The Customer Is NOT Always Right

0:00Welcome to Repair Shop Reckoning: From Chaos to Control. Because too many shops today are running on chaos. Phones ringing, technicians frustrated, front counters overwhelmed, owners buried in problems with nobody to call. Kevin Brown has spent over 30 years in the trenches learning how to take that chaos and turn it into control. Shop owner, operator, consultant, leader. Through industry shifts, insurance games, bad hires, great hires, and lessons learned the hard way.

0:28This isn't theory. This isn't corporate training fluff. This is real shop experience, unfiltered. On this show, Kevin breaks down what actually works— running profitable shops, front counter control, training technicians, negotiating with insurance companies, building systems that make your shop run instead of burn, and the mistakes that quietly bankrupt shop owners every single day. No corporate scripts, no sugarcoating. And yeah, somebody might get offended.

0:57That's okay. Disney's two doors down. But if you want the truth about this industry, buckle up. This is Repair Shop Reckoning: From Chaos to Control. Let's get started. Welcome back to Repair Shop Reckoning: From Chaos to Control. So I'll start out with the update on the Progressive. We, I don't think, do we put the clips out? Maybe we should start putting the clips out.

1:19Yep. Remember at the very beginning of last week? Yep. Yep. So remember, for them who didn't— for the people who didn't hear the podcast, Progressive, basically we started— stopped giving receipts a while ago. They call, we're not giving you receipts. If your bill is, you know, if our estimate's $5,000, insurance says we pay— they'll pay $3,000. Customer, we call them up, you owe $2,000.

1:42We had a customer all ready to go. We said, hey, they did a terrible sheet on your motorhome. So basically you're going to— it's going to cost you $2,000 with your deductible of $500. So $1,500 more. On top of what they gave you, plus your $500 deductible, you owe $2,000. Okay. Send it to them. Had the phone calls recorded. Approved. Yes, sir, I understand.

2:04At first he was apprehensive, wanted to take it. Maybe the RV dealer, they said, well, you know, we'll have it done in October. So he's like, fuck it, I'll get it done now. So this is going to actually lead into today's episode. So He called up and he said, I called the insurance adjuster. His name's Danny. I called Danny and he says I won't have to pay a dime more.

2:28So he short-circuited what we said. Jim says, well, you agreed to it, sir. So I, you know, you are going to have to pay if the insurance company doesn't come and pay more. So he hung up on us. Rude old man, whatever. He's upset. So we get all done, call the customer. Hey, motorhome's all done, come to pick it up. Uh, the insurance company call you?

2:53No, we're not talking to the insurance company. You got the money, you agreed to the— well, Danny said that we're, you know, they're, you know, I don't have to pay anymore. I said, well, Danny doesn't decide. Danny from Progressive doesn't decide what you pay or what you do not pay at our shop. You agreed to pay the difference and that's what's going to happen, or they are.

3:11Somebody's paying it. Few minutes later, the phone rings. It's Danny. Hey, buddy, how you talking to Jim? Hey, buddy, you know, what do we got going on here? Jim's like, well, I, you know, this is what's going on. And he's like, well, just send over the receipts. Danny, we're not sending you over the receipts. We already told you this. We're not sending you over the receipts.

3:31We'll send you over how much more it is, but we're not from now on. We're not, you know, we've been really, you got, you know, we've really been good for you. You know, we really have a good relationship. Jim's like, this is the third job we've done and every one has been— you chisel us, you tell us what you're going to do.

3:45Now this one, we're telling you what we're going to do and what you're going to do. Can you help me out on this one? Nope, sure can't, Danny. We already had the stage set. The guy agreed to pay the difference and you opened your mouth and short-circuited the whole thing. Yeah, well, you really put me in a bind. Well, that would be your fucking problem, not ours.

4:03But the bottom line is you owe $2,000. It was like $19,000 and some change. So we don't hear nothing for a couple days. The old man calls, you know, this is taking forever. Well, sir, you know, I don't know what to tell you. Hangs up again. Rude old fucking prick. Hangs up again. We're like, whatever. So yesterday— no, Monday, Danny calls us.

4:24Oh, we're gonna go ahead and do this as a one-time courtesy. Well, this isn't a one-time courtesy. You could be courteous however you want to spin it. However, whatever makes you sleep at night. Whatever thinks you sleep at night. The bottom line is you're paying. So there's a check in the mail. So after this old man has yelled and screamed at my people several times, that was only the two I just talked about.

