Metal Man Online Shares His Experiences of Mistreatment and Mismanagement in Auto Shops, Part 2

Oh, yeah, that's right. I need to run over to their house, handed them a $100 bill and said, you know, this is what I made from the video. You guys deserve it. Let me know if you need any more work. I'd like to be able to get myself to that point, but in today's day and age, it seems like it's that much more impossible to be able to reach that. I'd love to be able to make that happen, but the logistics seem a little bit too far fetched for me to be able to make it happen.

Kind of left you at a cliffhanger last week. That's Spencer Ellis metal Mandev online on TikTok. And we're about to get to the good stuff. What happened at Dave's auto?

Want to know?

Jeff and Spencer or metal man online on TikTok. Get into it on this week's episode of Jaded Mechanic. So you're sitting at Dave's, and it's not everything that is promised to be. Was there somebody at this point?

Yes. It did not seem like it was going to be worth it at all to me and I. Because things did have a little bit of a turn, but there was still a bad feeling that I needed to address, or that I'm hoping to address here, too. So I'd already. I had already received a couple of paychecks after this 1st 30, 30 an hour, whatever or 30 hours pay periods that we were promised. I should mention also the gal, that she didn't understand the logistics herself of it. She went to Dave and fought for us and said, this doesn't make sense how you have this set up. You just need to pay them out.

Pay them what you told them. And so, like, it was taken care of to where the both of us, both me and the tech that started with me, you know, we talked about it and we're like, how did you think that this was set up? And we agreed that it was not. It was not made transparent to us how that was going to be paid out, but it eventually was taken care of. Now, after those first couple of paychecks of only $1,200 or so, I'm like, I need to start looking for other places, unfortunately. And I just. I started going anywhere. I was looking at, like, h vac techs for air conditioning systems, I was looking for plumbing jobs. I was looking for anybody that was able to pay me the rate that I knew I needed to survive, which was anywhere from 32 to 35 an hour.

But no one's hiring on that. And I'm, of course, a Mopar guy. I go to a Mopar shop and I'm like, this is my skillset. I definitely feel like I can help you guys out even in your used car section of the shop. And they were like, unfortunately, we can't hire you on any higher than 30. And I'm like, great, okay, well, at least that's an option. I know that I can. At least I can at least have my bills covered at 30 an hour.

But there is no, there's. There's no emergency fund at that point. Yeah, there is no spending money on my, on my vehicles for funsies. There's no making content on my own stuff, which has been the most important part of most of my content is upgrading the SRT with some hellcat brakes. That was a big one. Putting a hellcat exhaust on that charger. That was another big one. I knew that that was going to be going away very quickly if I was to leave and go to these other places that the best that they can do is hire me on at 30.

So I'm like, well, worse off. Oh, yeah. And benefits wise, no benefits to some of these places. Or at least I would have to wait 90 days to be able to get them. So it was scary, but there was a shop that reached out to me that I met with them. Very, very small shop. We're talking four bays and it's crammed in there. If you have cars in each bay and one car comes in for an oil change, you're all blocked in until that oil change is done.

And they're doing that oil change on the ground. They're going to be putting in a fifth lift that every single car in and out of the shop has to pass through this lift. So it is very small.

That's called bottleneck City.

Yeah. So, I mean, it looks kind of bleak. But he was telling me I can match. I can match his pay hourly. Hourly. I will match your pay hourly from what Dave is paying you. I will also give you all the learning opportunity that you know, that you keep saying that you want. And yeah, at this time, I'm not as confident my diagnostic skills because Carmax, everything was diagnosed for me.

So I'm a whiz with repairing things. You give me a repair, I can get it done and I will get it done great. I will have little comebacks, all from just. I've taught myself over the years what looks good and what is good. And the only downside was just no healthcare yet he only has two shops, one in Salt Lake one in Florida, they're working on getting healthcare coverage for us, so it's. Unfortunately, we're gonna have to pay for that. But everything was looking so good with training on the job, hourly pay, consistent paycheck, that I was not gonna have to wake up in the morning and throw up because of anxiety. And that's when I decided that I know that this is one of my first options that I've.

That I've been handed. And even Tesla reached out to me and had an interview with them, free healthcare with them, but I wouldn't be hired on at the pay rate that I needed. We decided to go with that shop the next Monday. I go to Dave's, I pull miles aside, and I say, hey, I need to talk with you. Yeah. I let him know and let him know that this wasn't an easy decision. I truly like, and I. I didn't want to say, this place has been so rough, the way that I've been treated and whatnot.

I haven't even delve into that too much, but we can get to that in a second. What was the initial. The straw that broke the camel's back? We'll get to that in a second. But I then had the conversation with him saying, I'm sorry, but an opportunity has come up where I'm going to be able to learn as a mechanic, which I know I desperately need. If I want to be able to get. If I want to get a step forward in this industry, I need a way to be able to learn on the job, because I can't. I can't lose what I've got right now in order to better my education, like going to school or anything like that. There's no online academy that I'd be able to even do after hours.

So this was my only option. I'm sorry. I want to make this work. Maybe in a year or two, we can see if this would be a good fit again. But this was an opportunity that I don't think I can say no to. Learning on the job and still able to mate my bills, they took it well. I mean, they were sad. They definitely were sad.

And I get let. No, they tell me an hour later, oh, Spencer, did you know you. You were the top performing tech this month? What? What do you mean? Yeah, you hit over a hundred hours. What? And of course, in my. In the back of my head, I'm like, did I just make a mistake again?

No.

