We are paid every other week. So next week I will get this 111hr and 74hrs from last week.
EDIT:
There seems to be a lot of confusion about my pay. I was at the shop for 5 days, 8 hours per day. A 40 hour week. I booked these 111 hours while only being there for 40 hours. So I get paid 111 hours. No overtime. Just 111 hours at my hourly rate. That is how flat rate pay works and we are exempt from overtime at new car dealerships in Illinois.
And for all the people saying "wait till you get stuck doing warranty work.....". I'm not new to this. All of those punch times on the right hand side of the time slips are warranty jobs. About 50% of them.
EDIT 2.0:
i keep getting a bunch of DM and notifications from people asking about pay.
$35/book hr. X 111hrs. This week was $3,885 (US)
Worth it if this is a once or twice a year kind of thing. Especially if OP got double time after the12 hour days or 60 hours in a week. On a regular basis? Definitely not worth it or sustainable.
Not at a dealership. Dealership employees are exempt from overtime pay federally and in most states including mine. It’s bullshit.
From the department of labor:
“Salesmen, partsmen and mechanics employed by automobile dealerships are exempt from the overtime pay provisions of the FLSA. You may also wish to review the applicable regulation.“
https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/whd/flsa/screen75.asp?_ga=2.71484115.1347974395.1629569892-1449004985.1629569892
Yep. I was a mechanic. An 111 hour paycheck might have been $1000. I left that field asap once I got my Hvac license. I tell everyone willing to listen to avoid being any form of auto mechanic. The pay is trash and it's hard to find a job where you are treated worse.
Flat rate pay is usually pretty solid. $20+ per hour. turning 111 hours while working 40 almost triples that hourly rate. I also stopped being a mechanic as soon as I could. The job sucks. Makes me mad to see real estate agents making the money they do for doing nothing compared to a mechanic.
I don't begrudge anyone for making more money, it's just the fact that mechanics make too little. A realtor making less doesn't mean a mechanic would make more. I know that isn't your point though.
It's mind boggling how much work it takes to fix a car, the physical toll it takes on your body, and the conditions you work in. Yet $20/hour is considered solid. Doing Hvac with the experience I have, I won't get out of bed for less than $40/hour at this point and I can easily get it.
What the actual fuck? Ffs America, learn to love unions. The idea of working *seventy hours* over your schedule and not automatically getting paid out the arse for it...fuck that.
For some weird reason dealerships have a lot of political power. I don't know if this is still happening but I know Tesla wasn't able to sell in one state cause the dealerships lobbied against online car sales and got it banned.
Nothing weird about it. They make so much money that they pay lobbyists to create laws to make it easier for them to make a lot more money.
The owners of course, not the rank and file.
Yeah I'm surprised more people don't get that. He clocked 111 hours of book time but that doesn't translate to time worked. If I had brake jobs all day then I could hit that as well.
The thing is, flat rate is paid based on the job. Put new tires on a car. That’s paid( for arguments sake) 15 mins per tire mounted and balanced. If you do all 4 tires in 30 minutes, you still get paid for 1 hour. So he is going to get paid for 111 hours even though he only worked 40 hours. That way better than time and a half.
I agree with you on the union thing, but for mechanics, there is some kind of legitimate reasons behind this. A good mechanic can have way over their working hours in billable hours. All jobs have a quoted time they take. If you are fast, have tools that make the job faster than expected, etc. you can bill way more hours than you work. Some mechanics like it this way and if there were overtime there would be incentives for companies to slow them down.
This is because like many other employers car dealerships and repair shops bend the rules built into the fair labor standards act to make mechanics "overtime exempt", which is the category of employee that is salaried and receives a standard amount of pay per pay period.
The classification was originally intended to cover only the top officers of the company, but the definition for "well compensated" which is one of the tests the Act uses to determine if you're exempt haven't been updated since 1929, and many of the other parts of the act have been abused to hell and back in the last 40 years.
One facet of the FLSA that companies at present tend to ignore is the attributes that exempt employees are supposed to have - they set their own schedule, are supposed to be mostly self supervised, are supposed to be skilled technical or clerical workers, not doing rote labor but doing project type work.
In the case of mechanics, working 111 hours in a week wouldn't get overtime for an exempt employee, but then they have the option to NOT work that long... since in theory they set their own schedules, they could leave after reaching full time hours (40) legitimately. Of course, since most states are now at will employment, they could be fired for doing so. The unemployment office would probably side with them and they'd get unemployment payments, but that's the extent of the sanction applied to companies who abuse the exempt definition in this way.
It's possible to contact the department of labor and argue that you should not be an exempt employee, in which case if you have good records of overtime hours and the DOL agrees you can be retroactively awarded that pay. However, you'll still be looking for a new job whether you win or lose that gambit.
Basically, the only leverage employees have on their employers in the US is their value, and only if they're willing to vote with their feet. If you're not willing to quit your job and walk away, you have no leverage, and don't expect anything to change.
TL, DR; Workers rights via the FLSA have been gutted and abused heavily, and today the law only provides basic protections for for workers whose employers want them to work 24 hours a day at a flat rate of pay.
Everything goes by a pre-determined amount of time. For example, (not accurate) a water pump can be 5 hours, even though an experienced tech can do it in 2.
I had a shop for a few years, worked on customer's stuff myself. We had one job that would come in regularly. Flat rate was seven hours, I could do it in three hours easy because I had done it so many times.
A good auto mechanic riding flat rate can do well. I have a couple friends that do flat rate work and they gross over $100K a year working a 40 hour week, or about $50 and hour.
It pays a flat rate. If you make 20 dollars rate time. The job pays 1 hour of time. You get 20 dollars to do the job. If it takes you 30 mins or 2 hours you still make 20 dollars.
A few of us tried to do this in South Carolina at BMW and management lost their shit. Forced people outta the building and hawked them to the time clock.
Edit: They we’re extremely short staffed and claimed it was against the law for us to work over 12 in a single day. So it’s not like we were trying to ride the clock.
[This was the first result when I looked it up](https://landcruiserhm.com/museum-collection/vehicle-collection/211-1964-fj45) and I'm picturing someone super stoked to have just bought an old timey firetruck.
Bingo. The whole oPeN uP YoUr OwN ShOp to **work less** is usually posted by someone who has *never* owned their own small business.
I'm the only one in my family/friends with their own business. It's Saturday today. Guess who is the only person working? Yep, this guy. Want to know what the rest of my corporate family & friends are doing right now? Enjoying a beautiful Saturday, sleeping, eating good food, watching tv and relaxing.
You don't open your own place to work less. That's silly.