4:42But this guy's been a complete asshole to my people, I think, 3 or 4 times. Yeah. Hey, Jim, this will be good. Come here for a minute. I'm talking about Danny Boy's customer that keeps hanging up on you guys. That's rude to you. Was he 4 or 5 times rude to you guys during this whole process? I know 2 towards the end, right?

5:042 to you and 2 to Jake for— he keeps hanging up on us. That's not— oh, this isn't good. He said, oh, this isn't good. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I'll get right into that, but I wanted to go ahead and put a little bit of skin in here with you, actually, not me just sitting here running my mouth going, oh, he did this, and he's a rude old prick.

5:44Okay, good. Thank you, sir. Yeah, so after all this, this fucking guy leaves a voicemail. Hey guys, I'd really appreciate it if you guys would do me a huge favor. If you would go ahead and fill up all my tires on my motorhome to 70 PSI. And, you know, I understand it's difficult because of the wheel simulators and all that stuff, but, you know, I would be, you know, thank you very much.

6:18You know what? When I read that, I heard that voicemail. You know what I told my guys? Don't you fucking touch them tires. So this leads into today's conversation. The customer is not always right. And I believe a lot of shop owners are so scared of that 1-star review that they will fricking throw their people under the bus. They have no balls.

6:42We have corporate America, bitch, complain, threaten a bad review and get a gift card. Fuck that. You people need to stand up to these customers and go, you know what? You're acting like an asshole. Leave and don't come back. You're not our guy. So I kind of did a whole list of stuff once again that I'm going to go through just so I could remember what I'm talking about.

7:01But that man abused my staff, then he wants me to do him a favor. It's crazy. It's great. What were you gonna say? I cut you off. No, no, you're good. I was gonna say, when you said to remember, when do part of you, whenever you say remember, do you think of the guy with the, with the beard? The guy with the pubic hair beard?

7:20Yeah. So Let me ask you a question. Since that guy teased me about saying member instead of remember, I've watched people— this, that must be a Michigan thing. Yes, a lot of people say that. Yeah, my wife says it. Yeah, Lincoln says it. Yep, it's kind of interesting. I hear it all the time and it's, it's in my, it's in my thinking.

7:41So whenever you say remember, I instantly, I could see that guy's face. But it's not just you, whenever I hear other people say remember, because it's a Michigan thing. So many people say it. Member, right? Yeah. Member. Yeah. He's like trying to flame you on the way you pronounce remember. It's hilarious. Yeah. And he's sitting there stroking his little gnome beard, his little pubic hair beard.

8:02Like, like I give a shit. What is this? I just said remember and laughed and it made me think of the guy. Yeah. Like, it is so funny. These guys that like try to like, I don't even care. No, no. It's just funny. It really is. So, you know, for decades we've heard, what have we heard? The customer's always right. I don't like, I don't know, there's enough people out there in the world to find your right kind of customer.

8:29Absolutely. The problem is this always goes back to these fucking shop owners are broke or these business owners are broke, so they kiss everybody's ass to try to get that dollar 'cause they think, oh my God, if I just sell 5 more bagels or do more oil change or do whatever, my money problem's gonna be gone when your fucking numbers are not correct.

8:46And you know, I wanted to clarify something that Shane said to me yesterday when we were talking about, we went over our marketing and stuff. He said, you need to broaden your horizons because what you talk is like Dave Ramsey or anything. You talk about financial, pretty much every business, the stuff you talk about could be applied to any business. Yeah. He's like, so if you branched out, you could probably fricking do repair shop reckonings or restaurants.

9:10I don't know if I'm going to get into all that, but the bottom line is money's money. You know, the dollars, the numbers don't lie. Yep. Okay, if these restaurants aren't making money, like you, you were talking about that restaurant that rebranded. They had all this money to rebrand, they rebrand and go out of business. It's kind of no different than— you ever notice people that go bankrupt, they always have the money, the $2,500, whatever it costs to pay the bankruptcy attorney.

9:32They can't pay their fucking car payment or this or that, but they come up with $2,500 to pay the bankruptcy attorney. Yeah. Okay. Discipline, discipline, discipline gets you doing the same thing over and over again with money is how you get money to control itself. And you can, you're financially stable, but anyway, man, and talking about like target clients, it would suck to be a bankruptcy lawyer.

9:55Like that's all the people you're talking about and dealing with all day. And then you have to charge $2,500 and you're like, can they even, can they pay that? You know, they're going to pay it because it's like, that's the only reason they, you know, they, they need it. Yeah, exactly. So today we're gonna be here, we're gonna do a reckoning. I'm here to tell you the customer's not always right at my shop, and I don't think the customer should be right at your shops.

