, if I want to grab you and shake you, you to understand what I'm trying to say here is like, and I'm the same. If I screwed up, yeah, I'm not expecting to get paid, but I remember a Nissan Versa. We did break the coil springs.

Jeff Compton [01:30:10]:
So he's through the coil spring recall all the time. And we did the coils for. I did the coil spring recalling this Nissan Versa. And this guy comes back like four months later and he says, ever since the recall was done, my AC doesn't work. Okay, cool.

David Kline [01:30:23]:
So.

Jeff Compton [01:30:25]:
So I don't even rack the car because I'm already doing something else with it. Like, it's your comeback. Okay, sure it is. And whatever. So I don't rack the car and I go out and I've got the hood open and I'm watching it and the AC clutch is not cycling. Okay. That's probably why they see it, right? Then I run through the quick IPDM test that you could do with like some key cycles and some button pushes and stuff. And it still doesn't do it.

Jeff Compton [01:30:47]:
Because regardless of whatever, anything is happening, if the circuit's good, it should click it right as a sensor being down or whatever. Pressure sensor, whatever, it should still close up. Click.

David Kline [01:30:58]:
Didn't do it.

Jeff Compton [01:30:59]:
So then I crawl underneath and I look, the wire going to the compressor that you can't see from the top is broke off. Now, there's no way I did that by doing his recall right to the advisor. And I go, okay, you're gonna need to pay me an hour now, because I've diagnosed why this doesn't work. Oh, he's not gonna pay that, right? Okay, so he's not gonna pay it. So then I go into the service manager and I say, hey, Brian, I just diagnosed this. And you know, they're not going to charge the customer and they don't want to pay me. And his answer to me is why? And I'm like, that's a great question. He's like.

Jeff Compton [01:31:36]:
And then he goes, well, why don't they want to charge the customer? Brian, you're in your office, they're at their counter. I'm the. I don't know the answer to either. Here's what just happened. Go fucking fix this. And that's. That's how I would be.

David Kline [01:31:51]:
Right?

Jeff Compton [01:31:51]:
Because obviously there's not a process there. There should be, right? Obviously. Like, somebody's gonna pay me my hour. Somebody's gonna pay me 28 bucks. She can. Or you can. But I'm getting 28 bucks, right?

David Kline [01:32:05]:
Yep. Well, and you know, my. My thing is I like to go up front and ask them why they don't just go work for a charity because they want to give everything away. And look, I get it sometimes I'm sure these customers, they just. Oh, they've got the saddest story and they're crippled with CSI and Google reviews and all that. And I understand that, but see this, this all goes back to the flat rate thing. The only period, value, period I have is in what you pay me in that moment. You don't pay me unless I.

David Kline [01:32:39]:
Or I don't earn anything unless I am getting paid for my time. And when you're in a situation where you've got that going on, you've got, you know, parts ordered the wrong parts or this, that and the other, and it's like all of this that is. Is just a bottleneck to productivity only penalizes me. And it happens day after day and you just get so mad and it's like, God, this is so easy to fix, but we don't want to fix it. And you know, 25 years in, man, it's been a lot. It's been a long time. And there's days, I mean, I've flown off the handle and gone back up front to one of my advisors and been like, like, look, I was out of line. I'm sorry.

David Kline [01:33:17]:
Yeah, but sometimes it's just, you know, it's like I. I'm my only advocate and that's what I'm doing. I'm advocating. And you have, Mary, twice. You've not paid me for my time for this, and you've impugned my ability by telling me that I messed this car up. And I'll tell you if, if, if I mess something up, if I break something, if I do something wrong, or I am the first person to walk in my boss's office and go, hey, man, I messed this up. I'm sorry. Let's fix it.