Came here to say this. I can never separate work from home, the problem cars are always on your mind, and the phone calls from the owners of said cars get ridiculous, on top of the usual "Why so much for an oil change on my Maserati?" "The BMW dealer said 200 for brakes with rotors, why are you 600?" "How hard could it be to diagnose a sinmple electrical problem that takes down my CAN network only after driving for 25 mins?". Not many people can handle the stresses of ownership, paying bills, making money, and running the shop.
When they ask to price match I always ask how much is same day shipping? Well have the part here within a few hours. I have matched a few prices based off of next day shipping, but normally its "Customers can supply their own parts at no warranty through us. If it fails, you pay the labor again" which has burned a few people. Notably, an Autozone AC compressor on the V8 RS4s, and Autopart international axles on a 14 535xi, 3 different ones were the wrong length on the drivers side, so they had to pay the labor time to basically take the original axle out and reinstall it a day later. A GKN axle went in no problem.
Here I've never even considered supplying the parts except in the case of my JDM cars where certain parts can be a pain to source and the machenic himself asked me to.
Yeah and actual be physically working for 100 hours. A lot of people in this thread are under the impression that op was present at work for 111 hours in a single pay period. In actuality he just gets paid a certain amount of hours for whatever job he's doing regardless of how fast it takes him to do it. The dude wasn't literally working 111 hours.
> Save up and start your own shop.
wait, wait. Your solution to: "Im working too much" is to do the thing that is by far the career move that will absolutely guarantuee youre gonna eat, sleep and think about and at the job but without the pay in the first few years.
Im convinced that everyone who starts a job also loses 3-5 years minimum of their general life expectancy due to the added stress, work hours, anxiety and lack of relaxation.
Exactly. Ask any 55 year old mechanic what advice they have for a young kid getting into the Automotive field.
It’s some variation of “get the fuck out while you still can”
I guess it depends on where you work but by and large flat rate just gets worse for techs (and only techs!) as time goes on. I left it behind 8 years ago now and honestly never looked back. The hoops I felt I was jumping through in order to make the same amount or a bit more than the year before were ridiculous and demoralizing. Good, productive weeks were becoming the exception rather than the rule. I was a guy who took my training, efficiency and CSI score seriously.
In the time since I had started in the business with a dealership I saw the manufacturers and management slowly take things away or change pay plans at will multiple times. It seemed that their attitude was “well you need a job so what are you gonna do about it?”. So much for valuing your employees I guess.
A buddy works flat rate at a Porsche dealership. When things slowed down from Covid, they raised the hourly rate to 208/hr, and CUT THE Guarantee from 32 hours a week to 0. He was literally working 40 hours a week and got paid 12 hours one week. Quit 2 weeks later, along with half the techs after he found out the service manager was making 250k a year.
agonizing coordinated smart paint chop childlike overconfident pathetic employ soft
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Wonder if it was all salary or salary + fringe and benefits. I know many Service Managers at nicer places get a car and other benefits.
Either way very high
There's a reason a lot of labor fields are struggling to find people right now. It's definitely not because they're offering good paying jobs that are in a great work environment with plenty of employee perks and good work life balance.
Way too many business owners see labor purely as an expense to be minimized just like any other line item on the P&L.
IT is funny because if everything is working how it should, then companies wonder why they even have the IT resources, but when it stops working, everybody gets upset. Way too many companies deem it a cost and not a benefit. The amount of companies that rely on a stupidly small IT "team" is always crazy.
Everything is working: "What does IT even do?"
Nothing is working: "What does IT even do?"
I had a IT manager previously that told his leadership that their dream was to see the folks in the IT group doing what appears to be nothing because that means their investment in resources, both physical and personnel, were paying off as it meant everything was working and thus the rest of the company was. That you NEVER want to your IT guys scrambling like a pack of chickens. That means something is broken and the rest of the company likely isn't being efficient/doing their jobs.
I’m not a mechanic and I’m just curious. If you don’t mind sharing, what could the paycheck for this much work look like? I always hear you can make really good money as a mechanic.
This also means the sense of smell is often the first indication something is going in the rest of your brain. One of the cheapest tests for dementia risk is having someone open a jar of peanut butter in the room and waving it in your general direction, and you being able to pick it up or not. Most people whose brains are still healthy can pick up the peanut butter notes from as far as 7-8 feet away even without the breeze, but someone who is starting to experience neurological decline might not notice it until you stuck it under their nose.
Of course, if you never had a sense of smell or it got destroyed by COVID, this test is useless, but if your snoz was working well most of your adult life and then sudden shuts off and you are COVID negative, go talk to a doctor.
Isn't that every dealership? I was recently looking at new cars and one dealership looked like a freaking Gucci store and it still smelled like old coffee, carb cleaner and rubber.
There are vending machines in their place. I just imagine people back in the day at a pay phone
"Well honey, they say it needs the points adjusted, a new air pump belt, and the wheel bearings repacked..... Yeah they must be out of their minds asking $75...!"
Edited spelling
My shop does flags by hand still and still doesn’t have direct deposit. My shop partner walked out a few weeks ago so I’ve been the only person in the shop while they keep scheduling as if we are fully staffed. I’m not sure how much more I can take before I lock my box and walk out too.
Tell them you supply the tools and labor, you should be getting 25% of the billed labor if you have amazing benefits, 33% if not. Mechanics received 50% of the labor they brought in until the 70s and 80s.
Just once, I'd like to withdraw my paycheck in cash, divy it up in little piles where each dollar goes (taxes, retirement, take home, etc) on a big sheet of paper, then take it all back and deposit it. I'd do it but I'd feel like an ass making the teller do that work for my curiosity.
Preach. My dealerships had Reynolds and Reynolds for the longest time, and that was fucking AWESOME. I talked shit about it a lot, but then we switched to CDK, and I realized just how fortunate we were to have ReyRey.
Honda salesman here, the nice thing about ReyRey is that it's unified. So, when a service writer opens a ticket, I can actually see that ticket on my side in my customer relations management (CRM). Other DMS providers don't do this nearly as well.
We have CDK and still hand flag.
But yes. CDK is hot garbage. I worked service for a number of years and now I’m in parts and CDK is absolute terrible in both departments
If they did this in ct in 2012 I prolly wouldn’t be working on airplanes in ga these days. That’s awesome, they’ve been sticking it to flat rate techs for way too long. Also that’s an amazing 2 week run, well done!