But here's the reason why that paycheck was so good. I mean, by myself, by my own merit, I probably made maybe 50, maybe 50 hours. And Dave does have a pay structure where, like, the more hours you spend or the more hours you make, the more you can make per hour. It goes up $5 here and there. If you get over 70 hours, you make eleven more dollars an hour. So I did like that. That was great. The reason I was getting paid out so well, 60 guy backed out, said, no, I'm not going to pay the amount needed to be able to fix this truck.

I was told to box it up, push it out, get everything loaded into the back of the truck, push it out, because the shop had assembled. That probably could go on his page and find the videos, but a shop had assembled this engine and they forgot the oil squirters that sprayed the bottoms of the pistons.

Okay.

So he had zero oil pressure on the first test drive that this engine had had. It had just barely been rebuilt by the shop. And he brought it to Dave's to have them correct it, only to be told, oh, it would be this much more. On top of this, he's already paid a 50% down payment on it, too. So he's locked in on like ten grand, 15 grand ish. Already had paid that only to be told, oh, yeah, it was the last shop that effed it up. You need to. You need to pay this much to be able to have these parts fixed, have the block completely gone through, because who knows? With zero oil pressure with how long it ran, how.

What happened? We don't know. That's why my paycheck looked as good as it was, because that guy backed out right next, and I actually had another one back out in the same one. I think it was the GTO. He also got told, same thing. This is how much it's going to cost to have your engine redone. And because, like, I get that, these customers, they definitely sign themselves up for. They. They agree to this.

This is legal binding. I know what I'm getting myself into. And once it goes through the machine shop and they've done their full teardown, I'll get a, like a finalized. This is likely what it's going to cost you. I don't. I don't know personally how the conversations went with those customers. Again, I'm just the mechanic.

Right.

But, yeah, those two backed out in the same week. So we got. We finally were able to get paid on that. On that 50% down. We had covered our asses as it was.

Yeah.

But I then was stuck with, you had to box it up and push it out. So it was unfortunate, but that then just put the dirtiest taste in my mouth where I'm like, I am getting paid really well because these people can't afford it. They got locked in on something like this. And I get that you have to be able to pay your shop. You have to be able to cover your butt for those times of, we've already spent x amount of time on it, but can you justify that amount? I don't know. Again, I don't know what expenses were overhead.

Yeah.

I did hear conversations with our service advisors, tough, tough conversations with customers that would come in and look at stuff and they would be told in a much larger dollar amount than they were initially, than they were initially promised and saying, I can't do that, and I gotta pull out. It just made me so sick to my stomach that the reason I got paid as well as I did was because in just one paycheck was because somebody got pulled through, they got raked bad.

Can I understand this correctly? Then let me. Let me reach out here with a scenario. So is it tentative that somebody could come in with an engine that's got a knock? Right. You take the engine out, you. You tear the engine down, it goes over for inspection in a machine shop. The machine shop says it needs $20,000 to make this work. Right. They put $10,000 down.

Say 20,000 is the number they throw up. Spitball, right?

Yeah.

It cost you $20,000 for the engine, for your truck, Cory. And we say, okay, I need 10,000 down of that. Cool, cool story. Yep. Let's do it. And then they tear it down and they find out it needs way more than. It's going to be over 20. It's going to be 30 hypothetical numbers, right?

Yeah.

So does it work like that then, that, Spencer, that they get their car back in pieces and they don't have anything more than the $10,000 spent?

I mean, that. That's. That's not wrong.

Yeah.

So to give an example that actually happened was this person they. They bring in there, they sent their truck from Virginia. That's just how big he has gotten. He is accepting work from all over the country.

Yep.

In this small two building shop, he's accepting work from all over the country because people see him online and they say, I want my engine built by him.

Yeah.

This customer has a 2015 ram ecodiesel. Yeah. Eco diesels.

Whoa.

We love a good old eco diesel, right? Those things are bulletproof.

If there was ever a truck for a hemiswap that'd be an equity.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Believe it or not, I actually considered when it was brand new at the time, I considered maybe I should throw in a, maybe I should throw in the eco diesel because, you know, that'd be a good torque and whatnot. I'm so glad I did not do that, dude. I would have much rather put in a twelve valve. But emissions reasons were why I went with the hemi and money. But, yeah. This person sends in their truck from Virginia.

I am then tasked with, hey, it's consuming coolant, and I'm looking at the expansion tank. It's sooty, it's black. It's a replacement, dormant one. So it's definitely, it's definitely recent that it's had this failure. Yeah. We go around and do some basic testing on it, only to be told, all right, we've gotten to go ahead. We need to pull the cab and tear the heads off. All right, cool.

I've never done this before either, and tore it down, got the heads off, and I'm like, yeah, these head gaskets aren't great. And one of them, you could definitely tell it was warped. You set it down on the table and it was bubbled. So we were like, we've definitely got some problems here. Cylinder walls had very light scoring, but just like nothing that you could catch your fingernail on. I, again, am not sure what was quoted to the customer for fixing it, but it was such a high number that he decided to back out. And he's already into it. The towing from Virginia to Salt Lake City.

And now he's looking at another $10,000 or so in just engine rebuild. And, and on top of that, he's already taken the, the couple of thousand down for us to even tear it down. I felt so bad for this guy. Cause I'm like, this truck was not worth it to begin with. Yeah, I get, I get that some customers are like, well, no, no, no. That, like, this truck's important to me. You almost wanna be able to advise him, just take it to a dealership local to you, and have them replace the motor if you think it's gonna be the motor. I, again, am not sure how that conversation went.

I just know that he had to back out and, yeah, it was, it was a rough go. That truck boxed everything up, threw it in the back of the truck. After he backed out and he was out, the, the cost of basically a brand new engine at that point. If he had gone to a dealership and bought that engine, he was already out the cost of that brand new engine.

Yeah.