David Kline [01:33:50]:
If I have a car that comes back because I did something wrong or I got called away or something like that and something missed, let's go. I don't expect to be paid for it. I don't expect me to be whole from it. It's taught me a lesson that apparently I needed to learn. But the presumption that everything that comes in that the customer says is obviously my fault and under no circumstances at all should I need to be paid for that is asinine. And it wouldn't be an issue if the flat rate thing wasn't an issue, because sure, whatever. I'll spend all day looking at so and so's squeak noise from her left tail light. As a matter of fact, I had a car the other day that's a perfect example.

David Kline [01:34:31]:
I did a valve adjustment on this car. Car came in maintenance, little Honda crv. Yeah, The. The lady picks the car up, leaves, whatever. She comes back and she says, my car's messed up. It. When I accelerate and I turn my headlights on, the car won't go over 40 ever since.

Jeff Compton [01:34:53]:
Wow.

David Kline [01:34:54]:
So the advisor comes and tells me, and I'm like, you know, valve adjustment on these things. I've done them a thousand times. I can't fathom anything that would make this happen. Maybe she's just crazy. So the car comes in. I, you know, I hop in it, I go drive it. I'm cruising down the road, 60 miles an hour. I click the headlights on, car falls right on its face, won't accelerate anything.

David Kline [01:35:12]:
And I'm like, this is interesting. So I pull it back in. I spend 15, 20 minutes driving it around, and I observe that when you turn the headlights on, the data list for the ABS says that the brake switch is on. Okay. And so I start looking at it, and what had happened is the parking light filament in the dual element bulb had failed and had contacted the brake light filament. So when you turned the headlights on, it back fed the tail light circuit it. Which made the car think your foot was on the brake. And because it's drive by wire, it was lifting the throttle.

Jeff Compton [01:35:43]:
Yeah.

David Kline [01:35:43]:
And the car was slowing down. So I go out there and I'm like, yep, definitely not me. It needs a bulb. And that's it. And the customer left mad. She was pissed off that we didn't figure this out before it happened. I guess the advisor didn't, you know, didn't charge the customer. And of course, the service manager, hey, he's a great guy.

David Kline [01:36:03]:
He really does a lot to look out for us. He made me whole. I got paid my diag. But, like, I'm excited. Like, this is one of those things that you read in a textbook, right? The bulb failed and shorted. Like, holy shit, that's a fantastic diagnostic. And I figured it out in 15 minutes, right. We're on down the road, and all I got was grief that the customer had to come back.

David Kline [01:36:22]:
And I felt like shit because my service manager had to pay me for time. That somebody, maybe not him, but definitely the advisor didn't think I deserved.

Jeff Compton [01:36:30]:
Yeah.

David Kline [01:36:31]:
And that same day, as funny as this is, I was listening to Joshua Taylor. I had listened to him on your podcast, and then I was listening to him on that other one. He did wrenches. Yeah. And, you know, he's talking about mental health. And. And honestly, I think that was the day I sent you that message. And I said, you know, Listening to your podcast, I've never felt more heard.

David Kline [01:36:56]:
And, you know, it's a thing. I know we've been at this for a while, but you. But it's a thing that never gets talked about. It's, like, taboo in this industry. But this is an incredibly difficult profession to do. And you hear about mental health in every overused context in today's world, where people get PTSD from somebody saying something mean to them. But it's something that guys like yourself and Joshua have are bringing to light, that needs to be brought to light, because this is a damn hard job to do. There's a lot of days that it just feels like every single aspect of it is just.

David Kline [01:37:41]:
It's just. It's just bad. They're out to get you. You know, I listened to a podcast where a guy was saying that he got out of this field and went to go do something else, and he had been at that job for a little while, and he realized that the problem with what we do is that nobody's really happy we're doing it. Yeah. You know, the customer's not happy. They're not happy. They're coming in and paying you a thousand dollars to fix their car.

David Kline [01:38:02]:
They're happy the car is fixed. They're not happy that you're fixed. And our society has taught us that they probably got ripped off by you. So even though you did everything you could have possibly done, and you did a hell of a job at it, and you beat the published time and the car is fixed, and the quality of work is such that you open the hood and you'd never even know it was done. But they're not happy. The service manager is happy the customer's gone, but he's not exactly happy that you make $35 an hour, because that's less profit. Maybe not the service manager, maybe the dealer principal.

