Angry Bob on TikTok Fame and Flat Rate Frustrations, Part 1
The Jaded Mechanic Podcast · Oct 1, 2024
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From what I've seen in the business, like, if you go into shops, you watch the oldest guy there. They work until he's worn out, and then when he's no longer of use, they start treating him like shit on his way out. And then that's how he goes out. That's what I've seen time and time again in the business.
You're listening to another episode of the Jaded Mechanic podcast. I got a new friend with me tonight, somebody that's really gaining some traction in the last little while on social media. Mister Angry Bob the mechanic.
How you doing?
I'm doing awesome, man. I'm doing great.
Thank you for having me.
Yeah, anytime. My pleasure. This is, we were just kind of talking about before we got on about how, what is my goal with this podcast and everybody I think knows by now, my goal is kind of like to just be that voice for, you know, in a greater thing. If they're scared to say something online about a condition, you know, that I'm sure you probably get more and more and you see a lot of it too. But I get messages all the time of people from like that. I've never talked to that. They just say to me, oh, something. You know, this, this episode really resonated me because I work in a place like that, or I've been treated like that.
And so you kind of give us some background on Bob.
I'm from Philadelphia. I've been an automotive technician for. I've been in the automotive business now, I guess, say for almost 25 years. I started out in high school and I went to Lincoln Tech and progressed from there and had a career with Firestone for about ten years. And then I was out my own for a little bit and then just kind of progressed and we ended up where we're at now. And as far as the goal for the TikTok thing in the beginning was really just to, I guess, try to teach a little bit. You know what I mean? Like, like to educate a little bit. And then it, you know, it kind of grew into my complaining a little bit.
And then, you know, from there that kind of snowballed because you see, well, you know, people responded to it.
Yeah.
And, you know, you just try to put that out. But really what it started out as was to educate. Because a lot of what I see in the diagnostic is guys struggle for no reason. Like you'll be, you know, like your diagnostic process that they show you, you know, or whatever. That's a trouble tree or, you know, we'll have you pulling out the gas tank, checking, you know, like, for p 0496 code. I've seen it. I've seen guys literally with the gas tank out, and I'm like, what are you doing? I say, I got this p 496 code, and it's because there's no. There's no good teaching.
There's. They don't teach you the easy ways. They. No one. No one shows you the tricks, you know what I'm saying? And that's kind of what I started at was it was to show the tricks of.
Yeah, because. And then there's always an easier way to do it, right? So if I don't have to drop the gas tank, but I want to load test, you know, the circuit to the. The tank pressure sensor, if I can save that hour it takes me to get the tank down. And I mean, you know, us people that work in the rust belt, like yourself, myself, we know that it's not always just about the time. It's about how much damage am I going to do, you know, doing a test that I don't need to do? Am I going to break the fuel tank strap off if I'm, you know, am I going to fold over a rotted old fuel line fitting on the top of the pump? And then, guess what? We're buying a pump, right? It didn't really matter what the diag was. Pump comes with a new fucking fuel tank pressure sensor. So, I mean, like, I'm all for that, and that's. I'm the same as you until I got out of the dealership, because the dealership was always just about follow the trouble diagnostic chart in the service manual, that was the only way you got paid.
And once I got out and realized that, like, I didn't have sometimes the time or, you know, the way that they wanted me to do, it didn't work on a ten year old cardinal. It worked on a three year old car, because Russ wasn't the factory yet. There's always a better way. So I say that all the time. And I was like you. I struggled with, you know, I still struggle a lot with the online stuff of what's being put out there for diagnostic processes, not with the, I hate to say the quote unquote experts in the field, but you know who we're talking about? The guys that you can watch and you can apply it and you work. But then, like, there's so much out there that is nothing. Professionals, you know, it is somebody out there going, here's a fix for this code on this car.
Cool story. Great.
You know, only for that one car.
That's. It's only for that one car. And he's in Alabama where he can drop his tank down and not have to buy all the lines and all that crap. And he can, you know, put a new pressure sensor in and if it doesn't fix it, oh, well, he does. He's only out, you know, a couple hours, three beer in his afternoon driveway and, you know, a $20 autozone sensor. He's only out that. I can't apply that to what I do at the shop every day because of rust and time and accuracy and, you know, it goes on and on and on. So I'm right there with you.
So. And then it kind of, you say it snowballed. It snowballed into, like. Because what really started resonating with me with you was your little shorts on, you know, things that you would see in the industry, you know?
Really?
Yeah.
And see, it's funny because you can't know. I mean, you see the likes and things like that, but you can't know what, because people don't really just come out and tell, like, that was good or that was bad, so you don't know. But I'm glad that you said that to me, that that resonated with you. And there are things in the business that I see consistently, you know, that, like, it's, it's the thing of where you wanted to be. You wanted to become the best at what you do, and then you become the best at what you know, or try to be the best at what you do and at least to your ability, and you find that the reward for that is be doing other people's jobs, who, it's not that they can't do it, it's that they just don't want to. They're not going to, or they're going to do it at their own, you know, they're going to do it slow because they don't feel like it. It's just like, dude, that's not what I signed up for. I didn't sign up to pick up other people's slack.
And then when you say something about it, you're, it's like, well, man, calm down. You know? And I just, I have a way of coming off very hot and angry. But, you know, it's, it's, it's harmless. It's just a lot of, you know, yelling, you know what I mean? But it does come off kind of angry. So it can off put people. So that's a problem, too.