And my, my, my immediate response is, I'm so sorry that you had to go through this. If the guy is even listening to this podcast, dude, I am so sorry that that happened to you.

So was that you said the straw that broke the camel's back? Was that the straw?

No, this was the. Let me, let me go off on this story. Oh, my hell. So this was actually the one time that I feel like I had actually seen Dave make a video showing his, showing a shortcoming. So we had a fleet vehicle from somewhere out in California. It was an f 250, single cab, long bed. It was a truck that was converted to propane. Pretty basic system that it just replaces the gas engine system with a propane system, supposedly runs cleaner.

Yada, yada, yada. I don't know. Well, with propane, it's going to run at a higher temperature inside of the combustion chamber. And they had a knocking noise on this engine that they're pretty sure that if they wanted to remedy it, they needed to build a motor specifically to handle propane with hardened valve seats and everything. Okay. So they had already built an engine. I was tasked with. Pull it out, replace it, get it in, get it out of here.

Cool. That's a, that's a good chunk of change, especially where I'm probably going to be able to see that in the same paycheck. I'm going to be able to pull it in, replace the motor. Good to go. I get it installed, I fire it up, and at this point, like, it, it's like very basic stuff put together. Just, I want to make sure that this engine runs okay, cool. Get everything to run. It ran for about maybe 30 seconds.

Okay, let's finish everything off and let's put coolant in the system. Let's get it all, get it all ready to run out the door. I fire it up. After everything is ready for like, test driving. It runs for two minutes, probably tops. As I'm sitting there with it idling, I then start hearing a tick which progresses into a knock, which progresses into engine runs rough, shuts off within two minutes. And I'm immediately going through my head like, I received a long block from the guys next door and it just failed on me. What happened? So I go to my service advisor, I go to my shop foreman.

We're like, okay, well, we need to, we need to figure out what the codes are. Why did it shut off? Like, what did you miss? And I'm like, I don't think I missed anything here. We then decide, okay, we got to pull the valve cover. We gotta pull valve covers and see. Cause we have some cam correlation codes. Pull a valve cover. We find out that. Yep.

The camshaft VB or.

Yeah.

Variable valve timing sprocket had sheared off the pin on the back of the cam.

Nice.

Yeah. And we're like, oh, great. Now we gotta go through and make sure that valves didn't kiss the pistons. Yeah, great. So at this point, it's all, it's all warranty work. I was given an extra 9 hours to be able to do this warranty work. But, you know, when there's 9 hours thrown at a, at a ticket for that, you know, we've just barely installed this new engine, and Dave definitely gets word. So he shows up, and cameras not rolling anything, he and his son who built the motor are going over it, and I'm standing there kind of in the background, like, what you guys think? Like, how did this happen? Dave's looking at it, and he's like, the only reason that that would have ever happened is if that bolt wasn't torqued to spec or if it didn't have loctite.

He has a very strict policy on if it's a rotating part on an engine needs loctite. Okay, well, I mean, he turns to me and he's like, was that bolt tight? And in my head, this is, again, a little bit of like my ADHD, my, my, my little dash of the showing its colors here, because my brain immediately goes, not just from a yes or no answer to, well, you see, I put my torque gun on it to be able to take that bolt off, because I'm flat rate, and I've got to be able to be quick with everything. So, yes, I didn't stab a torque wrench on it and reverse it to see what the torque spec was when I was pulling it off. And that's not always 100% accurate either. So, like, I'm. I. When I put the gun on it and you zip it off, you know, the thing goes zing when, you know, something was tight and not cross threaded or I using any loctite. Well, when I put the gun on it, it was.

And that kind of tells you it's either cross threaded or it's at least got loctite on it. So that whole thing is going through my brain as Dave is looking at me going, was it bolt tied? Yes or no? Yes or no? Come on, man, you're flat rate. You got to be able to answer me. Yes. Or no. And I'm like, it. And as I stumble over my words, he turns, and he's like, he doesn't know. He doesn't know.

And his son. And then they go back at it, and he's looking at the bolt going, I don't see any cross or I don't see any loctite on that bolt. Basically pointing his fingers at his son, just like you did this, like. And they're. They're kind of in a yelling match with each other over it. And his son, I felt really bad for him, but at the same time, he, like, we talked later, and he's like, now, that's just. That's just how things are with him. I'm like, does it have to be, though?

Do you don't have.

Listen, I wouldn't take that.

When the king and the prince are having an argument, you don't have to feel bad. Okay, first of all, I know that's a lie.

Maybe is just like my personal upbringing. I hear and I see this stuff, and I'm just like, why can't we all get along, guys? Come on. You know? That's what's going through my mind. But, you know, Dave, he. This is where it, like, mom, if you're listening, you may not want to. You may not want to listen.

Your mouse, mom.

My. I'm then approached by Dave, and he again asked another question about the engine with the yes or no? Yes or no? Come on, give me an answer. And I. I had already had these conversations with my wife. I'd already, like, been like, I need to give him an answer. But in that moment, I am frazzled, and I feel like this has been a constant struggle throughout my life of just being able to give an accurate, good answer when my brain is running through a. To zenith of everything that that conversation could have been or how I want to answer, because I don't want to lie to you. I want to give you a straight answer.

But I feel like sometimes it's more than just a yes or no. Like, I don't know if it was to the exact spec and whatnot. So Dave has already, at this point, multiple times, gotten kind of short with me.

Mm hmm.