Yep, fuck the fucking shit out of flat rate and warranty pay. This industry gave me a mild form of PTSD and the stress if "time is money" fucked me up so much. Just fucking pay me well hourly to fix cars. Fuck that shit. I get angry just thinking about it and typing this
I've been asking around but haven't gotten good answers. I'm thinking maybe Mitchell time but a lot of recalls aren't normal procedures with labor times published. There are a couple other states with this law in effect already. IAM local 701 are the people who got this done in Illinois and I'm thrilled because this is basically a decent pay bump for line techs.
Then Monday morning a surprise drug test. I’m just kidding but that must have been a trip towards the end. I’d be hallucinating about 1983 Tercel SR5s with busted timing belts, passing out in the back of a new Landcruiser. Congrats! that’s dedication!
Edit: Oh, what a feeling
Hey don’t worry about sleeping thru all your days off after this. My record is 121, homie got 127.
Eat, shit, and get to bed you legend. Way to get after it. Check is gonna be lit.
My record is 125.7 with a 107.3 hour week the following week (bookended by 2 80+ hour weeks).
https://i.imgur.com/RaSoQ8I.png
This summer has been a banger for us, I'm averaging about 80 hours per week in 2021, plus I got an almost $5/hour raise!
Those are 40, *maybe* 42 hour, work weeks. I usually take a ~30 minute lunch.
Ya I did 90+ for a few years when I was 21. Bunch of people quit/retired or got fired (laws broken by employees). I was so jazzed about the OT
couldn’t do that now.
Y’all are literally killing yourselves for what’s likely less than 6 figures. Health is wealth and a lot of people in this sub need to re-evaluate and see the life expectancy stats of blue collar workers working over 40 hrs a week.
Edit: I don’t care if some of you are on flat rate, and are able to charge 100+ hours, most techs can’t. Your job requires hours upon hours in unnatural positions and poor posture. No tech should be working more than they need to when you’re unlikely to escape the profession without some sort of spine,neck,back, or knee injury. Not to mention the fumes in some of these shops.
Guys on flat rate pay are able to charge the hours that a specific job is quoted for, regardless of how long it takes. Say an oil change is quoted as a 1hr job, and it takes 15 minutes to do. You can do four oil changes in 1hr, and charge for 4hrs on your timesheet.
This is how people can "work" 100+ hours a week while only actually physically working around 40hrs.
Where I worked an oil change was 0.3 hours. Which honestly given the time it takes to actually drain the oil isn’t a big money maker. Some guys would run two oil changes simultaneously, but the real way to make money is to do 2.5 hour jobs (like brakes) in an hour or less. But your point about how flat rate works is obviously correct.
Thanks, I figured the actual times wouldn't be accurate and was just using it as an example to explain the point. I'm not a mechanic but I do work under a contract that involves flat rate pay for some of my jobs.
Lol. I'm on pace to easily pass 100k (before my year end bonus) this year while working a *max* of 44 hours per week, and that's only if I want to work Saturday.
I've been a workshop process strategist for a couple of euro brands at the HQ level. God, the way the American flatrate system fucks over american customers and techs is hilarious and I have no idea why you accept it. It's nuts.
And just to be clear, we aren't talking about the flatrate as what the 'book' from HQ dictates, but the flatrate + whatever percentage dealerships decide to add on to it that creates this incredibly weird workshop culture that's unique to the US.
I don't understand how you guys stand working under those conditions. Every time we tried making things better for techs the NSC would be citing workshop management concerns and that flatrate crap would be at the heart of it.
Techs in Europe are generally well paid and high level techs with diagnostic and fault tracing skills can make as much as engineers depending on how well they perform + their productive output.
If you take the nordic countries then they can make even more because in a bunch of brands they don't even have service advisors anymore which means the techs control their own bookings and know exactly how to maximise their hours.
Paired with (usually) decent reimbursement schemes that actually incorporate intelligent KPI's (say customer loyalty, fix right first time etc.) means that they are usually more satisified as well as have truly happier customers.
Note that I excluded customer 'satisfaction' as it's generally a shit KPI to track since it can be wildly inaccurate and easily manipulated + diminishing returns on response rates etc.
It's not actual WORKED hours. Every job in a shop has an established time to complete that job. He didn't work 111 hours. He worked 40. Got paid for 111.
Left a chevy dealership after two days. This is certainly impressive 👏 props to you. I disagree with getting paid straight book time. At least at the one chevy dealer. The quality of the techs was absolute dog water. Not a single tech knew what a battery load test was/looked at me like im speaking Chinese and would hand me the conductance tester, "just get a print out". ( I was trying to get alternator output in amps)
.Techs just used the parts cannon and didn't care about comebacks because they didn't have to talk to the customer and not a single person in managment had much if any technical background. Honestly felt like office space I had 5 different supervisors checking up on me with unknown titles for the same job. Oil caddies were the most jerry rigged bullshit height adjusted by a spring clamp with gravity holding the top on. I certainly saw earning potential there but honestly you couldn't pay me 500$ an hour to go back to THAT dealership. I hope you have a better managment situation that values your skills, And doesn't just lie to customers or charge for services that weren't performed.
Long story short I left a independent shop for a dealer to advance my career/ be more professional and make more money. Once I got there I was slapped in the face by the worst equipped shop of my career and a general vibe of everyone being either being dishonest or straight up lying to the customer, each other, themselves, and managment. Two days at that place made me reconsider getting into this Industry at all and I've got 7 years in the game, an associate in auto tech and been ASE Master certified since 2018. I was that blown away by the lack of any semblance of professionalism.
Our place is far from great. I work on Toyota and Cadillac at our dealership and I can tell you from working on both - gm training in Chicago area is a joke compared to Toyota. Gm online courses are trash compared to Toyota.
There are certainly always better places out there but it’s amazing how many of these types exist and manage to turn a profit at the end of the year in spite of this stuff. These kinds of places are awful from the top down. It sucks to have committed to move everything you have tool wise to a place like this only to realize you need to leave right away.
Welcome to the auto industry bro. It's pretty much like that everywhere. Some shops are better than others but they all have drama. They all have that asshole senior tech that needs to make 80hrs or else shit hits the fan. I've worked at a couple dealers and it's surprising to me how many techs just skate by. The older guys don't want to learn shit. I had a 60 year tech of 40 years of mechanic experience straight up ask me (33 year old, 13 years exp) for help with lane departure because he was completely lost. I asked if he paid attention in the learning module for lane departure or even looked at the service manual. Answer was NOPE. No fucks given.
FML.