You know, I'm the same way, like, in. You know. Cause I kind of got my traction way back on Facebook before there was a TikTok, and so everything was just written is blunt like a spoon. It is blunt to the point, you know? Like, no, you didn't test that properly. You need to go back and learn how to. How to test that properly. And people list, like, as if you slap them in the face. Face.
And I'm not saying, whoa, whoa. I'm not saying you're dumb. It's just flat out truth. You didn't test it properly. There's a better way to test that. You know, when people say, check the ground, what do you mean by check the ground? Like, how did you check it? Well, I took it off and screwed it back on. It didn't fix my problem. Okay, that's not checking anything, dude.
Except maybe the torque on the fastener. Like, that's not a check. You know, people get so mad, they just feel like, oh, my God, you spit in my face. No, I didn't spit in your face, dude. I'm just like, and again, delivery is so important. If I maybe had always been about, can I show you a better way? Can I tell you a better way? Can I teach you a better way? I learned that it might go over better, but it's like, who's got the time? I don't. You know, I'm sitting there on Facebook. It's two minutes before, whatever.
I got to do something. I got five minutes of slack time. I'm reading the post, and it's just cut and dried to save you the time to go, hey, you're. You're headed down the wrong track. You didn't test it properly. Go back. I'm not necessarily going to give you the bullet because the car's not in front of me. I don't know.
I could be wrong. But it's like, we see that test, you know, we see that guy had a Chevy Express van, put a fuel pump in it, right? And no ground on his fuel pump relay. Where's the ground? That woven ground strap? Yes. You could blurt out to everybody listening and everybody reading, just change that ground strap. It doesn't really teach anybody, you know, it fixes the car. I've said that for years. It's like everybody just wants an answer to fix the car. What I want to do is empower people to know how to do that.
Why, exactly. The why is way, way more important than the answer. You know, the adventure to get to the destination trumps the destination. And so for years, it was like, you're just a jerk because you don't want to give anybody the answer. Firstly, I can't accurately give you the answer, you know, because it's not in front of me. So let's stop that. That you want the answer, you know, the silver bullet, whatever you want to call it. But what the.
That's more. The process is more important than the end result. The process avoids going down the rabbit hole. So that's how I kind of got into this whole thing of networking. So when I saw. When I see people like yourself talking online, you know, about what they're trying to do, where do you see it happening? Like, where is it? Why is it always like, bob, 30 years, 40 years later, why are we still having the same obstacles in the.
Industry, to be honest with you? And I. And I just pulled it. I'm sitting by my toolbox, so I just pulled it out. What changed everything was using this. Yeah, it was a bottom line. If you just pick this up and use it, dude, it changed everything. For me. It was the bot.
It's like the simplest way I can put it, by using that and a test light. It doesn't even have to be a power probe. You get more familiar with the theory of it. It's not even like, you know, us speaking terms. You get to see it with your eyes, visually, you know? Okay, that ground is there. And really the best part was, was when I would start checking cars that were okay. That was when I learned the most, because then when you saw something that wasn't okay, you were like, all right, that's. That's.
You know what I mean? It started making sense, and now it's like you pop in there and you're like, I'm gonna use. You can see it in my videos with the light bulb I use. It's just checking grounds, checking power, checking. And that's as complicated as things have gotten, right? Like all these modules and everything, there's still DC voltage. They're still in a box. They can only go so far because science is only going to let them go so far. DC voltage has rules. We have, you know, there's things that you can't break.
So as long as you understand the theory a little bit, you know what I mean? And hands. And you spend that hands on time, it's never going to get too complicated for you, you know, it's just not.
I took a good course just about a year ago, and it was a. Auto aid is who teaches it up here in Canada, in Ontario, Canada, Barry area. And so he. Because I tell everybody all the time, when I was in school for this, when I went to college, I sucked at electrical.
Me too.
I was terrible at it. And it was because everybody was like, series, parallel series, parallel circuits. Like, and I tell ad nauseam, the math screwed me right up. And then, so, God bless this, you know, for me, finally figuring out that it's like, most of the time, you're just looking at a simple series circuit. Like, yes, you know, the module has to have all its powers and grounds to do what it's supposed to. And yes, you know, one ground can operate four different things. But let's be real. Most of the time, if we've got one ground missing, we've got maybe three things that don't work.
And if we know how to read the wiring diagram, we don't even care. The circuit design at that point, the wiring diagram shows us. So what's in common? Probably that ground. Cool.
That's right.
They. The ohm's law thing. And building circuit boards on a, you know, breadboard, as we used to call it, with little resistors. And it, like, I was sucked at. That was terrible.
Didn't do anything for you. And it didn't, it didn't push you, like, later on, you didn't like, oh, I can go back and use that breadboard stuff now, you know?
And then, no, it's because I'm thinking always in the. When I'm looking at a breadboard, and maybe it's the way it's taught. I don't know, maybe I'm dumb. I can't. I was always like, how do I apply this to a car? How do I apply this to a car? How do I apply this car? And I couldn't. I couldn't. It seemed to me more like, okay, if I'm going to design a circuit, if I'm the engineer here, that's maybe what they do.
Cool story.
But I just want to know why that frigging blower motor don't turn on, right? Show me that. So my first employer, first serious employer that I had when he took away my dvom. It's funny because you're talking about that. And handed me a test light. Light bulb went off. And then it was just like, okay, cool. And then I learned how to like, okay, the test light can show me what I'm missing, and the test light can make what I need to work. Work or not work.
Component level. Proven it out, done. Needs a component done right. And it blows my mind still, the amount of techs that I still meet and it's. They've over complicated it. Right. And the meter is a wonderful tool. I use it all the time, just like yourself.