Jeff Compton [01:38:34]:
Yes.

David Kline [01:38:35]:
You know, the advisor is not happy because they think you're a dumb grease monkey, and they don't understand why you make so much money. Your coworker's not happy because you did that job, and half the time they could. So now, and you go home and you think, what the hell am I even doing this for? And you do it 20 times a day. You know, you come in, some days, you come in and it's everything. Your hand is just a bomb. And. And I'm a pretty egotistical person sometimes. You know, I think I'm damn good at what I do.

David Kline [01:39:08]:
And I think there's a lot of people that are in the Same situation. I've met. I've met guys that weren't worth holding a wrench for me. And I've met guys that I'm just in all of Paul Danner, like, holy cow. Like, the way that he does stuff. You know, I've been watching, you know, I've watched chickens and chuck. Even Ryan Mullen, you know, he's been doing this for like no length of time. And I watch him do stuff and I'm like, damn, he's a baby.

David Kline [01:39:33]:
Yeah. And it's like, you know, there's such incredible people. And you sit here and you think, when's the last time somebody told him he did a good job? Because nobody tells me I do a good job.

Jeff Compton [01:39:45]:
Here's. I gotta stop you for a second because there's. We gotta unwrap some things from all that. So people have known me for a long time, have always been like, I'm hammering on the head of, like, we gotta get paid for your example of what you talked about that car. Right? And here's the thing. I hammer on the point that you got to get paid. You got to get paid. You got to get paid.

Jeff Compton [01:40:03]:
And you made a very good point. Because you know why? Nobody says, amazing. Nobody says, great job, David. Nobody says, holy. Nobody else in the shop would have figured that out today, let alone maybe at all. It would have gotten an ABS module, It would have gotten a brake switch or what it got. Where did you go? You knew exactly how you're. So that's why even when we.

Jeff Compton [01:40:26]:
When we always see like the technician, when they're always hammering on them, like, you got to pay them, you got to pay them. It's because nobody else in this industry yet has caught up to the idea that. It's like if you just said, said thank you a few more times, you wouldn't have to pay us so goddamn much.

David Kline [01:40:41]:
Absolutely.

Jeff Compton [01:40:42]:
Now, here's what makes me sad about. I see Ryan, and you're exactly right. Nobody probably other than his. His circle that he's on with Tick tock and everything else has said, oh my God, Ryan, great job. The other night, that guy at 10 o' clock was night was working on a car and going live. Right? There's something to be said. Yeah, we're. You and I are cut from the same cloth.

Jeff Compton [01:41:10]:
We're keeners, right? Like, it's like, I gotta know what was wrong. I gotta understand this. I want to be the guy in the shop. But there's. It comes on a healthy level for some of us where we're seeking something that money won't buy that we don't get at home. Maybe we didn't get it as a kid. I don't know. Right.

Jeff Compton [01:41:31]:
And this is the dichotomy of all of this is really weird. Why we. What compulses us to do what we do. And I. I joke and I say, you got to be half nuts to pick this, but I'm not kidding when I say it, right? Because there's something about taking something broken and making a whole again and making it right again.

David Kline [01:41:50]:
And. And.

Jeff Compton [01:41:51]:
And doctors, and it's. It's like you're a miracle. They want to hug you. They name their kids after you. Like. Like mechanics bid on you and resent you even though you do it. And it isn't just the pay, but we collect the pay because you're never gonna say thank you for doing it. Now, I understand some customers are the exception.

David Kline [01:42:10]:
Sure. Absolutely.

Jeff Compton [01:42:11]:
Reality, like, you're. What you just described here is happens way more than somebody comes up and shakes their hand and says, my God, Dave, I took that car to four other people and he couldn't fix it. Thank you. Here's the reality. They begrudgingly pay the fifth person that finally fixes it, and they go, they're all a bunch of thieves.