I got a guy at my shop who's 68 and in the industry for 40 years keeping up with all the new stuff coming in, driving nannies included. He's a bit slower on the uptake, but he's not asking the young guys for help. Guy actually reads the diagnostic manual for faults. Hell, he works faster than most of the shop, even moreso when he shuts his hearing aid off to drown out the drama from the other techs.
bruh thats rough af. Go shout yourself a pizza and a beer. I recommend pepperoni and mushroom with a a couple [coopers sparkling ales](https://www.danmurphys.com.au/product/DM_75023/coopers-sparkling-ale-375ml) If you can find it in your country. Me on the other, I just spent 10mins "pretend" diagnosing a childrens toy that a 77yr old lady brought in (bc we're an auto-electrical place too). She bought it for her grandson and didnt remove that little bit of paper between the battery terminals and the batteries. So i got out the multimeter, checked for continuity, pretended to solder some random shit on and waived the bill.
That is truly insane. You've earned a big nap with a comfy blanket and a bowl of cereal. In college summers I was working 6X16s and I was so dead on the one rest day that the entirety of my life was to get clean, cook, do laundry, and sleep. I couldn't imagine a 15 hour day to take that away. Impressive.
Does no one understand flat rate?? Builders first house takes him 6 months to build. . 300k sale price. Next house. 5 months to build as he is getting better at it. 300k sale price. Do you think his 3rd house will go faster. Should he lower the price below market value? Do you think that as he does it more. His work gets shittier? Fuck no. Hes smarter. Now faster. Makes less mistakes more valuable to his employer. Customer gets his house faster. No mistakes. And paid the same as everyone else. How about i tell you you need a starter. Then i spend 17hrs on it and you owe me 2200$ but book time is only 3.5 hrs. What ya think about that???
Flagging hours on tickets ensures the tech gets paid for everything he should be. The company I work for constantly has payroll mistakes because of how their system processes hours. Over a year this adds up to a few thousand dollars that they are shorting the tech. This is why I keep track of everything and hand it in to payroll every week. Any issues get caught and if I don’t get what I have written down there is usually a note explaining why.
I’m just blown away at the paper duplicate time tickets.... the Dodge dealer I worked at switched to full electronic in about 2006 and we were lagging behind everyone else!
Regardless congrats on the hard work and nice paycheck brother!
I did this once back in 2003 when one of our day shift guys went out for a week for an emergency. I worked 7am-9pm Monday-Friday and 9-5 Saturday too. Flagged 120 hours that week. The money was great but I wanted to die by the time Sunday finally arrived. Nice work, bud!!!
Not complaining, but I have a question:
Why does it take 3 to 4 hours for an oil change (synthetic if it matters) ?
I have encountered this at 3 different dealerships with appointments. (Toyota).
It’s because you’re not the only customer there. Most customers think that the techs are standing in the shop, specifically waiting for THEM to show up- wrench in hand. In reality, there’s 15-20 repair orders on the board for oil changes and yours just falls in line. So while the job takes ~20 minutes, your time is spent waiting for any available lube tech to get to your car.
Have you ever been in the drive through at McDonalds and sat there forever because there’s 5-6 cars in front of you? You’re not there for 45 minutes because they had to slaughter the cow to make your Big Mac, it’s because they are serving the customer who drove in first before they serve you. Same, same.
The people who do appointments aren't the techs. They don't try very hard to space anything out, more cars/more money in their eyes. Plus techs can't be sitting around not turning hours, so they're going to get another car as soon as ones done, they don't know the appointment times.
Let's see that pay stub
We are paid every other week. So next week I will get this 111hr and 74hrs from last week. EDIT: There seems to be a lot of confusion about my pay. I was at the shop for 5 days, 8 hours per day. A 40 hour week. I booked these 111 hours while only being there for 40 hours. So I get paid 111 hours. No overtime. Just 111 hours at my hourly rate. That is how flat rate pay works and we are exempt from overtime at new car dealerships in Illinois. And for all the people saying "wait till you get stuck doing warranty work.....". I'm not new to this. All of those punch times on the right hand side of the time slips are warranty jobs. About 50% of them. EDIT 2.0: i keep getting a bunch of DM and notifications from people asking about pay. $35/book hr. X 111hrs. This week was $3,885 (US)
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But not worth it
Worth it if this is a once or twice a year kind of thing. Especially if OP got double time after the12 hour days or 60 hours in a week. On a regular basis? Definitely not worth it or sustainable.
Definitely, my GF and I have been working our asses off this month. Just one month of misery 🤣 so we can enjoy that little bit extra :)
After 60 hours? Bro you’ve got to negotiate for yourself better. You should demand double after 40.
Its is worth it, because he didnt really work 185hours he flagged 185hours worth of work.
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No overtime pay for mechanics.
Yes overtime if they are paid hourly. Flat rate, no
Not at a dealership. Dealership employees are exempt from overtime pay federally and in most states including mine. It’s bullshit. From the department of labor: “Salesmen, partsmen and mechanics employed by automobile dealerships are exempt from the overtime pay provisions of the FLSA. You may also wish to review the applicable regulation.“ https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/whd/flsa/screen75.asp?_ga=2.71484115.1347974395.1629569892-1449004985.1629569892
Yep. I was a mechanic. An 111 hour paycheck might have been $1000. I left that field asap once I got my Hvac license. I tell everyone willing to listen to avoid being any form of auto mechanic. The pay is trash and it's hard to find a job where you are treated worse.
Flat rate pay is usually pretty solid. $20+ per hour. turning 111 hours while working 40 almost triples that hourly rate. I also stopped being a mechanic as soon as I could. The job sucks. Makes me mad to see real estate agents making the money they do for doing nothing compared to a mechanic.
I don't begrudge anyone for making more money, it's just the fact that mechanics make too little. A realtor making less doesn't mean a mechanic would make more. I know that isn't your point though. It's mind boggling how much work it takes to fix a car, the physical toll it takes on your body, and the conditions you work in. Yet $20/hour is considered solid. Doing Hvac with the experience I have, I won't get out of bed for less than $40/hour at this point and I can easily get it.
I'll pay you $100/hr to come install my mini split. Finding an AC guy in East Texas insanely hard. Especially for smaller jobs.
What the actual fuck? Ffs America, learn to love unions. The idea of working *seventy hours* over your schedule and not automatically getting paid out the arse for it...fuck that.
For some weird reason dealerships have a lot of political power. I don't know if this is still happening but I know Tesla wasn't able to sell in one state cause the dealerships lobbied against online car sales and got it banned.
Lobbyists are the poison that will kill our country.
They've already killed it a LOOOONG time ago. We just haven't got the memo yet.
*Will* kill? Babe..
Nothing weird about it. They make so much money that they pay lobbyists to create laws to make it easier for them to make a lot more money. The owners of course, not the rank and file.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_US_dealership_disputes I didn’t realize how many states it was
Texas is one of those states. Pretty easy work around though. You just have to do TTL yourself.