But it's like, yeah, you know, I didn't use it the way they taught me in school, that's for sure. You know, I'm not sitting there building measuring resistances across the circuit and trying to calculate how many amps should flow. Like, I just don't do it. You know, it's not. It's not how I'm. It's not my process. That was the big thing for me, was to learn to just break it down into just a basic. Yeah, like he said, all in.
He said, just always break this into a series circuit. Just focus on the power and in the ground and that's it. He said, and don't get confluffled with everything else and what it's going to do. He said, the wiring diagram, when you learn to read them better, will show you, you know, how to still, what you're trying to figure out. I mean, let's be real. We're still always either dealing with like, a lack of power or lack of ground or a fail component. That's still all what this is, you know, and. And, you know, yeah, there's shorts and, you know, can.
And all that kind of stuff comes into it. But I mean, like, there's still a lot of times that a bypass test and a jumper wire is your best friend and a test light, you know, it's still the way that I.
The electrical principle. The electrical principles never change. They can't.
Yeah. That's what I love about this industry, right. Is because it's like they can. They can screw up an, you know, an internal combustion engine all six ways from Sunday. But I mean, it's like, I like electrical because it's staying the same, you know what I mean? Even though people are like, oh, they're doing this and they're doing that, sure. But it still works the same. Even 48 volts works the same as twelve. Right.
It still needs a path to work through. That's it. You know, I have to have current that I can make it work. So I feel like you do it the same way. From what I've seen, from your content, you approach it this very similar manner. Right. Just.
Yeah, it comes down to just more or less now. You just. You break it down to simple. You know what I mean? Like, I like kisses that they keep it simple, stupid. You know, where you just kind of like, it still is what it was. Like. Even like a blower motor and stuff like that. That blower motor still is what it always has been.
It's just controlled differently now. And like, guys will get held up on. We used to control it from the, the power side. We used to control with a power side and then all they did was move it to the ground side. What it. Everybody up and then that. You just got to keep it simple. You look at go, okay, well, since I can read that wiring diagram, I can tell that they just moved that resistor and that whole control to the other side.
But if you can't read a wiring diagram and you're not familiar, at least with reading them, then you can't, you know, you can't figure that type that type of stuff out. And that's where you get, this is where you'll get a customer that comes in and says, yeah, well, they told me to take it to an electrical shop because, you know, it's just that small thing and that's not to knock anybody. And my, and my way is to never knock anybody because it's not that, you'll see, I, and I don't get on people for not knowing anything. It's just that it's the don't know anything and claim that they do and then want to put us down.
Yes.
You know what I mean is the way the guys that just don't know, listen, I can show you. And it's not in like a yo, you're dumb way. It's in it. Like, I did it the same way I made those mistakes. Check engine lights used to ruin my day, man. Like, it was like, forget it, because it came in, you knew. You knew you weren't going to fix it, right? Like, I didn't know how to find lean codes. I didn't.
I was an identifix tech, you know what I mean? Click. And whatever the confirmed fix was, we all were. Everybody was, you know, and once I changed that bad habit and like I said, I started using that meter and the test light and, and I got out of that flat rate game, that's when things, you know, improved for me as it, as a technician. I wouldn't say they improved for me as far as income wise, you know, but, but they improve. But it's not always about the income. It comes down to, like, you want to be a good tech. Like, I want to fix cars well, and I don't want that car to leave and not be fit. Like I'm not giving up.
I know. Give up in me, it's going to get done. That's it. You know, and so it does. It's not always about the money.
Yeah. Was there. Can you think back to one particular lesson or one particular car that kind of was like the snap your fingers, this is for me.
I was. I was doing like my own thing. So I was just kind of working out of my house at the time. This was like, 2021, and a guy that I was doing work for, he was flipping cars. He had a 2012, or I believe it was Chevy Cruz. And when I got it, it, like one parking light came on and it. And the horn beeped, like when you turn the key on. And I figured out it had water damage.
And I, and I took the carpets out and I went all through it and up back in my house, I had figured out what module was down and got, you know, got a new module for it, programmed it through sp's all my driveway. And I was like, all right, man, we're, you know, this is a different level now that we're on. Like, we're no longer on that, you know, just where we just push that stuff out of our mind and we just don't deal with it or we just kind of throw darts at it now it's like, yeah, we, you know, you're really starting to be able to fix this stuff for real.
You said you got out of the flat rate game. Is that like. When can I ask? Is that like. Because you mentioned Firestone and they have kind of a. They don't have the best reputation, I guess you could say, with right fire.
I can't say anything. See, it's double edged with firestone because, yeah, flat rate was tough and it was like, you know, it doesn't breed the best diagnostic wise. But Firestone, the company sent me the training. If you ever heard of a company called east over in New Jersey, Medford Lakes, New Zealand, was east training. They were really knowledgeable guys, like some of the smartest guys I'd had, I'd ever, you know, had the opportunity to go to class and sit in front of. And it was engine performance they sent you for and all types of different things. They sent me down to Jessup, Marilyn, for a hunter lining hunter alignment class with which. Which that class changed my life.
That was. I learned all types of secrets down there that I would never have known. Just like doing jeeps that seek, you know, being able to jeeps correctly and stuff like that. Once you've. Once that windows open, and you get that. Those tricks and that theory, and you get trained in that way, man. You're unstoppable.
Yeah.