Because I was not. I have. I have shown him within the first couple of weeks of being there that it takes me a second to answer his questions, and he's now just been like, I. Why are you taking so long to answer these questions? Yeah, these are simple yes or no answers, and you just aren't doing that. And then I start, like, I'm trying to explain to him, look, I've been diagnosed with ADHD, autism, a little bit, Asperger's and whatnot. Like, I have had a lifelong struggle with trying to be able to overcome these problems with my brain. And in an industry like this, it's hard to find anybody that is definitely a mental health expert, right? Let alone an HR representative that's going to be able to help you out. So as I explain this to Dave, I'm like, dude, I need you to understand my brain just, it doesn't work that way.

It doesn't. He cuts me off, looks me square in the face and says, I don't care about your fucking brain. I'm taken back. And I'm like, Dave, I need you to understand, like, my communication style with how my brain works cuts me off again. I don't care about your fucking brain.

Good answer.

Okay. All right. And I let it go. And that was the straw that broke the camel's back. I said, I am not going to be treated this way. I have been bullied my entire life. I am not going to be treated this way, let alone by a boss.

Yeah.

Dave is a mechanic. He's, he's been a mechanic for decades now. He's going to, he's going to treat you just about how every mechanic I've had to deal with is going to treat every other mechanic. But I think he doesn't realize that he's, he's now he's a boss of an empire.

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

He has definitely doubled the amount of work, and he's become a completely different person. He's expected to be a completely different person than where he was maybe ten years ago.

I'll say five years ago.

Yeah, even then. Yeah.

Yeah.

So that in consideration, that's where I said, I can't do this. And I know that there are plenty of mechanics that plenty of people have commented on my TikTok videos, especially the one where I announced where I am leaving. They said, you couldn't hack it. And in a way, yeah, I couldn't. I couldn't hack that. I wouldn't, I don't want that.

Yep.

I've been in industries where I, I was treated way better. Maybe not paid as well, but I was treated way better. I was happy to go to work. I was happy with even the days where I was scratching my head going, great, now we gotta work on an ecodiesel. You know, I'm just, I was so taken aback by that very moment that I know, even right now, I've got no proof for it. I really, it's adhesive.

Oh, yeah.

We're pointing fingers at each other at this point. Like, there's nothing that I can say that would definitely make some of his ultra fan boys turn their allegiance. And I'm not asking for that. I just want people to consider there's more to this guy than even I thought. I joined this business with a completely different idea of the guy.

So. And that's, that's part and parcel to why, why I do this podcast. And it's part and parcel to why I reached out to you and I said, we need to have this conversation. Let me be clear. First of all, I'm not trying to out anybody. I'm not trying to cause the, the downfall of the king. You know what I mean?

Same here. I don't want. I, and this is, again, we don't want to have any major repercussions from it, but it's not like you can just let something like that go.

No, I, and I want people to be aware that the old adage of, you know, when people look at somebody and go, well, that's how they appear on social media or online or whatever you want to call it, is probably not who they are. We're not saying that, that right now. He's human, right? He's human. We all have our slips, we all have our misses, we all have our days where we're nothing. So it's not because I had those.

Even at Carmax, I had, I had the first anxiety attack of my life, having a guy that was not qualified to be a manager pull me into his office, and I then started having a panic attack. Never had one in my life. So I don't know what it looks like, but I can. Shortness of breath and I'm like, I gotta go, I'm sorry. And I burst out of his office and I'm just panting and crying on the side of the building. And for him to even tell me at that point, hey, man, you just gotta calm down. And I'm like, okay, that is not what you say when someone's having a panic attack.

No.

So I get it. I've had, I've had it all in different, different contexts.

Not just here, there's lots of daves out there that have that personality in the industry. That's what we're, I'm trying to say, yeah.

Not unique to him. This is unique to anybody.

And so it's not, this is not meant to be a hatchet job or a witch hunt. On Dave's auto center. That's not why I brought you on here at all. It's. If it sounds like that to people listening, go back and listen to it a couple times. You got to understand, it's just a young man sharing his experiences that's worked at a shop. And people. People my age, you know, that have done this a long, long time.

Longer than Spencer can certainly attest that we probably had boss just like that. Or boss even worse. I know I had one. I had a shop foreman that, like, was worse than that. He wasn't my boss. But for all intents purposes, on the other side of the office door, he's your boss. That's what was instructed to me. And I've mentioned this gentleman more times than I care to mention.

And, you know, he's the one individual that I had a hammer in my hand and felt like smashing it through his forehead. Yep. That's pretty. Pretty strong emotion for me. I'm pretty even keel like, not. But he's just was. There's. There's bullies, right? And there's levels to that.

He was the. The worst I've ever seen. So when. When we're sitting here talking about Dave, we're not talking about Dave. Just because this is an opportunity with the. The news that has come out about Dave and an engine job and all this kind of stuff that's all over social media. This is not what this is about. This just happened to be how the timing.

Yeah.

I started right after that transmission seal thing with Mister Subaru. I started right after that. Maybe two weeks after that.

Yeah.

And I quit about three weeks before this whole thing with Corey's engine.

Yeah. Which is so for people that don't know the whole story. And now, again, some of the whole story how will be speculative because a lot of videos that have been put up and what now have been now taken down. And there's probably a backstory to that. A good friend of mine is still not convinced that it's even a legit thing. He thinks it's. To borrow a term from the wrestling world, it's a work. He thinks it's all a work.

It's a rib, so. Which, because of how many. What it's been doing to drive the algorithm. Whatever. Yeah. Um, so this. This gentleman, Corey, has a terminal illness and he. His engine.

He's got a Duramax and a Chevy truck engine needs to be rebuilt. Not that uncommon for Duramax. I think it has. I think it has cp four failure or something went through it and whatever he tasked me with taking the engine, I want that engine rebuilt. I want my numbers matching, engine block, whole thing back. Yeah. Which I'm gonna go right out and say it. And I have other people that we've had this conversation behind the scenes and they in it.