10:17But a lot of you guys are little bitches and you're scared of your customers and you let your customers control you 'cause you're broke. So when you're broke, you don't have options. You can't look at a customer and go, I don't wanna do this job, take it on down the road. So a lot of people are afraid to push back at the customers.

10:32I just literally had a guy that with his trailer out there before I walked in the studio. I'm here working today because I got 2 guys out sick, and his estimate was replace 1 spindle, repack and replace all the bearings and seals on the other 3 spindles. I don't want to do that. I just want to replace the spindle. This is how we got here, sir.

10:53Lack of maintenance because you're cheap, broke, whatever. I'm 81 years old. I take the boat down the 4 miles down the road and in the— okay, great, but all your bearings are rusty. Okay, if I put a spindle on it and fix the one, you still have 3 that are bad. I'm doing you a disservice. I— you just want to sell me over $1,000 worth of repairs.

11:13My word track was this: no, sir, you brought your boat here for professional opinion. I disassembled it with a checkout fee. I told you these are the parts that failed, these are the things that need to be fixed to make the trailer safe and workable to drive back and forth. If I just put one spindle on because you're telling me to, and you went down the road and your other wheel fell off, you would go around telling everybody I ripped you off.

11:37So I'm here to tell you, I don't need your money. I don't want your money. If you think for one minute that you're gonna tell me I'm gonna put one spindle on this thing because I want your money that bad, you're wrong. I could care less if you take this thing and throw it in the river, junkyard, whatever you want to do to it.

11:50Well, Okay, but it's not even gonna make it home if I put one spindle on it. You're not seeming to understand. Well, I don't wanna put that much money into it. I don't know what to tell you. So we go back and forth and he's like, well, you're gonna charge me $199 to put the other wheels back on it and stuff like that.

12:04Yeah, we had to fight 'em all off and we're gonna put 'em back on. You're not even gonna make it outta my parking lot. What would you do for me? I said, how about I take $199 off, you charge me the 4, I'll charge you the $452 or whatever for all new bearing kits and the labor to put it back together. And that gave you a $199 discount and made his bill go up $456.

12:22So really, he went up $200 and he was like, absolutely, I'll do it. And he thanked you for it. And he thanked me for it. So I don't, you know, but if I would have backed up and let him boss me around, what would that have gone? Oh, man, I'm so fucking broke. Payroll's due tomorrow. I need that $756 instead of the $1,351 he spent.

12:41Yeah, fuck it. We'll put it together. Okay, Bob. Go ahead and just do this. And you know what? Uh, do the one spindle and just pound them bearings back on. The guy doesn't even make it out of your parking lot. You know that review you're scared of? Cause you're a bitch. You just got the bad review because you're scared. You don't, you're broke.

12:56You see the whole, the whole line here. It all goes back to what? You don't know your numbers. You're not pricing your stuff right. You're broke. So it leads you into being scared to push back on the customer, which you don't push back on the customer. That leads to a 1-star. Your whole shit show. It's just, it's just not— it's like a set of stairs.

13:15Like, you're at the top of the stairs and the customer, you just push the customer and off he goes because you won't— you're scared to fight back. Like, what the fuck is wrong with you guys? You guys sit there and say, you know, you're the best shop around, you'll do this, you'll do that, right up to the point where somebody pushes back on you.

13:30You go get the boss, the boss lays down like a little fucking cat. It's okay. You know, it's okay. Let me give you a discount. You know, my service advisor's snippy with you. Oh, I'm sorry. You know, I need your money. Come on, bitch. That's literally what it all amounts to. Okay. Now there's guys, I'm sure on the other side of the spectrum, the guy's like, hi, how you doing?

13:53He's like, fuck you. Get out of my shop. I don't like you. I'm sure there's guys out there like that, but this ain't what this is about. We're talking about is the customer's always right. Kissing ass gets you Nowhere. Well, you are confident and convicted in your recommendation. This is not safe for you to— for you to drive. And like, you're not telling him anything that's like, um, he should be offended by.

14:16You're telling him this is flat out, and you don't need his money. Take your— take your thing, go get it fixed shitty somewhere else. Like, die. Like, yeah, the whole fucking world's offended. Yeah, you could wave at somebody and they don't like the way you held your mouth and you offend them. Oh man. Okay, I had a lady come in last week and I was walking by the window at Carrots.

14:34When you walk in, I walk in there, I look over at the window and there's a lady up there and she's flailing her arms. She's got red hair and pink hair and all these different hair and she just looks like a fucking disaster. So I go walking by and it automatically caught my eye the way her body language was and she was pointing to Phil and Lincoln's leaning back in the chair like, oh God.