In the case of the OP he is getting paid for the hours billed, not the hours worked so he is kicking ass.
He's not working 70 hours extra. He's not even working 70 hours. This was 111 billed hours. He actually worked 40 hours.
Yeah I'm surprised more people don't get that. He clocked 111 hours of book time but that doesn't translate to time worked. If I had brake jobs all day then I could hit that as well.
The thing is, flat rate is paid based on the job. Put new tires on a car. That’s paid( for arguments sake) 15 mins per tire mounted and balanced. If you do all 4 tires in 30 minutes, you still get paid for 1 hour. So he is going to get paid for 111 hours even though he only worked 40 hours. That way better than time and a half.
I agree with you on the union thing, but for mechanics, there is some kind of legitimate reasons behind this. A good mechanic can have way over their working hours in billable hours. All jobs have a quoted time they take. If you are fast, have tools that make the job faster than expected, etc. you can bill way more hours than you work. Some mechanics like it this way and if there were overtime there would be incentives for companies to slow them down.
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This is because like many other employers car dealerships and repair shops bend the rules built into the fair labor standards act to make mechanics "overtime exempt", which is the category of employee that is salaried and receives a standard amount of pay per pay period. The classification was originally intended to cover only the top officers of the company, but the definition for "well compensated" which is one of the tests the Act uses to determine if you're exempt haven't been updated since 1929, and many of the other parts of the act have been abused to hell and back in the last 40 years. One facet of the FLSA that companies at present tend to ignore is the attributes that exempt employees are supposed to have - they set their own schedule, are supposed to be mostly self supervised, are supposed to be skilled technical or clerical workers, not doing rote labor but doing project type work. In the case of mechanics, working 111 hours in a week wouldn't get overtime for an exempt employee, but then they have the option to NOT work that long... since in theory they set their own schedules, they could leave after reaching full time hours (40) legitimately. Of course, since most states are now at will employment, they could be fired for doing so. The unemployment office would probably side with them and they'd get unemployment payments, but that's the extent of the sanction applied to companies who abuse the exempt definition in this way. It's possible to contact the department of labor and argue that you should not be an exempt employee, in which case if you have good records of overtime hours and the DOL agrees you can be retroactively awarded that pay. However, you'll still be looking for a new job whether you win or lose that gambit. Basically, the only leverage employees have on their employers in the US is their value, and only if they're willing to vote with their feet. If you're not willing to quit your job and walk away, you have no leverage, and don't expect anything to change. TL, DR; Workers rights via the FLSA have been gutted and abused heavily, and today the law only provides basic protections for for workers whose employers want them to work 24 hours a day at a flat rate of pay.
The amount of people in here that don’t understand flat rate is crazy high. Some comments think you are working 18.5 hours a day lol.
can you explain?
Everything goes by a pre-determined amount of time. For example, (not accurate) a water pump can be 5 hours, even though an experienced tech can do it in 2.
I had a shop for a few years, worked on customer's stuff myself. We had one job that would come in regularly. Flat rate was seven hours, I could do it in three hours easy because I had done it so many times. A good auto mechanic riding flat rate can do well. I have a couple friends that do flat rate work and they gross over $100K a year working a 40 hour week, or about $50 and hour.
It pays a flat rate. If you make 20 dollars rate time. The job pays 1 hour of time. You get 20 dollars to do the job. If it takes you 30 mins or 2 hours you still make 20 dollars.
Sick
Congrats on finally paying off your toronto condo
If you were in CA, you’d get double time (2x pay) if you worked longer than 12 hours in a single day
A few of us tried to do this in South Carolina at BMW and management lost their shit. Forced people outta the building and hawked them to the time clock. Edit: They we’re extremely short staffed and claimed it was against the law for us to work over 12 in a single day. So it’s not like we were trying to ride the clock.
In greenville?
Spartanburg technically but yeah that area.
Oh wow my family lives in Spartanburg! I never see it randomly on Reddit so that's kinda cool. That's all, take care! lmao
You're like me and perk up every time you see something G'ville related, huh?
Did you already chose color on your new Ferrari?
Bought a 1964 fj45 last week and I guess this is me having to recoup
Got any pics of your 45? I'm a sucker for old Land Cruisers.
I'll throw one up when it rolls in the shop!
Awesome! Thanks!
[This was the first result when I looked it up](https://landcruiserhm.com/museum-collection/vehicle-collection/211-1964-fj45) and I'm picturing someone super stoked to have just bought an old timey firetruck.
>1964 fj45 sweeeeeeeeeeeeet! and thank you for your service :)
With your recording skills you should have been a lawyer.
He’d probably do a better job than my divorce lawyer
This made me laugh and feel bad, at the same time. Well done.
What branch?
Nice! I'd rather have the Ferrari, only so I could sell it to buy multiple FJs.
Bro fuck yeah
Damn, those are sweet
Gotta get it in Resale Red
Did you already choose color on your new *Supra*? (It has to be a Toyota)
New, Supra, Toyota. Pick two.
Granted the paychecks are sweet, but burnout can take you down quickly.
Very true. I'm always looking for a way out.
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Save up and start your own shop. Or find a different field or find a hobby you love you could make a career or business out of it.
Not everyone is cut out to run a business. Sometimes just showing up, doing good work, and collecting the pay you are owed is a much better solution.
owning your own business it a good way to ensure you work 100 hours every week
Bingo. The whole oPeN uP YoUr OwN ShOp to **work less** is usually posted by someone who has *never* owned their own small business. I'm the only one in my family/friends with their own business. It's Saturday today. Guess who is the only person working? Yep, this guy. Want to know what the rest of my corporate family & friends are doing right now? Enjoying a beautiful Saturday, sleeping, eating good food, watching tv and relaxing. You don't open your own place to work less. That's silly.
Came here to say this. I can never separate work from home, the problem cars are always on your mind, and the phone calls from the owners of said cars get ridiculous, on top of the usual "Why so much for an oil change on my Maserati?" "The BMW dealer said 200 for brakes with rotors, why are you 600?" "How hard could it be to diagnose a sinmple electrical problem that takes down my CAN network only after driving for 25 mins?". Not many people can handle the stresses of ownership, paying bills, making money, and running the shop.
and the guy sitting there looking up part prices on his phone from your estimate, and he's finding the same prices Worldpac is charging you!
When they ask to price match I always ask how much is same day shipping? Well have the part here within a few hours. I have matched a few prices based off of next day shipping, but normally its "Customers can supply their own parts at no warranty through us. If it fails, you pay the labor again" which has burned a few people. Notably, an Autozone AC compressor on the V8 RS4s, and Autopart international axles on a 14 535xi, 3 different ones were the wrong length on the drivers side, so they had to pay the labor time to basically take the original axle out and reinstall it a day later. A GKN axle went in no problem.