To them it's a weird thing too. That's a weird request because some of us have been industry that especially we're not talking a corvette, we're not talking, you know, a demon, we're not talking a scat pack. We're not talking any high end collectors.

This is your average, like Chevy work. Average farmer has this exact same truck in his backyard.

So the whole numbers matching thing to me in this particular regard does not make sense. Now that doesn't take away from the fact that he had strict written instructions and agreement that that's what he was going to get back. He did not get that engine back. And the way I understood is this engine, they would drop it off, was rebuilt, then they were going to put it in the truck themselves to kind of get the truck back going. Kind of a project for this, this gentleman with terminal illness. There was some overspray, I guess. And then there's some things that transpired and some emails back and forth between this Corey gentleman, Dave and everything. What it boils down to is that Dave has, they've come to an agreement.

They've made it right. Okay. So whatever right may be, I don't know. Um, yeah.

And even with personal correspondence with Corey given to me today, even after they made it right there, there is still some glaring things that in his words has made him again lose trust in that business. And that, that's the most, that's the most heartland wrenching thing to me is you've completely built this up with your Persona, how you are on the Internet. Somebody puts that trust in you to have it then torn down and shoved under a rug, then to have it built back up again with other mechanics reaching out personally saying, that sucks, I'm sorry. Me reaching out saying I've worked in that shop and I'm sorry that you had to deal with that and what could be done, in your opinion, to make this right. Talking through that, to have. I even posted my own video that night after talking with Corey of, you know, this, this is not right. We've had it as the email back.

For.

Giving him an analogy of putting tile in their bathroom. And it wasn't perfect, but he was only paying attention to the minor pieces that were wrong with it. Instead of the big picture of you still got your whole floor retiled and it looks great. I came back with the analogy of like, that's not the tile he specked out for you. He purchased tile and gave it to you, said, put this in my house.

Yeah.

And you didn't put that tile in my house. Where is my tile? Regardless of how it may look. And yeah, there may be a couple of questionable things. Sure. You could probably chase out threads for overspray on some of the, on the glow plug holes. I think you and I both know glow plugs, they have a very tight tolerance. And how many times have you had one seize on you?

Yeah.

Especially in aluminum heads. So it's, it's one of those things that, regardless of this whole, like, let's just take it, adds face value. I gave you something and I didn't get that back.

Yeah.

Why didn't I get that back?

Yeah. And I want people to listen to me and know me really well. I almost never go to the bat for the customer. Right. I've got over a decade of online where people, like we talked about at the beginning, where people get online and they want to make a platform to tear down the professionals in this industry. My podcast will never be about that. Most of the time, if you hear me with the mic turned off, you're going to say that most of the time, I think the customers lie. They're trying to definitely those customers, that.

They'Ll come back and they'll be like, hey, my drain plug wasn't tight. And you find that if the shop uses a thread checker puts that's what Carmax did after we had to replace an engine on a BMW. We still had people trying to get warranty repair work done when it's like, there's a reason we put that there.

That's right.

Clearly voided that warranty. And guess what? Now you're out an engine.

So I'm not. I'm never going to be on here and try to attack a business. I'm never going to be on here and try to attack a fellow technician unless I've worked for that person. And I know you're like the guy we spoke of, like Mister Hammerhead, you know, if he was sitting here tomorrow right next to me, I'd attack him all day long because he's got it coming and he knows why, but. So this is not what this podcast will ever be about. But there's just too much going on behind the scenes for a lot of people to not look into this further. And I I want to think that it wouldn't have had to take all the exposure that this particular engine rebuild got on social media before Dave would have made it right. And I know that he came out and said, I would have made it right.

You know, he chastises his son and says, you should have let me know. I am not so blind and so naive to think that the reason that Corey has had the success now in whatever you want to call it is because of the fact that the industry, our little corner of the industry, our social online presence, pointed the finger and asked a lot of questions. And so what my whole process is, what my whole goal is, is that that's all that these conversations do. I don't want to see the downfall necessarily of, like I said before, I don't want to see the downfall of one particular person's business. I want to see everybody become better. Right. I want to see that.

Agreed.

If Dave walks away from this with better processes in that huge empire, that he's got to avoid this kind of stuff happening. If it means that, like, you know, all the cores don't get thrown in a pile and people just grab whatever and screw a six liter together, or they don't grab whatever is in a pile and screw a dirmat together. If that happens, we've done something serious. Right? That's all I'm about here. This is not an attack. This is not an attack. This is just a situation of. We often don't look at where we can become better until somebody shows us, points it out, till we.

You gotta fall down, man, a bunch to learn how to, like.

Yeah. You've got a. You've got to throw in a hemi engine in a truck that doesn't deserve it and get no help from anyone out there. Yeah. If you want to become better.

Yeah.

And I do believe that there are people that work at that shop that are good people that take. They take that, that feedback, and they actually make a change. But there are some others that they. They let their ego get in the way. You know, it's. It's not, it's not management or not only management, not only mechanics. Like, it's it. There's certain people in just about any part of the shop that can't put away their pride and accept that.

Hey, maybe there's a different way of looking at this.

Yeah. Um, Spencer is the guys that work in the machine shop, are they paid on a similar pay plan to the way where you were?

You know, I wish I had a good answer to that question. Because I even, like, when I first interviewed with Miles, when I interviewed the first time, not the second time, that was a position that they were going to talk with me about where they would pay me 40 hourly because I would be what they were looking for at the time. They were looking for somebody to do engine tear downs, but also install them. So, like, where there was a lot of variables involved there, I would basically just be light duty work with the machine shop as well as in the mechanic shop with the normal in and out every single day stuff. I did try to ask that question, and I don't think I got a straight answer on it. So, unfortunately, I don't feel like I have enough to be able to say about that.