You know, it's. It's just that those doors need to be open to you. You know what I mean? Someone needs to open that door and show them to you in a way that, like, when you're a tech and you've been a tech for a while, we're all like that. There's a certain amount of pride, you know? So you can't have somebody come to you and go, yo, but you don't know that, stupid, because you're like, oh, I got my time in here. I know my stuff. It's got to be packaged in a different way. I noticed, you know, you got to come at a guy a different way. And I think I learned how to do that a little bit, you know, in that sense.
And I. And it's. You know, it's really like, you just kind of want to open those doors for guys. You want to show them this stuff that. That you now know, that maybe that you got the hard way.
Yeah.
You know what I mean? Like. Cause, you know, you're. You're probably about my age. It wasn't the same as it is now coming in this business. Back then, man, there was no, hey, man, let me show you the tips and tricks. It was like, yo, you're here to take my money, get over there and suffer, and, you know, we're not going to help you out. You're an adversary. You're not a friend.
That's right. You're everybody at the. I use sales. I'm every pig at the trough is competition. And, you know, it's a situation like, I got pushed to my corner, and it was like, go figure this out. And I was in a dealership, it was flat rate environment. It's just the same as it, you know, of. Any flat rate environment is the same.
And in the dealership, it was like, yeah, there's always a couple guys that have that product a long time, and they know little secrets and stuff. But if it's a brand new, like, if you're fixing a 98 in 98, who do you ask about a 98? Nobody, right? You're all at the same place together. Now it's 2008, and you ask about a 98, completely different scenario. There might be still somebody that's been there ten years, and remember when that was new and it had something funky going on. So what I found was my background, being that I hadn't always worked flat rate, then I went to the dealer to make more money was that I had to figure a lot of stuff on my own. There was a lot of people, like, not a lot, but there was a few of us that, like, we gravitated towards driving electrical. So it was like we bounced off each other, we fed off each other, and it became almost like a little click where you didn't necessarily want to see the guy that couldn't do it, you know, if he got handed that ticket because they were backed up or whatever, he didn't want to go over and help him, you know? I did not because I felt like that should have been my ticket. Right? He can't do it.
It's another ticket for me. That's exactly how I approached it. And I got a lot of flack when I talk about that in the industry. It's like, oh, you're just. That's gatekeeping. That's not gatekeeping, man. That's.
That's housekeeping is what that is. You need your house.
Yeah.
Right.
So what will happen is it was like. But I very quickly got up to speed on doing Diagon drive Billy on this stuff, and then it was like, I would see guys over there that had been there like 1012 years, worked on that product, and I could, like, I was doing their comebacks. I was fixing the stuff they didn't want to fix or couldn't fix it. And it'd be the little things, like, it'd be like, oh, I unplugged it and it showed 12 volts, but it wouldn't flow current, right? Like, or shit like that, you know? Or I can still remember a guy put a crank sensor in caravan for a no engine speed reading in the TCM. And everybody goes, like, if you're lame and you're all, yeah, seems to make sense. The car ran beautiful. Started every time. Never had a no crank, so it's a wiring point from ECM to TCM, right.
That. That signal that's coming across that wires, not there. That's when the light bulb clicked for me. And it's like, I'm every bit as good as this guy over here, you know, because it's like I'm solving the stuff that he can't solve. And I've been here two years and he's been here twelve. And, you know, you can argue, people will say, fix one car. It was. You fix that car times how many other guys in the shop.
Pretty soon you're going to start to get a bit of a buff my chest out and feel pretty good about what I can do now. I couldn't go over there and, you know, take that tranny out and overhaul it because I wasn't a transmission guy. But if it came in with a problem I could diagnose and I could fix it, you know, if it had a burnt valve. I figured it out. I did the valves. Like, if it, you know, transmission was in limp. Figured that out, you know, Ac clutch wouldn't turn on. Figured that out.
Like, it was just what I got tasked with doing. So that's where I kind of. Kind of got into that attitude of, like, I don't want to give you the answer. I want to show you how to find the answer. And that was just become my. My method, I guess, of how I approach this stuff because I think it's like, you know, you teach the man how to fish he lives. You give him a fish and eats for a day. So.
And it was in it. But the flat rate world makes you very competitive because that, like, you know, where we all were we're just paid the same per hour. So it's all about flagging hours. So, yeah, you go in there and you tackle diag after diag and you hit. You go home at the end of the day and you got 8 hours, right? The guy over there got 14, 1620 and he never did a diag. And I was like, there's. That's the problem with the industry, you know.
And you want guys to fix these cars. But then, like, I equate it to, like, when you were in first grade in school and you finished first grade and now you're in 12th grade you were not expected to do the work from first grade plus your work from 12th grade. You understand? Like, so I don't want to do tires and oil changes if I'm. If I'm pulling apart wiring harnesses and I'm fixing, you know, broke with a piece of wire that I pulled out of a box from underneath my toolbox. Didn't cost you any money in the output parts. All you're trying for is labor. But they never ask, hey, man, where'd that come from? Where did those connectors. It came from my toolbox.
You know what I mean? And that's the whole thing. But then the very next ticket is, yo, I got shock absorbers and, you know, I got installer work. I got, you know, day one, kindergarten work for you and it better get done quickly. And I got to the point where it was like, dude, it's. It's not wrong for me to just want to do one or the other. Because when I was a monkey back in the day, you know, when I was a young kid and I was doing tires and brakes and stuff like that, you know, they say when you get your stripes and you'd be like, you know, john over there and, you know, you're this. You know that this level now do, you won't have to do that stuff anymore. But somewhere along the line, the world kind of changed.