David Kline [01:42:28]:
Right? You included. Right. Because you're. You're in the circle whether you want to be or not.

Jeff Compton [01:42:34]:
So that's enough of me cussing and ranting, because that's been. That was a long one for me. But you're exactly right. And the mental health thing is we're going to continue to talk about it, and we're going to continue to meet these young men that are. And women that are moving into the industry so that I can give them a cautionary tale of. It's like, be good at what you're doing and be focused and work hard and hustle and have that drive. But, man, don't let it define you.

David Kline [01:43:03]:
Yeah, well, the podcast that you had with Joshua, you're talking about the guy that you had known, you know, and he's at the dealership now, and he's just doing it all. And, man, I mean, I'm the guy. Even now, you know, hey, the tour room needs to be cleaned out. Let's go clean this shit out. Let's. Let's do it. Like, because to me, you know, and this. This is paramount in my.

David Kline [01:43:23]:
My personal life, my relationships, everything, you know, my. The way my mind works is if there's a problem, let's fix the problem. If we're not going to fix it. I don't want to talk about it because obviously we're not, we're not, we're not doing anything right? So if the shit's dirty, let's do it. If the tools need to be put away, let's put them away. And eventually you get to the point where it's like, well, I'm the only guy doing it. So you don't, to hell with it. They don't want to drain the flush machines.

David Kline [01:43:45]:
I'm not draining the flush machines genes, but my personality type. Your personality type you feel like about it and you're just like, well I'm less right. And, and you know, that's the way I feel. Every time one of my advisors comes like, oh, you gotta come back. I'm like, because no matter what justification I find, whether it's my fault and I take ownership of it or it's not, that's a hit to me. And they're up front going, gosh, this guy has a lot of cars that comes back. Well, it's like, no, Linda, you never got a decent explanation from the customer. You give me a ticket on a car with 150,000 miles on it says car rattles and I get in it and I'm like, oh shit, it needs a timing chain.

David Kline [01:44:24]:
Wow. But that's not what the customer hears. The customer hears the stupid coat hook in the back. So now the customers mad. I sold them a two thousand dollar timing chain job because their coat hook rattles. And then they come back and somebody else gets it and goes, oh, he's an idiot. All they needed was this 90 cent screw and it's like no, jackass, like that's not how this works at all. No.

David Kline [01:44:44]:
And it's like great. So obviously 25 years, I don't know my ass from nothing. And that's what you take home, you know, and then you go home. I, I came home a couple of weeks ago, I was so mad about something that happened and you know, my wife comes up and she's like, what's wrong? And I just woo. We, we let it out and my dog wouldn't come to me for the whole rest of the night. And I felt like the biggest piece of crap. And I'm like, what is this job even doing to me? Like this is what I'm bringing home. But you get up every day and you go do it and it's like, you know, you show up and you do 200 productivity and you do it five days a week, six days a week, every single day.

David Kline [01:45:21]:
Your vacation pay is 20 hours a day. And nobody gives a, Nobody says, hey, that's good job, we really appreciate it, but they're going to call you in there and go, hey man, I got this guy on the phone that's really upset because you did his recall and his AC doesn't work. Work. And it's like, oh, so that's all I am. Okay, well, great. And then you go home with it and it's like, well, you know, the wife's upstairs working, the kids at ball, you know, at band practice. And you just sit in it and you just sit there and you just think it. What, like, what am I even doing? What's the point to any of it? Yeah.

David Kline [01:45:52]:
You know, and, and the other side of this is doing something that's useful to people. You get a hell of a lot of friends that need you to be useful to them.

Jeff Compton [01:46:01]:
Yeah.