It's kind of crazy to me, people that are listening, that when we see an empire that big, that is doing the kind of turnaround and volume that.

They are with tickets that are $30,000.

Plus, that they're paying their people on a flat rate or an incentivized commission based type of plan. Now, in our industry, those are not new things like, don't, don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to say we need to abolish flat rates.

These are all very common business practices that a lot of shops have done.

But they don't tell you when they're, when they're standing there talking about how all this care and detail goes into your build, that the person that's responsible for it has a tick and clock time bot time crunch to get it done right. That's not the. They're painting illusion of something different. So it's just something to people that are listening to mull it over. When you're thinking about making choices in this industry on where you spend your money, do a little research, talk to a few people, find out what's going on, because that's not things that I.

Wish I had done. The red flags were probably there from day one. I should have checked his reviews. I should have checked.

Reviews are funny, right? Reviews are funny because there's.

They can be, you know, you definitely hear the worst of some people, especially when they have. They've taken legal action and whatnot. I get that. But I mean, the shop that I'm at right now that has had some of the same struggles we first day, I'm putting an LS one head or what, with the design, I don't know, an LS engine. I'm reassembling one side of the engine again with some new lifters, and it's back again. But that's just because it's related to a completely different issue. So it's. Yeah, I'm seeing things in just about every place that I've worked at that there's good and there's Badlandore.

You're going to hear good and bad reviews from customers. But this shop that I'm at, the integrity, the transparency with their customers has still led them to have a over four and a half star review rating on their page with hundreds of reviews. Whereas I've gone on Dave's page, and this was what my mom told me. This was what my wife told me. Okay. Have you taken a second to look at the reviews? Like, there's a lot of people that are upset with him about some of these things, that there's. The common factor is how much it costs and how certain things were not justified. Again, I know I'm only on the repair end of things, so I didn't truly get to see like what some of these tickets closed out at.

Um.

Right.

Minus two. Minus two that, uh, were not closed out as I was leaving the shop, which I have not been paid out for. And I am going to the labor commission because there are two trucks that I tore engines out of. I spent the time, I spent the labor. I deserve to be paid for what I did. I understand that now. Somebody has to. Yeah.

Take the stuff that I took apart and put it back together, which is an unfortunate thing, but, like, those trucks are still probably not done. And I don't know about you, but even with everything labeled in cups on these baker's bread tray, whatever's to be able to have everything nicely laid out for you, it's still gonna take you, it's still gonna take you time to figure out where everything goes. So. And let's say a customer backs out. Let's say one of those customers backs out who directly is getting that money. That would have been paid to me.

Yeah.

So it's, again, you've been paid the 50% down. If that person backs out, you're covered.

Yeah.

Now that I'm out of the picture, who directly benefits from that amount if they refuse to pay that out?

Well, and that's all calculated into the fact that somebody's going to walk in and put a truck back together that you took apart and they're going to lose their butt on the time factor of it. And that's just why, you know, that's.

Why this structure is not the greatest for that situation.

But we as flat rate techs coming up, we're always told you take the good with the bad, you win some, you lose some. Right. This is one of these situations where the shop, unfortunately, is going to take the loss. Right. This thing with Corey, the shop's gonna take a loss. This thing with. When that tech goes in now and has to put together something that Spencer took apart and he loses time on it, the right thing to do is to pay the tech. That's the right thing to do.

I keep reiterating that for people who are listening, like shop owners, especially when you listen to me, understand, I have love for you all, okay? But there is a right way to do things and it's not the old way.

Yeah.

Things are changing. The young man sitting here right in front of me and countless others that I talk to all the time, we will not accept what the way we used to be treated. And that's what the people that are struggling with the. Now, Spencer, you and I are in different networks in terms of how, who we talk to and the social media. You know, things like, you tend to think more. I'm talking with a lot of owners and a lot of older technicians now, the younger people like yourself coming in, you're going to see very quickly they're going to be very different. Like, Spencer didn't leave the job because he couldn't do the job. Spencer left the job because he wouldn't tolerate being talked to the way he was talked to.

So if you want to take young people that have talent and drive them out, continue to treat them like that. But I don't think anybody that's constantly talking in the groups and, you know, my feeds blow up and people. I can't find technicians. I can't find technicians. So we have a two fold problem here. We've got a bunch of younger people now that won't pick the industry. And then we have a whole bunch of younger people that come in like spencer have an unbelievable passion for and a knack for, but then we drive them out of it by how we treat them because it's like, well, that's how I came up.

Okay, we can't keep doing this way. I'm going to make you learn this way.

Yeah.

When so much has changed from that time, I, even at Carmax, there were guys that they've been doing. They would brag that I've been doing this for longer than you've been alive. I'm like, okay, but I'm replacing a transmission on a Ford Mustang that you effed up.

Yeah, yeah. Let me. Let me tell you what the eye opening thing for me in this industry. What contributed to a lot of my attitude or my confidence or whatever you want to talk about it was the fact that, like, six years in, I was doing some things that the. The old heads that I worked with weren't strong at. Right. And it woke me to the fact that it's like, yeah, okay, so they've been here a long time, but there's something that I do better than them. And then I just built on that.

And I built on it, and I built on it until it became part of my. It became my confidence, it became my suit of armor, became my ego, where it's like, you might have done, you know, you might have done the first head gasket in the k car ever in this building. Cool story, bro. Right? I'm sitting here diagnosing a transmission that's in limp because you can't figure out a volt drop on a wire. You know, I'm doing stuff like that. So no disrespect to that person, but we all have to keep relevant. We all have to fight every day to stay on the cusp of where we need to be. We owe that to our employers.