Like, things kind of changed just everywhere. And now it's like, yeah, you can't do that no more. There. There is no. There is no old head anymore. There is no earned respect. There's no pension. There's no thank you.
There's no nothing. It's what it looks like. It's work. It's pretty much work until you're worn out. From what I've seen in the business, like, if you go into shops, you watch the oldest guy there. He. They work until he's, he's worn out. And then when he's no longer of use, they start treating him like shit on his way out.
And then that's how he goes out. That's what I've seen time and time again in the business, because they don't.
Want to see him finish off and pay him severance out, right?
Like, he earned it, but. He earned it. But that's. I'm saying we put our, like, it's. It's. It's gone away. Remember? Like, it used to be that, like, you respected the elders, you know, you like, and you wanted to get to that level and earn that. And now it's like, for what? Cause you're the same as you were when you, when you weren't.
Yeah, and it's. It's. And that's when, that's what guys are seeing. That's what kid, like, my stepson, I'm seeing it firsthand. He's, the experience that he had coming in his business. Two different shops mistreated him when he did things right. He gave notice at the first shop, and when he gave the notice, they were like, yo, get out of here, kid. Yeah, but he gave the two weeks, and then this other shot, they said, yeah, we're going to put you flat rate.
He was so excited and a defeat in that kid's face when we did the math and showed him what he really made, because he didn't know how to do the math. He's not supposed to. None of us are. When we come in, we're all so green, you know, and they take advantage of that they do, and we get miserable and we get tired and we leave. Or we just were like, me, you know? And right now I'm seeing it, man. It's. It hurts because, you know, even with my leg, dude, we could have made something work, you know? And I. And they just.
It's just more. Another one and another one and another one. You're like, yo, I'm not going to degrade myself physically to the point where my. My. After this will be no good. So I give you what I have left, and then I have nothing left for me.
And that's kind of what I want to ask you about, because it's kind of like you haven't really come out and said it, but I can sense that there was something going on physically with you, where it was just like, you were going to work, was struggling, you know, from a. From a production standpoint, I guess, physically. Right. And you didn't really, you know, you have a leg injury, so.
I have a leg injury from a car accident that I was in. And, um, so I have a, you know, a bar in my femur. I broke my femur in two places, and there's a lot of hardware in my heel at the bottom on my right side. And it was. It was getting worse. I was getting build up in what was left of the joints. So you. They fused one joint, so there's another joint in there that's basically taking the brunt of everything, right? So, I mean, I'll be open and honest in here.
I'm a recovering drug addict, so. So. So this was at the time when I was coming out of that and I was rebuilding my life, and I really went hard. You know, I was working in my drive, and I just was putting a lot on my leg over the years, and it just. It's. It's basically, doctors told me about a year and a half ago, like, you need to. You need to find a different career. And I, you know, I was at a point where it was like, I don't know what else I can do.
I didn't know that I had any other worth outside of what I was doing. I was defeated. It was literally when I started making the tick tocks. I had just had the surgery, and I was trying to come back from it. It wasn't going well, and it took me months to get back to work, but when I went back, I had to go back in a medical boot all the way up to my knee, but it didn't slow me down. I still continued to pump out the cars the way I always did. I still continue to do everything that I did before because I, I felt that I made a commitment to that job, to do that job. So how could I go in there and expect special treatment when the other guys were still doing their job? So I got up on alignment racks in a medical boot, and it was ugly, man.
I did everything in that boot. It was. Went and got cars. Everything. Yeah, I really, I challenge anybody to do it. I did it for, like, for like, four months, man. It was just every day in that medical boot. And then I got a little bit better and was able to go back regularly, but I just couldn't do the full days anymore.
So, Bob, isn't it frustrating? Sorry to interrupt you. Frustrating when they don't look at some, like, at you and go, okay, we're gonna get a guy to bring your cars in. We're gonna get a guy to take your cars out. We're gonna get a guy to go down on his hands and knees and ramp your cars. Like, hoist your cars. I know I got a good friend that, like, almost every car that gets set on his hoist, somebody else is putting it on the, on the rack.
Form because he wasn't even an option.
He's, you know, his knees and his back and everything else like that, and he's, he's a super tech. He's fantastic. Like, why in this industry don't we do that? I think it's, I mean, I think I know why. Because we're so, the margins are so thin. We're always looking at the production and going, like, how do I go and get, how do I pay for somebody that's going to shadow Bob and do that kind of stuff? For him to keep the wear and tear off of his foot and his knee and his back and everything else, like, for us that do it every day long, it just makes complete sense. There'd be no better person to shadow under, right. Than somebody that's got all the years of experience can show him or her the fundamentals that need to be taught the process that they retard. But we seem to have our head up our butts in terms of, like, mentorship in this industry, because it's like, oh, well, Bob's slowing down too friggin bad.
And the door.
Bob goes, yeah, I mean, to be honest with you, it wasn't even slowing down. I don't think I slowed down at all. I just, I just wasn't able to, like, I told him I got elite, you know? 02:00 I couldn't do the whole day. You know what I mean? It's just. It was. It was. And then that becomes a problem because you got guys who were there for the full day, and you can understand it's a natural thing to where they're working their full day. So they're looking over at you and you're leaving it, too.
You know what I mean? They don't give a shit about your leg. You know, it wears on them because they're tired. They're working their men, you know, and they see it from their perspective, not your perspective, you know, and it's. And you got to kind of remember that. Or I try to remember that.
You know, they're not almost 50 within a medical boot, though.