David Kline [01:46:02]:
And you don't really. People don't realize, people that, that hold no real intrinsic value to other people don't realize how emotionally difficult it is to be somebody that does. I've got a shitload of friends, man. They need me once a month when their inspections expired or every time the check engine lights on. Yeah. You know, and some of them are man enough to hit me up and go, hey man, it's been a long time, but my, my shit's messed up. But a lot of them are like, hey, how's your son? I saw, he graduated. And it's like, yeah, get to the point.

David Kline [01:46:30]:
Point. Yeah. And it's, you know, it's hard. And, and I have tech friends and we sit around and we talk for hours because, you know, we speak the same language, we're cut from the same cloth. But you know, it's so, it's so frustrating to just be like, you know, and, and there's songs about this, right? Like your only worth as a man is what you can provide to people. Yeah. And when, when you're a high performing person, you're a high providing person. That's the norm.

David Kline [01:46:59]:
You know, it's like if you have two kids and one of them's a genius and one of them's not, you expect a genius to be smart, but you reward the hell out of the dumb one when they do something good, you know, and as an over performing person, you never get your flowers, but you, you get a lot of criticism. You come into work and you really just mess one up and it's a big deal. You're getting phone calls at home and it's just like, wow, I'm just gonna have to sit on this the whole rest of the night, think the rest of the week. And it's like, what about the. You know, what about the 125 hours I turned last week? What about the. This? What about that? Nobody. That's just normal.

Jeff Compton [01:47:36]:
That's expected, and that's going back to we. I want people to understand when they listen to me that it goes beyond whether flat rate is right or whether you should pay. Like it. It goes beyond the pay thing. It goes beyond the whole culture of how we actually treat the technicians in this industry. And I'm not. Again, I gotta. I gotta always go back and say.

Jeff Compton [01:47:56]:
Because otherwise people come in. I don't treat my people like that. I understand, I understand. But yet I can have over 200.

David Kline [01:48:05]:
Guests now on, and they all tell the same thing.

Jeff Compton [01:48:08]:
I'll share very similar stories of it. Once in, in their lifetime, they have worked for somebody who treated them like that. So we can say that probably for the most part, it is the norm to not treat us the way we should be treated.

David Kline [01:48:21]:
Okay, Right.

Jeff Compton [01:48:23]:
Everybody goes on about the pay thing, the pay thing. We're going to talk about that till I'm dead and then somebody will pick up the torch and we'll talk about it after.

David Kline [01:48:30]:
That's good.

Jeff Compton [01:48:31]:
We have to change the way we treat technicians. And it's not. We have to get past the idea of pay. We have to see them, stop seeing them as an expense and stop seeing them as a. As a commodity, as a. The horse in the, in the field pulling. Right. We have to see them.

Jeff Compton [01:48:48]:
They're actually. They're beyond what I've always said they're. The product that you're selling is them. It's beyond that. They're not an expense. They are literally the only frigging thing you have to offer the public. If you don't have a good one, you got nothing. I don't care if you got the best coffee in the waiting room.

Jeff Compton [01:49:05]:
I don't give a shit if you got the best magazine, the best WI fi. It does not matter. It doesn't. If the person like Dave isn't bringing their A game that day and fixing the car, guess what? You've got a day that ain't gonna go well for you. So.

David Kline [01:49:21]:
And that has long systemic effects sometimes.

Jeff Compton [01:49:24]:
So to think that then all of a sudden you should just roll your eyes and go, I don't want to charge this customer or have the cup difficult conversations. They should be so advocating for us in the back, they should be like saying, there's no possible way Dave could have made that mistake.

David Kline [01:49:40]:
Exactly.

Jeff Compton [01:49:41]:
You're gonna start by paying 200 to check this out. And trust me, Mrs. Smith, if we erred, you don't owe me nothing. But if most likely Dave didn't screw this up. So are you willing to pay the 200 today, yes or no? And Mrs. Smith says, hell no. Say thank you, Mrs. Smith.

David Kline [01:49:59]:
Next right. And on.