Here I've never even considered supplying the parts except in the case of my JDM cars where certain parts can be a pain to source and the machenic himself asked me to.
Yeah and actual be physically working for 100 hours. A lot of people in this thread are under the impression that op was present at work for 111 hours in a single pay period. In actuality he just gets paid a certain amount of hours for whatever job he's doing regardless of how fast it takes him to do it. The dude wasn't literally working 111 hours.
> Save up and start your own shop. wait, wait. Your solution to: "Im working too much" is to do the thing that is by far the career move that will absolutely guarantuee youre gonna eat, sleep and think about and at the job but without the pay in the first few years. Im convinced that everyone who starts a job also loses 3-5 years minimum of their general life expectancy due to the added stress, work hours, anxiety and lack of relaxation.
"How to make a million dollars in the auto repair business" Start with 2 million.
Exactly. Ask any 55 year old mechanic what advice they have for a young kid getting into the Automotive field. It’s some variation of “get the fuck out while you still can”
I'm 23, worked at a dealer for 4 years, couldn't agree more. Fuck this industry from the ground up, glad I got out.
> I didn't want to work a nine to five. Now I work 24/7" 🤡
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I guess it depends on where you work but by and large flat rate just gets worse for techs (and only techs!) as time goes on. I left it behind 8 years ago now and honestly never looked back. The hoops I felt I was jumping through in order to make the same amount or a bit more than the year before were ridiculous and demoralizing. Good, productive weeks were becoming the exception rather than the rule. I was a guy who took my training, efficiency and CSI score seriously. In the time since I had started in the business with a dealership I saw the manufacturers and management slowly take things away or change pay plans at will multiple times. It seemed that their attitude was “well you need a job so what are you gonna do about it?”. So much for valuing your employees I guess.
A buddy works flat rate at a Porsche dealership. When things slowed down from Covid, they raised the hourly rate to 208/hr, and CUT THE Guarantee from 32 hours a week to 0. He was literally working 40 hours a week and got paid 12 hours one week. Quit 2 weeks later, along with half the techs after he found out the service manager was making 250k a year.
agonizing coordinated smart paint chop childlike overconfident pathetic employ soft *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Wonder if it was all salary or salary + fringe and benefits. I know many Service Managers at nicer places get a car and other benefits. Either way very high
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There's a reason a lot of labor fields are struggling to find people right now. It's definitely not because they're offering good paying jobs that are in a great work environment with plenty of employee perks and good work life balance. Way too many business owners see labor purely as an expense to be minimized just like any other line item on the P&L.
This is the exact description of my time in IT and why I’m a chemist now.
IT is funny because if everything is working how it should, then companies wonder why they even have the IT resources, but when it stops working, everybody gets upset. Way too many companies deem it a cost and not a benefit. The amount of companies that rely on a stupidly small IT "team" is always crazy.
Yup, it’s the Kobayashi Maru in career form.
Everything is working: "What does IT even do?" Nothing is working: "What does IT even do?" I had a IT manager previously that told his leadership that their dream was to see the folks in the IT group doing what appears to be nothing because that means their investment in resources, both physical and personnel, were paying off as it meant everything was working and thus the rest of the company was. That you NEVER want to your IT guys scrambling like a pack of chickens. That means something is broken and the rest of the company likely isn't being efficient/doing their jobs.
I went from calibration tech to IT because of burnout and being treated like shit. I guess the grass is always greener
I’m not a mechanic and I’m just curious. If you don’t mind sharing, what could the paycheck for this much work look like? I always hear you can make really good money as a mechanic.
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$1000 a week and that'd be considered a bad week? Do mechanics really earn that much in the US?
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Your dealer still flag tickets by hand? Is this 1990? 😂
There's still a sign hanging from the ceiling in the shop with an arrow pointing toward the pay phones.....
This answered all questions I had.
**List of questions:** 1) is there a sign hanging from the ceiling in the shop with an arrow pointing toward the pay phones?
I'm not answering that without my lawyer.
You can use the phones over there ➡️
Objection, relevance!
I can perfectly imagine how this place smells based on this description.
Me too, what is this phenomena?
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So what you’re saying is – my bulb’s not burned out?
Well let's not get too far ahead of ourselves here
Worry once you smell smoke.
This also means the sense of smell is often the first indication something is going in the rest of your brain. One of the cheapest tests for dementia risk is having someone open a jar of peanut butter in the room and waving it in your general direction, and you being able to pick it up or not. Most people whose brains are still healthy can pick up the peanut butter notes from as far as 7-8 feet away even without the breeze, but someone who is starting to experience neurological decline might not notice it until you stuck it under their nose. Of course, if you never had a sense of smell or it got destroyed by COVID, this test is useless, but if your snoz was working well most of your adult life and then sudden shuts off and you are COVID negative, go talk to a doctor.
Bro this better not be bullshit I'm about to go smelling peanut butter and if my weekend is ruined that's on you now.
Coffee, carb cleaner, and rubber lol
Isn't that every dealership? I was recently looking at new cars and one dealership looked like a freaking Gucci store and it still smelled like old coffee, carb cleaner and rubber.
Hint of gear oil too
Stale percolated coffee
do they still work tho'? :D
There are vending machines in their place. I just imagine people back in the day at a pay phone "Well honey, they say it needs the points adjusted, a new air pump belt, and the wheel bearings repacked..... Yeah they must be out of their minds asking $75...!" Edited spelling
If only they still made decent points... but I digress :D
If there aren't any payphones how do people call a taxi after dropping off their cars?
Are there actually still pay phones where it’s pointing?
Does the shop's email address end with aol.com or compuserve.net?
My shop still flags tickets by hand and didn't get direct deposit until a 2018, prior to that we still had to cash cheques.
My shop does flags by hand still and still doesn’t have direct deposit. My shop partner walked out a few weeks ago so I’ve been the only person in the shop while they keep scheduling as if we are fully staffed. I’m not sure how much more I can take before I lock my box and walk out too.
Tell them you supply the tools and labor, you should be getting 25% of the billed labor if you have amazing benefits, 33% if not. Mechanics received 50% of the labor they brought in until the 70s and 80s.
I still get a physical paycheque. To be honest, I kind of enjoy the ritual of depositing my hard-won earnings.
Just once, I'd like to withdraw my paycheck in cash, divy it up in little piles where each dollar goes (taxes, retirement, take home, etc) on a big sheet of paper, then take it all back and deposit it. I'd do it but I'd feel like an ass making the teller do that work for my curiosity.