Yeah, no, it's. But to be honest with you, man, and it's a sad thing to say, but it's just not the way the world works, man. People, you know, it's. At least in the experiences that I have, man, very, very. On your own in that situation. You know, you just, like, kind of, like, tough for you, kid, but, you know, you got to figure it out. And it's. That's just.
It's. It's a sad. It's. It's sad, but it really is. I mean, I'm being honest. I'm not trying to be mean or anything like that or throw any shade on any. It's. It's what I found in the business.
Businesses. It's cold, man. You know, you fix cars or. You know, that's it.
I mean, there's so many. There's so many other places that, like, I can. I can see putting somebody with your skillset, you know, whether it's just like, go diagnose this car. He's, you know, this tech's gonna rack it. And then I need you to go look at this, or I need you to come out and listen to this customer's complaint or need you to ride in this test drive with this. Like, there's so many. Whether you want to call it a foreman role or something like that, there's so many places that we can put a people as they age out. My boss is already doing it with me, and it's because, like, I'm not walking around in a boot or anything, like.
But I've got, you know, some shoulder issues that give me a lot of my neck can sometimes be difficult. My knees are not great. I mean, if I get up, I can, you know, if I get down, I can get up, but I'm not gonna shoot up. You know what I mean? Like, I am slow. If I go down on my hands and knees to put a car on a rack, I'm not jumping right back up four times. Like, it's. I got to grab something, pull myself up. I don't understand why they didn't offer it to you.
And I'm not understanding still in this industry, when I see the conversation about I can't get anybody to mentor, you know, young people in this industry suck, and young people, period, are terrible. And, you know, I keep losing older technicians. Why? Why is that? Why do you think that is? I think it's because we're not utilizing what we have. I think we're so wrapped up into. Bob's got to turn 50 hours of labor this week, or I, you know, I'm going to go get another tech that'll turn 50 hours because I got to pay there, and it has to make money. Like, I so tired of that.
Me, too. And what I'm trying. Well, so I don't. So this is kind of like a gloom type of thing right now with the leg and all, but I do. I'd like to get to move it a little bit, like. So to tell you that because of TikTok, because of everything that I did, when I put that video up about my leg, I was contacted by somebody, and nothing's concrete yet, but it's a company that does Adas calibrations.
Okay.
For. For, like, dealerships. Well, this guy reached out to me, and I, you know, I've already talked, went and talked about the job and everything like that, and it may very well be coming through. So, you know, it's. It's not. It's. It was like the luckiest thing in the world, right? I mean, that happened. And I posted the video about the job, and he reached out and.
And, and this ball was rolling on this thing, and it is showing me now that, that there are of. There's other avenues now that there weren't before.
Yeah.
You understand? I'm saying, like, even this tick tock thing, me putting myself out there, I don't think I could ever become a teacher in that sense. You know what I mean? And, like, in, like, a school or something like that. But. But I was able to start just doing it on tick tock, and over time, you know, it grew a little bit, and it is what it is now, and that's a really special thing for somebody to be able to do now in any way, shape or form. You know what I mean?
Yeah. And so when you talked about your stepson, and he's kind of. I've seen a couple. You've mentioned him in a video once or twice, a couple different times. His name is Zack.
Yeah.
So how does, like, it's your kind of situation and what you've gone through and your time in the industry? Does Zach not see it as a warning sign or take it as that?
You know, he's got the bug, man. Like, he's just cars. He lives him right now. He's just like. It's so. It's such a coincidental thing, because I don't really think that I did it. You know what I mean? But I'm nurturing it. I can tell you that for sure.
And I. And I am doing my best to use this thing as an example. So as I'm moving forward at my clip, where I'm at now, and I'm having some of the hardships that I'm having, I'm trying to overcome them, as I am now, to show him that it can be different, that it's not, that this isn't the end of my story. You don't understand. Like, it's important to me to be that example for him, you know, because I, like, I don't want to put a negative. The business sucks, let's be honest. But working on cars. Cars are awesome.
I love cars. You see my garage, you see behind me? I mean, I. I still love cars just as much now as I did when I was. When I was his age. I still do. And that's why I'm here with him. That's what I want to do. That's what we want to do.
We don't want to go to shop every day and work eight to five and kill ourselves. We want to be here, home, at the garage, you know, working on things. We want to work on enjoying it, you know? And that's where we all come into the business. We all come into it. Nobody comes in and goes, I want to go. Really hate my life and, you know, flat rate hours and all this stuff like that, and fight with other techs and bitch and complain over tires and hours and point threes. We just come in and we just love cars, man.
Yeah.
And what he did for himself was he made himself a little networking, and he went from working in that general repair side to where he got a taste of performance. And now it's like, no going back for him. It's all horsepower and chargers I got. You see in the videos, I got hellcats apart here. That wasn't part of my story. That's his story. You know, that's. That's all him.
17 years old, man, he's incredible. I'm not. Listen, I'm not trying to tell you to boost this kid up. He's incredible. He's going to be. He's going to be so much better than me, you know, so much faster. And. And he's getting the electrical to me.
Yeah, he's.
I got pictures of him in trunks, at chargers, in fuse boxes, you know, because we've done that together. He's had problems where I'm like, come here. I show him, you know, pin this out. We'll pin that out. And he had. His fog lights weren't working. And I said, sure it's not the bulbs. I put new bulbs in it.
Well, we got bulbs off Amazon, and they were bad. So we went in and. But I pinned him out back from the fuse box, and it showed him the steps to take to figure it out. And, you know, man, I've doing this for so many years, and it was always about, like, my reputation and, like, building for me. But now that I'm doing it, like. And it's like, for him, the rewards are so much more than. Than I could have ever imagined. Seeing, you know, just seeing the stuff that he can do now is just.