Jeff Compton [01:50:01]:
That's how they should be advocating at the front counter for us, not the other way of saying, I really don't want to piss off Mrs. Smith because it's Monday morning and I had a rough weekend and I fought with my boyfriend like none of that shit matters or just. Yeah.

David Kline [01:50:16]:
Or just the predisposition that, oh, yeah, you obviously did it wrong. You know, like, do I historically do it wrong? If not, give me the benefit of the doubt. It goes a long way. Yeah, yeah, I, you know, when I found your podcast, and I always love the disclaimers about flat rate. I get it. You know, I don't mean for a moment to sit here and badmouth an industry that has provided me with a hell of a life. I mean, I have a beautiful home, I have cars, but every single thing that I have was paid for with pieces of my time and 25 years of those pieces. It's nice to be able to listen to someone else or to sit here and have these conversations, and they're conversations that are very difficult to have in the context of a dealership because, oh, well, you don't like it, get your.

David Kline [01:51:05]:
And leave. You know, I've got a drawer full of applications, and it's like, well, do you. Because I've been here four years and I haven't seen a single person come in here after me that can do what I can do. But that makes me cocky. And it's like, I'm not cocky. I'm, I'm relevant. Understand that. And I, I, like I said, I love my boss.

David Kline [01:51:24]:
They are so overwhelmed by the, the, the above them that I get it. You know, when, when, when you're being drug in a million different directions, the guys that you can depend on that, that perform, that do it, they become the only real constant you have, and you take it for granted. You know, like you're not going to hit the nail that's not sticking up. Right, right. And, you know, I've. I've come in my boss's office mad about something and just, whoa. And you know, afterwards, it's like, you know, cooler heads prevail. And it's like, look, you have to understand the same thing that get.

David Kline [01:51:59]:
That makes me sit here and go, I don't give a damn if it kills me. I'm gonna figure out what's wrong with this car is the same thing that's gonna send me in here going, what the f. Is going on? That passion, that's the trade off. Like, that's what you have. That's the toll you have to pay to get what you get out of me. And I think as an industry, as a whole, if we would stop taking the standpoint, and there's bad. There's bad guys in this industry, and they need to be run the hell out of the industry, period. I get it.

David Kline [01:52:28]:
If you've got a problem in your house, you' address the problem, but you don't burn the damn house down. You know, and, and, and you have to get to a point that you demand the respect that you're not receiving. And it's, you know, you got guys, my toolbox has wheels on it. Absolutely. But you've devoted years to this place that you're at. You've built these relationships, and it's like, just hear me out. Like, understand where I'm coming from. Don't dismiss me because I'm mad, but understand that I've been mad for six weeks.

David Kline [01:52:59]:
And, and this was the straw that broke the camel's back. You know, I give everything I can give to this. And, and all I'm asking for is, is the opportunity to be heard and to be recognized for it. And when, when the, the dealerships and the, the employers and stuff realize that and stop just, oh, anytime a text says anything I don't like, remind them there's replacements, because there's not. This industry isn't the biggest technician short of it's ever seen. And Covid was the nail in the coffin. How many dealerships, when Covid hit, said, hey, guys, we don't have any work. You're not getting paid by.

David Kline [01:53:34]:
You know, the only reason I'm still in this industry is because I was at a good independent that paid me and kept me here for better or worse. And it's like, you lost all these people. All this talent is gone. I hear you talk about the Goodyear plant all the time. How many guys, how much knowledge is just removed from this industry? And you can't. You can't fill those holes. Goals and what do we have for it? You saved a little bit of money for a little while, like, give Your guys, the benefit of the doubts because I have to provide for my family. The minute I can't provide for my family, nothing else matters.

David Kline [01:54:07]:
We'll burn every bridge, we'll scorch every piece of earth until I can provide for my family. And most of the guys that I, I meet, most of the guys I've worked with, that's all we want. But at the same time, if, if we felt appreciated and valued, you know, then, then the money is almost secondary. Like, you have to make enough to pay your bills and survive. But, you know, if my boss sat me down tomorrow and said, I tell you what, I'm taking a dollar an hour away, but I am going to go out of my way to recognize your accomplishments. Take it. Great. Because I don't get that.