Our employers owe it to us to keep us trained up. And the old adage, you're only as good as your last work order. There's some truth to that, and it sucks. But the reality is, these young people today have an exceptional skill set. It's incredible. Like, the kind of stuff that Spencer's told me that he's tackled and other people that I've interviewed and talked to and, like, it's just, I've known guys that worked with guys for 20 years that would have said the same thing. I wouldn't even try to do what you're doing. It can't be done.

Well, they don't. They don't accept that as an answer. Right. Because they have such a grasp of the technology that goes on. They're just like, why can't it be done? It's just. Yeah, we say it's just nuts and bolts, and now they just tell me.

No, tell me that. Like, all right, let's try it. Let's try your way of thinking. If it doesn't work, we're no better off than we were before. But if it does work. Oh, yeah, there's some great benefits to that.

Yeah. Yeah. It is like a suit armor. And, I mean, it's the same thing. Like, I can tell you what I'm good at, and I'm. Tell you what, I'm terrible at. And I wear it on my sleeve. I'm oh, yeah.

So I don't have to have anybody look twice at some of the jobs that I do. And I prided myself on that. At Carmax, I had the lowest comeback of any of the ma three s that I was working with, and I wore that as a badge of honor. Like, look what I can do now. At the same time, I was sitting there not able to figure out, why don't my reverse lights work? It's like, it should be totally simple to figure this out. So, I mean, the comparison is the thief of joy type of thing. I know that there's things that I excel at that other text they struggle with so bad. But if I can be that helping hand to be like, hey, you know, let me show you an option that worked well for me.

And I've even had guys that are younger than me, they've taught me something. Like, I tell them, hey, just use a pair of channel locks very lightly in this way with these electronic brake calipers. They show me, oh, just take a power probe and, yeah, well, okay, that's different. And all right, if that works for you and you're quick with it and you haven't had comebacks related to it, who am I to stop you? Yeah, but if we get a break, concern that has to result in replacing $1200 calipers. I'm going to suggest that we try to find a different way to do this. And every time you do it, don't think that just because it worked on this one BMW, that it's going to work on this Ford f 150 that I've heard about their new brake systems.

Have you seen the bulletins on the Chevy trucks when you don't follow the service procedure, when you do the rear brakes on it.

So again, that's maybe some of the fear that I have that I know it's not going to work for every car. I need to accept that going by the book sometimes is safest.

So my goal for this, when we're all done, what I want to help you with is I'm going to help you network with people that are going to be able to bring you to that next level.

Okay.

And it's going to be through people networking for jobs, people that are networking. It's going to be, I'm going to set you up with some people I appreciate that are going to really show you the pathway to bring up your weaknesses and continue to polish your already good strengths. I want to close with. So what's going forward, what's happening with dave situation.

I just want to be. I want to be rid of it. I want to get the pay that I know that I deserved from there, and I'm gonna throw it into my. I'm gonna throw it into my 70 charger project car.

Yeah.

I want to step away from that. I don't want to have anything else to do with that place. I appreciate the time that I had there, the learning experiences that it gave me, but there's not enough time in the world for me to be constantly worrying about what's going on up there. Don't need. I don't need to worry about it, and I know that he doesn't worry about me, so.

And you filed your paperwork to be. What's the word I'm trying to think of? You've gone through proceedings to get. Yeah, to get. You've gone through the proceedings.

We're. I mean, the day I quit, as I am picking up my toolbox up off of the ground, because I. I saw it fall, hit the brakes. One piece fell off of the toolbox as I was rolling towards my truck, and it's already on a slide, downhill slope, I hit the brakes, and to avoid running over that thing, and all of my sockets and everything are in the top drawers, so, of course, it's top heavy, and it fell off. And I'm like, dang it. But at the end of that, just to be told, oh, yeah, we're not paying you out for those two jobs that the tickets are not complete on. However, we are going to pay you out on what you've done on the 1972 nova, even though it's not complete. We're waiting on a new transmission ban for that fifth one, by the way, that we got wrong.

You know, it. I immediately jumped in my truck and went to the labor board, and I said, here's what I'm faced with. Do I have a case? And they said, absolutely. You file the paperwork online. Let's get you. Let's get this figured out. So, probably after we're done with this conversation, wife and I are going to make sure that all that paperwork is properly filed.

Good. When you went to the labor board, did they kind of. Did anybody kind of roll their eyes and go, not another one from that shop?

No. There was actually only, like, I know it was awkward moments with, like, two or three people. I cracked one joke that the lady looked at me, and she was like, what? This. This is why I need to end my sentences one sentence early.

Yeah. Mechanics have a strange, very weird sense of humor. Right? Like the things that we find funny just upset some people. There's some shops around me that, like the labor board knows very well.

You know, I know the labor board may not know this shop very well, but I know for sure the county does with the amount of vehicles that were towed out of there, parked in weird spots. Yeah, it's a famous shop.

Yeah, well, I mean, I'm, you know, I want to see, like I said, I don't want to see the mountainous crumble, you know, under the weight of the kingdom.

I want to see, I want to see this shop succeed. If that, if that Discovery Channel tv show does work out. I don't want to see more drama. I want to see this shop show what they can do at the best of their abilities and making things right for customers, no matter what the cost is.

And I think maybe what this story and the Corey story, maybe if anything positive comes out of this, is that it snaps Mister Dave back into the realities of like, hey, you might still need to be a little more involved in a lot more of what's going on. And I think that that's what a lot of shop owners suffer from, is that the kingdom gets very big and you step away from it. And there's the saying in our industry all the time. In my circles, not so much yours, but you'll learn it all, Spencer. They'll say that shop owners shouldn't work in the business. They should work on the business. And I'm going to sit here and I have some really good shop owner friends who don't necessarily agree with that coaching, because this is an example of, I think what can happen when you do that, when you want to slow down and spend a little less time. We're not saying you haven't earned that, but this is what can happen.