It's incredible.
That performance market, though, that can be a tough road, too. You know what I mean? Like, it's. It's a different type of customer, right? It's a different type of customer. It's a different type of car. It's a different type of approach to the business. You know what I mean? Like, it is a lot more. I watch some tv shows that are, you know, up here that are still guys doing it, and it's like, you got to be such. So much more of a people person.
I think they want to put $50,000 into this thing. You know what I mean? It's one thing to go and sell a car, $50,000 car to someone. It's another to convince somebody to take, you know, this pile of parts or this. It was Grandpa's old c ten or whatever, and put $50,000 into like, that.
There's people out there to do it.
Oh, because people love it. They love that shit. As soon as it's got a sentimental attachment to it, as soon as it's a toy, people want to put money into it.
I'm sorry. I mean, erupt you. But something that no one's really talked about yet is the supply has been shut off, or it's going to be shut off. We're not making them anymore. There will be no more hellcats. There will be no more scat packs. There will be no more hemis. It's the end of an era, and we've never seen it before.
So I think that this little niche market of performance is going to get bigger, more expensive, and harder to get. So if you can, like, it's a. It's a real special time, I think. Yeah, I'm trying my hardest to, you know, with him, with the cars, and this time with the. With them being shut off and everything. I know there's a way to make money here. I'm just trying to put it all together, you know what I mean? At least in my mind, you know?
And I see, I think it's shifting. You know, 510 years ago, it was the big diesel trucks, right? That was where, buddy, if you were in the performance market last, Lucas. Oh, you had to be in the diesel trucks. I think that's kind of gone away, and I don't know why. Um, whether it's just. It's a fad or whether it, you know, the old happy days, you know, it jumped the shark, right? Fonzie jumped the shark. And after that, happy days was nothing. Um, or.
But I'm like, if you see the signs behind me there, like, I bleed mopar. I love that brand, and I love what it stood for. And, you know, the fact that it's all gone sad. It's the last bastion holdout of unapologetic, excessive horsepower, you know, noise, the whole thing. They were unapologetically loyal to that, to the. To the final days. And it's sad now that they're gonna bring a charger and it's gonna be an Ev. You know what I mean? Like, it just sucks.
I think, why not just kill the name off and let it die with dignity? Why are you rebranding these iconic names with batteries in them?
Yeah. Like, the Ev Mustang. Like, anybody wants to drive that. That's. I'm sorry. That's an escape. That's not a Mustang.
I don't.
How fast.
I'm sorry.
Yeah, it's not a Mustang.
No. And you got a name. This just like we were saying earlier, but the mechanics, it earn that name has earned something, it has built something, it means something. And I get that your CEO's in a company somewhere, and you just. It's all about numbers and what you think is going to make money, but you have a following of people that, like, if you would just give that thing and put it to rest and honor it, it would, you know, you'd be respected for that. And there's none of that anymore. It's just not just none of it.
If you. And, you know, I can understand that the company like Mopar, well, Stellanis is still going to be more about, like, we need to sell a billion caravans, and if we sell a million, you know, scat packs, it's good. But if they'd come out and said, this is going to be the last charger that is ever going to roll out. The last. The name is dead. You know, it's like the, the old analogy. You see the, you know, a fighter takes his gloves off and he leaves him in the ring, stuff like that. If they just said it's never coming back, right.
You could have done anything to that car that you wanted, within reason, some traditions, but, you know, and put any, just about any price tag on it you want and it would have won every JD power award and would have sold, like, they couldn't have made enough to sell them. But it's, it's always like, yeah, you know, we're trying to sell caravans, but like, hey, look at this really cool car that this is probably going to be last year. Every sell it. And it's just an afterthought. It's just an afterthought. And that always irks me because when I was growing up, like, I didn't care. You know, that Chevy sold 3,000,006 cylinder trucks. I cared that they had a 454 ss short box, you know, little, little truck in 1980, 919, 80, 91.
Like I cared about that. That was cool. That was make you go out and.
Buy a six cylinder truck. That was the whole. That's what I went away used to see the viper and you would go buy a neon because you couldn't afford a viper. But Dodge had the Viper, so, you know, neon, whatever, right. You were in it. And they went out, they did away.
With that man one on Sunday, sell on Monday. Right? Like that's, that's where it all came from. Right? But I mean, and I understand we have to build cars. We have to market cars to, to what the consumers want. But it's, it's. I've said it. I think the idea that people are going to just walk into a dealership now and get excited is not. I think we're going to be buying utilitarian vehicles.
There's going to be no excitement anymore about a vehicle. The the.
We have any machines? Car vending machines, man. Carvana. Like, you can literally go buy a car from a vending machine with no human contact.
Come on.
That's how you buy a car. No, no, but that's what they want. That's what these kids want now. That's what the people want. That's where the shop.
I pissed a lot of people off when I told them that there's going to be. There's going to be service visors replaced with kiosks. And at the last deal I worked out, we had one once.
Last time went to McDonald's. They have kiosks now to order. Like, it's. It's crazy.
Yeah. I flat out refuse to, like, if it's the same as, like, if I can bag my own groceries, like, or use a. An automated teller, or I stand in line because I try that person in a job.
My dad was like that, you know, that said that. He said, they need them jobs. Every. Not everybody can be a CEO or a doctor.
Yeah.
You know, people need them jobs.