David Kline [01:54:44]:
I don't get that in my, in my personal life, you know, and it's, it's, it would, it would heal a lot of that. And if, If I feel like I'm valued and I'm doing well, then when the guy next to me is getting his ass kicked, I'm not sitting there like, oh, it's about time, gravy boy. I hope you drown on that. I'm gonna walk over and be like, hey man, let's figure this out. And you, you foster the growth that this, this needs. Because when I lock my and leave for my last day, everything that's in my head never made it to any of these express guys. It never made it to any of these four or five year texts. And because I was never shown the respect and the value, those guys don't see me as a value.

David Kline [01:55:25]:
Like the, the other text, the apprentices, whatever. And really, they should be like, look at this guy. He's got this huge toolbox. He's smart, he fixes stuff. You should be over there every chance you get. What they get is, that's just a. Over there. You know, he's mad.

David Kline [01:55:40]:
We are mad. You know, I, I give you everything I got. And, and I just, every day it's like, oh, well, you fell short. You fell short. You fell short. And then you look at other guys and it's like, oh, I turned 30 hours a week, dude. I wouldn't get out of bed for 30 hours a week. So, you know, and, And I'm sorry, I like to talk.

David Kline [01:55:59]:
It's. But I see guys like you and Joshua and, you know, you had, I think his name was Donald on. And he was talking about, about, about that, about not, you know, like, tell me I did a good job. Like if you work somewhere and you think you're doing a good job, but you're not told you do a good job, like, that's the most profound thing I've ever heard. Because it's so true. Because it's like, well, you know, I have a beautiful house. My. We have cars, we have all this stuff.

David Kline [01:56:29]:
But. But there's very little. Like, man, you've really done a lot for us. And it's like, well, have I. Like, am I falling short? Do I think? Am I wrong? And then when you're somebody that is wired the way that a lot of us are wired, you don't want to do wrong, you want to do right. And if you don't get that, it puts you in this. This funk. Because it's like, well, do I.

David Kline [01:56:51]:
Do I need to do more? Like, how the hell could I do? Could I do that? And. And I listened to that, actually put that on my Facebook, and I was like, this is the realest thing I've ever heard because it slips through the cracks. But it's so profound.

Jeff Compton [01:57:07]:
I lived it very recently, right? I keep talking about that same one, that Mercedes that I fixed that or diagnosed. And, you know, it left at least with the symptom rectified, you know, and it was. It's. It's not surprising to me. Like, it's not surprising to me that I. I'm used to working for people that don't recognize. You know, when you do knock one over the far wall, you know, you get a home run. But, man, I'm.

Jeff Compton [01:57:32]:
I'm so tired of it not being like, it's just become normalized that we don't have to do that. Like, I. I live by a very simple creed that, like, if. If somebody that works for me or works with me does something for me that I wouldn't be able to do.

David Kline [01:57:49]:
I owe them absolutely not saying that.

Jeff Compton [01:57:52]:
They can't do it, but if they did it in a timely, really way more efficient, like, if they just hit the mark, just bullseye. Call it sheer luck, shit luck, whatever. You would have got there too cool. But for somebody to just go, wow. Like, he just. He just did that, say thank you, right? Like, I don't. I don't need a hug. I don't need a handshake.

Jeff Compton [01:58:16]:
Just say thanks or wow. And I'm repeating myself again. But it's.

David Kline [01:58:20]:
It.

Jeff Compton [01:58:20]:
People gotta listen to it. It's not good enough to just pay somebody. You have to acknowledge what it is they do. We. We see it. You know, you go to A restaurant or whatever. And it's like employee of the month or waitress of the month or.

David Kline [01:58:32]:
Or salesman of the month. Yeah, we see that one a lot.