And I think it's a, it's a situation of, there's a lot of family shops out there, like Dave shops, a family shop that have the family running it for you. I'm gonna go out on a limb here, and I'm gonna say sometimes that's not the best choice for your management is your, your own family. Because I think that, that the bad habits that you have, like you talked about how Dave speaks with his son, imagine that, that he may speak with his son one day like that. And you know, yep, there's trends.

I don't want anybody to be treated like that. Family or not, mistakes can be made in any portion of the industry. And it, at the end of the day, it's like, guys, let's learn from this. Let's move on. Again, life so short. Let's not, let's not get hung up on the who did what? Who did? Or, like, what happened so much as, like, what can we learn from it? Where can we go from here?

Yeah, 100%.

That's, yeah, I had many opportunities there, even with Dave, like, all right, even in my head ringing to this day, I still have, every time I'm putting on some loctite, I hear, make sure that that's got loctite on it. So maybe that's the positive that I got from that was always making sure that I have that on there. And unfortunately, also learning, hey, make sure that you have your brakes properly assembled when you're pushing a vehicle out of a shop because that red ram went for a ride. I don't know if I mentioned that, but, yeah, when we pushed that out of the shop, the plunger on the back of the going into the booster was not properly seated. So I'm slamming on the brakes, and it did not slow down.

That's the one you had to have off the diesel.

Yep, yep. And I narrowly missed, I narrowly missed a 55 chevy. Went up and over the curb into the ditch. No damage done to the vehicle other than a sidestep that I was able to repair flawlessly. So customer was made aware, as far as I know, about that, like, but he was again backing out. So we were like, just make sure that it's at least in the condition that it was brought to. And I made sure that that thing was spotless. So I I care, I cared a lot about that.

Customer wanted to make sure that, like, this unfortunate situation would at least be made right as good as I could. I wanted to be able to leave the shop that day and go. We, we did our best.

Yeah, yeah. That's all we really, that's the goal that should be for all of us every day, right, is you try to go and do your best. Um, for a lot of years, I didn't go with that goal, I'll tell you right now. And when I do go to work every day with that goal, I have much better days. So I want to thank you, Spencer, for coming on. This has been an awesome, awesome conversation.

And thank you so much for reaching out. I feel like a lot of good can come out of this podcast if the right person is listening.

Yeah, I think it will. And I think we'd be naive to think that it's not going to reach the people that it needs to reach.

Yep. And those people might be following me currently, and I'm gonna be sure to release a video saying you want the full story.

Yeah.

Here you go.

Yeah. And to reiterate again, it's not. It's not an attack on anybody. It's just a situation of, you know, one technicians telling their story, their experiences at a shop that they worked at.

You know, we could have from many different positions. This is simply mine.

We're not. We're not going to do the industry any favors on this podcast, my podcast. If we were to go in there and put a cloak over your head and, you know, you do anonymously and we change the names, we shouldn't in this modern day need to do that. We're going to.

They're going to figure it out if we did.

That's exactly it. So it's not. It's. If you see it as a hatchet job, you're just being naive. You're just wanting to see it as that. That's not what it is. It's just somebody coming and sharing the experiences they had at a shop that could have been any one of the millions of shops that are out there. You would have had the same experiences.

It's not a case of jumping on a bandwagon. That's not what this is about. So please, anybody that you know, my feed's gonna blow up with people like you just trying. Listen, I understand the fanboy mentality. I get it. Your mom cut your crust off your peanut butter and sandwich for you. You feel like you're an important person. Yeah, I'm good with it.

Call me whatever you want. Bring it. I'm not worried. It's called I love you all.

I hope people like, whenever they start fanboying with me, I do appreciate it. But at the same time, like, I'm. I'm. I'm probably no better than some of the other people that are out there that are maybe even more well qualified. When you say that I'm the greatest tech that you've ever seen, I humbly disagree with you. And that you don't need to have this blind fanboy ship for me. You know, if there's something that I truly do that you find admirable, great. Base it off of that.

Don't immediately say that I'm somebody that I'm not, and don't stand up for somebody when they show their true colors, that they're nothing. That.

That's right. Yeah. Superman had to take his cape off eventually, so. All right, folks, thank you for listening. As always, I love you all. I'm looking forward to seeing everybody at Asta. Spencer, if you're not coming to Asta this year, you need to put it on your bucket list.

Yep. AstA as well as I would love to be able to get the 70 charger down to Sema. And, I mean, if anybody is wanting to meet with me and be able to chat with me a little bit more personally, I will be attending roadkill zip tie drags in Tucson. That's where my parents live. So we're gonna be down there the exact same weekend. I'm not sure which day we're gonna be there, but if you find me, I've got a stack of stickers with my logo on it. You can come say hi, take pictures, whatever. I'm still gonna tell you I'm not the coolest mechanic you know, though.

Well, I hope one day I get to shake your hand and I'll meet you in person.

And I hope so, too.

We'll trade some. We'll trade some swag. So thanks very much, everybody, for listening. We'll talk to you all soon. Take care. 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. Mm. And we'll see you all again next time.

Metal Man Online Shares His Experiences of Mistreatment and Mismanagement in Auto Shops, Part 2

About this episode

Dodge Charger

Challenger Hellcat

Chevrolet Corvette

Proton Persona

Ford Mustang

Ford F150

Ford Probe

Chevrolet Nova

Request an Explanation

Want to learn more?

Help improve this episode

More from The Jaded Mechanic Podcast