I'll take extra time. You know, I don't want to push it because. And now, don't get me wrong, if I go and check out myself, bag my own damn groceries, and they give me 10% off, I'd be pushing people out of the way to get it, right.
They never do, though.
But if I'm paying the same money, somebody else might as well do it for me.
Right?
You know?
And then they got the guy standing there, he's watching you do that job. He's making sure you do that job correctly. Don't you mess up now.
Yeah, I want to. I want to yell at them and go, why don't you go open cash nine? Because, I mean, we've only got three caches open. You go open nine. There's a big lineup, but. But it's not how it works. They're there. It's a slow conditional thing to condition us to wait longer and go with less services. So what kind of got Zach into this? Just following you around?
Or maybe I don't take credit for anything, but I was at the house working on cars, and he was very into bikes and riding his bikes and stuff like that. And I told him, I said, once you get to the age of driving, you ain't gonna want them bikes anymore. And he said, I'm always gonna ride a bike. And then his sister got her license, and we got her a Hyundai Azera, and they were driving around in that. I'm sure, you know, he's driving that without his license when he shouldn't have been and stuff, just like I was when I was a kid. And he just. He just caught the bug. He did.
And. But he's like. He's like the Hulk with it. You know what I mean? Like, he, like, where we. They have so much more knowledge available to them now. They just. He just intakes YouTube videos all day of different kids working on cars, whatever. Do you know what I mean? That information wasn't available for us.
Google was brand new. When I was. When I got in the cars, like, 99, Google was like three years old, and I think that YouTube was, like, six years off. It wasn't gonna come out to zero five. So we. That information, we had children's manuals. That was it. That we read for the car that we had.
That was it.
I can remember somebody contacted me back in the nineties and saying, you know, I need this done on a car. And I immediately had to go, like, you guys have autozone? We had canadian tire, and I had to go to the parts counter at Canadian Tire, and they had all the Chilton manuals under that counter. Yeah, I used to buy it, and it'd be like, okay, I'm gonna do a timing belt in a 3.5 lhs. And this is before, say, you know, I ever worked at the dealer, so I'd go and buy the chilt manual for $18 manual. And that showed me how to do the timing belt. And then immediately, I had to at least charge $18, like, to do this job, I had to end and whatever else to charge on top of it, probably. So people don't appreciate how lucky they are that everything you'd ever want to know is out there. It's out there.
You do not have to. You just have to put the time in to find it.
You don't even need to go to school, to be honest with you. I went to tech school, and I advised my stepson against it. I said, you don't need it. I said, you have me here. I said, you have. You know, people are literally putting this education. Guys like me or Paul Danner or, you know, or any. Any of the guys that the education is there.
Like, it's there. It's. It's all. If you. If you seek it out, it's there. You know, it's not in a setup where you're gonna go to a classroom and they're gonna feed it to you like we came up. You have to want it. You know what I mean? You have to go out there and seek it out, but it's available for free.
And that's just. It's. It's. It's. It's made him better. I mean, you. I can see how fast he had advanced, you know, as opposed to what I did back then. Just cause the.
You know, that the. There's, like a camaraderie now, too, on the Internet, you know, with. With a bunch, like, technicians like myself and yourself and check engine Chuck and all. A lot of reason why I started doing it. I was like, yo, I want to be a part of that. That. That's different from what I came up with. I came up with this, and now these guys are, you know, they're friends on here, and everybody's working together.
I'm like, I dig it, man. And that was that why I wanted to be a part of it.
That's going to do it. For this episode of the Jaded Mechanic podcast, part two with Jeff and angry Bob comes up next week. 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. Thank you to my partners in the ASA group and to the change in the industry podcast. Remember what I always say, in this industry, you get what you pay for. Here's hoping everyone finds their missing ten millimeter, and we'll see you all again next time.
About this episode
Angry Bob, a rising TikTok mechanic star, shares his journey through the automotive industry, discussing the challenges of flat rate pay and the lack of mentorship for technicians. He emphasizes the importance of education and practical skills over mere diagnostic charts, advocating for a hands-on approach to learning. The conversation also touches on the generational shifts in the industry, the impact of social media on knowledge sharing, and the emotional toll of working in a demanding environment. Bob's personal story of overcoming physical challenges adds depth to the discussion.
Original notes
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Angry Bob from TikTok joins Jeff Compton to dive into the intricacies of modern automotive diagnostics. Jeff and Bob emphasize the importance of understanding basic electrical theory, sharing their experiences with hands-on testing methods that trump classroom instruction. Bob highlights the critical role of practical tools and knowledge, offering insight into how hands-on experience with functional cars can be more beneficial than traditional schooling.
00:00 Avoid unnecessary tests to prevent damage.
05:06 You can't always know others' reactions; frustrating.
06:52 Delivery impacts how advice is received.
10:32 I struggled with circuits and realized the simplicity of the series.
15:52 Prioritizing skill over income improved my work.
18:31 Doors must be approached differently for techs.
19:44 Experience fosters knowledge-sharing and competition among dealership technicians.
24:12 Struggling with job expectations and changing roles.
27:47 Discovered self-worth through adversity and TikTok creation.
29:03 Industry neglects mentorship due to thin profit margins.
35:00 Prefer working on cars at home, together.
36:10 Bought bad bulbs; taught him troubleshooting steps.
40:31 Neglected iconic car models irk nostalgic enthusiasts.
44:38 Used Chilton manuals for car repairs pre-internet.
46:33 Tune in next week; please like and share.
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The Jaded Mechanic Podcast
Jeff Compton
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48:07