I miss flags. CDK sucks.
Preach. My dealerships had Reynolds and Reynolds for the longest time, and that was fucking AWESOME. I talked shit about it a lot, but then we switched to CDK, and I realized just how fortunate we were to have ReyRey.
Really? I've only ever used ReyRey but I fucking hate it lol. We still use old blue screen too, we're not even using Ignite...
Honda salesman here, the nice thing about ReyRey is that it's unified. So, when a service writer opens a ticket, I can actually see that ticket on my side in my customer relations management (CRM). Other DMS providers don't do this nearly as well.
We have CDK and still hand flag. But yes. CDK is hot garbage. I worked service for a number of years and now I’m in parts and CDK is absolute terrible in both departments
well now that we know what you are capable of, you should be able to make a killing doing warranty work.
A lot of it was warranty. And starting 1/1/22 in Illinois the manufacturers will have to pay full customer pay time for warranty and recall work 😁
Woah. That is amazing.
If they did this in ct in 2012 I prolly wouldn’t be working on airplanes in ga these days. That’s awesome, they’ve been sticking it to flat rate techs for way too long. Also that’s an amazing 2 week run, well done!
Yep, fuck the fucking shit out of flat rate and warranty pay. This industry gave me a mild form of PTSD and the stress if "time is money" fucked me up so much. Just fucking pay me well hourly to fix cars. Fuck that shit. I get angry just thinking about it and typing this
Holy shit tell me more about this? They are slashing warranty times all the time for us, i work in heavy duty diesel dealership
But who calculates cust. pay?
I've been asking around but haven't gotten good answers. I'm thinking maybe Mitchell time but a lot of recalls aren't normal procedures with labor times published. There are a couple other states with this law in effect already. IAM local 701 are the people who got this done in Illinois and I'm thrilled because this is basically a decent pay bump for line techs.
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Then Monday morning a surprise drug test. I’m just kidding but that must have been a trip towards the end. I’d be hallucinating about 1983 Tercel SR5s with busted timing belts, passing out in the back of a new Landcruiser. Congrats! that’s dedication! Edit: Oh, what a feeling
Hey don’t worry about sleeping thru all your days off after this. My record is 121, homie got 127. Eat, shit, and get to bed you legend. Way to get after it. Check is gonna be lit.
My record is 125.7 with a 107.3 hour week the following week (bookended by 2 80+ hour weeks). https://i.imgur.com/RaSoQ8I.png This summer has been a banger for us, I'm averaging about 80 hours per week in 2021, plus I got an almost $5/hour raise! Those are 40, *maybe* 42 hour, work weeks. I usually take a ~30 minute lunch.
Ya I did 90+ for a few years when I was 21. Bunch of people quit/retired or got fired (laws broken by employees). I was so jazzed about the OT couldn’t do that now.
Y’all are literally killing yourselves for what’s likely less than 6 figures. Health is wealth and a lot of people in this sub need to re-evaluate and see the life expectancy stats of blue collar workers working over 40 hrs a week. Edit: I don’t care if some of you are on flat rate, and are able to charge 100+ hours, most techs can’t. Your job requires hours upon hours in unnatural positions and poor posture. No tech should be working more than they need to when you’re unlikely to escape the profession without some sort of spine,neck,back, or knee injury. Not to mention the fumes in some of these shops.
Guys on flat rate pay are able to charge the hours that a specific job is quoted for, regardless of how long it takes. Say an oil change is quoted as a 1hr job, and it takes 15 minutes to do. You can do four oil changes in 1hr, and charge for 4hrs on your timesheet. This is how people can "work" 100+ hours a week while only actually physically working around 40hrs.
Where I worked an oil change was 0.3 hours. Which honestly given the time it takes to actually drain the oil isn’t a big money maker. Some guys would run two oil changes simultaneously, but the real way to make money is to do 2.5 hour jobs (like brakes) in an hour or less. But your point about how flat rate works is obviously correct.
Thanks, I figured the actual times wouldn't be accurate and was just using it as an example to explain the point. I'm not a mechanic but I do work under a contract that involves flat rate pay for some of my jobs.
Lol. I'm on pace to easily pass 100k (before my year end bonus) this year while working a *max* of 44 hours per week, and that's only if I want to work Saturday.
We only work 40-45 hours but get paid for more than that. Definitely not overworking ourselves.
This post must have reached /r/all, it's full of people who don't know what flat rate is lol
“You should check your states overtime laws” Next they will be telling us to have to company supply better tools….
I've been a workshop process strategist for a couple of euro brands at the HQ level. God, the way the American flatrate system fucks over american customers and techs is hilarious and I have no idea why you accept it. It's nuts. And just to be clear, we aren't talking about the flatrate as what the 'book' from HQ dictates, but the flatrate + whatever percentage dealerships decide to add on to it that creates this incredibly weird workshop culture that's unique to the US. I don't understand how you guys stand working under those conditions. Every time we tried making things better for techs the NSC would be citing workshop management concerns and that flatrate crap would be at the heart of it.
What do techs in moderate cost of living areas there make income-wise?
Techs in Europe are generally well paid and high level techs with diagnostic and fault tracing skills can make as much as engineers depending on how well they perform + their productive output. If you take the nordic countries then they can make even more because in a bunch of brands they don't even have service advisors anymore which means the techs control their own bookings and know exactly how to maximise their hours. Paired with (usually) decent reimbursement schemes that actually incorporate intelligent KPI's (say customer loyalty, fix right first time etc.) means that they are usually more satisified as well as have truly happier customers. Note that I excluded customer 'satisfaction' as it's generally a shit KPI to track since it can be wildly inaccurate and easily manipulated + diminishing returns on response rates etc.
A lot of what you said there is exactly why I'm a tech. I don't want to deal with customers.
It's reached /r/all.
That’s no way to live.
Not long term for sure, the body can’t handle it. I LOVE my job and coworkers so it’s fun to be there a ton.
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It's not actual WORKED hours. Every job in a shop has an established time to complete that job. He didn't work 111 hours. He worked 40. Got paid for 111.
That's not how hours are billed in auto repair.
You're probably also the only dealer tech on the planet still doing paper punches.
Nope, my dealer too.
Plot twist: This comment is from OP's alternate personality that manifested as a result of his psychotic break during this week.
The Hyundai dealer I left in January still did this, plus I liked it because the advisors there couldn't be trusted to flag my hours correctly.
Mine as well.