Jeff Compton [01:58:36]:
Like a newsletter that goes around and go, oh, you know, Sally hit whatever and, and sold 10 homes last month or something like that. Do you ever see a technician in a. In a dealership and the service manager can say, David had a car that when the customer turned on the air conditioning, the car slowed down and David fixed it with a bulb? What a fascinating story that would be to put in a newsletter and stick it somewhere where the customers could read it. Are they ever gonna do that? No. You know why? Because it's just your fucking job. That's the way and see it. It's just your fucking job. No, it is not.

Jeff Compton [01:59:11]:
Because it has gone past that.

David Kline [01:59:14]:
Right. And if it is, if it is your job, is that the same job as the guy that successfully changes oil all day? Because I have a hard time making that make sense. And, and yet you're paid more than them. Whatever. But again, with the flat rate, they could very easily come in and do 25 oil changes. And you could come in and do one water leak and get your ass kicked. And they went home with more money than you, even though you make more than they do.

Jeff Compton [01:59:39]:
You finish that car, David. There's one sitting out there that when you turn on the left signal, it shuts off. You know what I mean? Like, if you're good at it, guess what? There's just more of the same saying waiting for you.

David Kline [01:59:51]:
Right, Right.

Jeff Compton [01:59:52]:
Where just plays dumb.

David Kline [01:59:55]:
Fails successfully.

Jeff Compton [01:59:57]:
Fails successfully. They set the bar. That's crazy to say is like they think a guy like Dave should set the bar. No, your low performer, that sets the bar because that sets the minimum and it sets the expectation. So, David, I gotta let you go.

David Kline [02:00:13]:
No, this. This was great, man. I know. We. We both can. Can ramble.

Jeff Compton [02:00:18]:
We're gonna schedule a part two to this.

David Kline [02:00:21]:
I love it. Yeah.

Jeff Compton [02:00:23]:
Because we gotta. I want to hear. I want to hear the next. What the. The exit strategy.

David Kline [02:00:28]:
The.

Jeff Compton [02:00:28]:
The. The next one year, two year looks like for Dave. And I want to dive right back in on this. But I like. You know, we're. We're. We've gone pretty long.

David Kline [02:00:37]:
Yeah.

Jeff Compton [02:00:38]:
And I. And I don't want to. I want to save some.

David Kline [02:00:41]:
You know what I mean? Sounds good.

Jeff Compton [02:00:43]:
So I want to thank you for coming on and getting me fired up tonight.

David Kline [02:00:47]:
I appreciate it.

Jeff Compton [02:00:49]:
I've cooked my brain for the last few days. But I mean, really, this is just the way I am and people that listen to this, and if you get a little offended by the cussing and you turned it off, that's okay. But I want you to understand and really hear what I'm trying to say here, which is not. It's not about flat rate or not about. About hourly, or it's not about the pay. We have to change the way we look at our technicians in this industry or there ain't gonna be any. So, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening to the Jaded Mechanic podcast tonight. As always, David, man, I can't wait to have you back.

David Kline [02:01:20]:
It was a pleasure. I really appreciate you having me on. Looking forward to it.

Jeff Compton [02:01:24]:
And everybody stay hydrated, drink lots of water, and I love you all. We'll talk to you very soon. Shout out to everybody at ASTA Expo coming up. Shout out to the bearded brotherhood. Stay bearded. Hey, if you could do me a favor real quick and, like, comment on and share this episode, I'd really appreciate it. And please, most importantly, set the podcast to automatically download every Tuesday morning. As always, I'd like to thank our amazing guests for their perspectives and expertise, and I hope that you'll please join us again next week on this journey of change.

Jeff Compton [02:01:57]:
Thank you to my partners in the ASA group and to the Changing the Industry podcast. Remember what I always say, in this industry, you get what you pay for. Here's hoping everyone finds their missing 10 millimeter, and we'll see you all again next time.