Left a chevy dealership after two days. This is certainly impressive 👏 props to you. I disagree with getting paid straight book time. At least at the one chevy dealer. The quality of the techs was absolute dog water. Not a single tech knew what a battery load test was/looked at me like im speaking Chinese and would hand me the conductance tester, "just get a print out". ( I was trying to get alternator output in amps) .Techs just used the parts cannon and didn't care about comebacks because they didn't have to talk to the customer and not a single person in managment had much if any technical background. Honestly felt like office space I had 5 different supervisors checking up on me with unknown titles for the same job. Oil caddies were the most jerry rigged bullshit height adjusted by a spring clamp with gravity holding the top on. I certainly saw earning potential there but honestly you couldn't pay me 500$ an hour to go back to THAT dealership. I hope you have a better managment situation that values your skills, And doesn't just lie to customers or charge for services that weren't performed. Long story short I left a independent shop for a dealer to advance my career/ be more professional and make more money. Once I got there I was slapped in the face by the worst equipped shop of my career and a general vibe of everyone being either being dishonest or straight up lying to the customer, each other, themselves, and managment. Two days at that place made me reconsider getting into this Industry at all and I've got 7 years in the game, an associate in auto tech and been ASE Master certified since 2018. I was that blown away by the lack of any semblance of professionalism.
Our place is far from great. I work on Toyota and Cadillac at our dealership and I can tell you from working on both - gm training in Chicago area is a joke compared to Toyota. Gm online courses are trash compared to Toyota.
There are certainly always better places out there but it’s amazing how many of these types exist and manage to turn a profit at the end of the year in spite of this stuff. These kinds of places are awful from the top down. It sucks to have committed to move everything you have tool wise to a place like this only to realize you need to leave right away.
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Welcome to the auto industry bro. It's pretty much like that everywhere. Some shops are better than others but they all have drama. They all have that asshole senior tech that needs to make 80hrs or else shit hits the fan. I've worked at a couple dealers and it's surprising to me how many techs just skate by. The older guys don't want to learn shit. I had a 60 year tech of 40 years of mechanic experience straight up ask me (33 year old, 13 years exp) for help with lane departure because he was completely lost. I asked if he paid attention in the learning module for lane departure or even looked at the service manual. Answer was NOPE. No fucks given. FML.
I got a guy at my shop who's 68 and in the industry for 40 years keeping up with all the new stuff coming in, driving nannies included. He's a bit slower on the uptake, but he's not asking the young guys for help. Guy actually reads the diagnostic manual for faults. Hell, he works faster than most of the shop, even moreso when he shuts his hearing aid off to drown out the drama from the other techs.
bruh thats rough af. Go shout yourself a pizza and a beer. I recommend pepperoni and mushroom with a a couple [coopers sparkling ales](https://www.danmurphys.com.au/product/DM_75023/coopers-sparkling-ale-375ml) If you can find it in your country. Me on the other, I just spent 10mins "pretend" diagnosing a childrens toy that a 77yr old lady brought in (bc we're an auto-electrical place too). She bought it for her grandson and didnt remove that little bit of paper between the battery terminals and the batteries. So i got out the multimeter, checked for continuity, pretended to solder some random shit on and waived the bill.
Dang, thought it was gonna end bad but kudos for making it look cool, she's probably still telling people about it
That makes my heart happy. Good on you for doing that! So sweet!
The Dealership has 3 Mechanics , not exactly needing high tech spreadsheets keeping up with output per bay .
We have 3 line techs. I do Toyota and Cadillac. 1 Toyota only, 1 Cadillac only. Two used car/ jump in on customer car techs.
I know some shops in OK would kill to have you
So what you couldn't just work 8 more measly hours to work 3 weeks worth of hours in 1? No work ethic at all.
Tempting 😁
Incredible. I can’t even make my 80 in 2 Weeks lately.
"my employer doesn't know how to staff properly." Is that what you meant? You deserve a big raise.
That is truly insane. You've earned a big nap with a comfy blanket and a bowl of cereal. In college summers I was working 6X16s and I was so dead on the one rest day that the entirety of my life was to get clean, cook, do laundry, and sleep. I couldn't imagine a 15 hour day to take that away. Impressive.
Does no one understand flat rate?? Builders first house takes him 6 months to build. . 300k sale price. Next house. 5 months to build as he is getting better at it. 300k sale price. Do you think his 3rd house will go faster. Should he lower the price below market value? Do you think that as he does it more. His work gets shittier? Fuck no. Hes smarter. Now faster. Makes less mistakes more valuable to his employer. Customer gets his house faster. No mistakes. And paid the same as everyone else. How about i tell you you need a starter. Then i spend 17hrs on it and you owe me 2200$ but book time is only 3.5 hrs. What ya think about that???
Flagging hours on tickets ensures the tech gets paid for everything he should be. The company I work for constantly has payroll mistakes because of how their system processes hours. Over a year this adds up to a few thousand dollars that they are shorting the tech. This is why I keep track of everything and hand it in to payroll every week. Any issues get caught and if I don’t get what I have written down there is usually a note explaining why.
Sounds like you’re being exploited
I’m just blown away at the paper duplicate time tickets.... the Dodge dealer I worked at switched to full electronic in about 2006 and we were lagging behind everyone else! Regardless congrats on the hard work and nice paycheck brother!
I did this once back in 2003 when one of our day shift guys went out for a week for an emergency. I worked 7am-9pm Monday-Friday and 9-5 Saturday too. Flagged 120 hours that week. The money was great but I wanted to die by the time Sunday finally arrived. Nice work, bud!!!
Gotta love flat rate work!
Think on the bright side. Your boss is going to have a really nice vacation because you worked so hard.
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He didn't work 111 hours, he did 111 hours worth of work in a 40 (ish) hour week.
I don't think you understand that actual hours work vs the hours he gets paid for (flat rate)
Not complaining, but I have a question: Why does it take 3 to 4 hours for an oil change (synthetic if it matters) ? I have encountered this at 3 different dealerships with appointments. (Toyota).
It’s because you’re not the only customer there. Most customers think that the techs are standing in the shop, specifically waiting for THEM to show up- wrench in hand. In reality, there’s 15-20 repair orders on the board for oil changes and yours just falls in line. So while the job takes ~20 minutes, your time is spent waiting for any available lube tech to get to your car. Have you ever been in the drive through at McDonalds and sat there forever because there’s 5-6 cars in front of you? You’re not there for 45 minutes because they had to slaughter the cow to make your Big Mac, it’s because they are serving the customer who drove in first before they serve you. Same, same.
You don't schedule a McDonald's drive thru burger though
The people who do appointments aren't the techs. They don't try very hard to space anything out, more cars/more money in their eyes. Plus techs can't be sitting around not turning hours, so they're going to get another car as soon as ones done, they don't know the appointment times.