14:52So I'm like, whatever. I need to stay out of it. So I go sit in my office and I have to go up front for something. I go out there and she's bitching about this other shop down the street. They deleted her Sprinter and I ignore it. And I walk back up there and I can see Phil starting to get a little bit aggravated and Lincoln.

15:09I'm like, this is not going well. So I don't say nothing. I'm digging through the cashier to get petty cash. I don't know what I was doing. Um, whatever, receipts or something in, in petty cash. So I look up and she locks eyes with me. I'm like, So Lincoln goes, this is my dad, he's the boss, being a smartass. I'm like, you fucker.

15:30So he drug me into the process and like, Phil's like, tell her your story. Well, I, you know, I live in my Sprinter. Oh no. I'm like, okay. I'm like, oh, it's a camper? She's like, no, it's an old ambulance. I travel around. And I'm like, oh, it's got a ton of miles on it. I don't remember the miles. Like, it's got over 200,000 on it.

15:47And anybody knows about Sprinters, it's a piece of— Sprinters are horrible. So I'm like, oh, she's like, yeah. So I took it to this shop down the street and I didn't even know the shop even existed. He's like, they deleted it. And I'm like, they deleted it? She's like, yeah. She's like, it wouldn't start when I went to pick it up, had a longer crank.

16:05Now today it won't start at all. I'm like, oh, what did they say? Well, the guy kind of went off at me and told me to get out of his shop. He wouldn't help me. I'm sitting there thinking to myself, hmm, wonder why. So we're talking, I started asking her questions and I'm like, okay, what did they do? Did they take all the parts off and delete it?

16:23Did they do this? And she couldn't answer it. And she's just going back and forth and the story is just getting longer. When I would ask her a question, it'd be a different answer to the same question. Yeah, it was almost like an interrogation. I asked her the same questions but in different formats and she's just full of shit. Finally, you know, it started to get heated and I'm like, listen, they have you written up for 2 hours here.

16:41I'm here to tell you you're wasting your money with us. We're not going to be able to talk to it. I don't know what tune he put on it. You said he deleted it. I said, how about this? You figure out how to go back to him with your hat in your hand and you have him deal with it. But I said, because you giving us $400-some to do this is not worth it.

16:57You don't want my money? It's not that I don't want your money. I said, but I would be doing you a disservice. I would plug into you, charge you $400 to look at it and go, I don't know what to tell you. You'd be like, you did nothing. I don't want to pay you. And it's just going to be a mess because I'm not going to be able to do nothing.

17:11These splinters are funky anyway. Uh, so I don't know what to tell you. So now she gets agitated. She goes, I guess I'll go just fuck myself. Oh no. And I'm like, just not in the parking lot, please. I'm like, what? So I guess I'll just go fuck myself because that's what you're pretty much telling me to. And I'm like, no, ma'am, I'm trying to tell you I don't want to take your money.

17:33I said, so I think it's time for you to leave. Fine, I'll leave. I'll just go fuck myself. Says it the third time. And it happened to be my insurance agent's walking in because we're doing an audit on my insurance to go through. I've Be like, walked, and she's out there. And my wife comes walking in behind me. She goes, very good.

17:50I'm like, what? She's like, you had 101 things to say when she said that, and you did not even say a word. I said, sometimes it's just better to let them walk out. So if I was broke, we were a little bit slow, payroll's due, and I had that lady come in, what do you think I would have did? You would take her $400 and yeah.

18:13And I would've bought myself a friend. Yeah. I would've had a big fight. We would've had to go back and forth. I would've been married to the thing. She's clearly had no money. Yeah. I would've got bad reviews how horrible I am. And she's a poor single lady that lives in her bus and here comes a big bad repair shop to take advantage of her, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

18:31So, you know, in that particular case, I did the right thing in my mind. I didn't take her money and I still got nailed for it. I had another one this week, last week, that this truck comes in from California. The roof is ripped off it. There's duct tape hanging on it. The truck won't start. The truck smells like ass inside. You open the doors.

18:52We sent the guy a 2-hour checkout and the tow truck put it way over in the other alley. So it's going to take like a half an hour for us to drag it in with the forklift to work on because I don't let my guys work outside because people drive around there too fast. If their legs are sticking out, I don't want to run over.

19:04So the rule is our policy, you don't work in the parking lot. Obviously if it's a standup where you have to just jump something, okay. But otherwise it goes in the building where it's safe for the mechanics to work. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we charge an hour labor for that, which is 2 guys for half an hour, right? Half an hour. So 2 guys and cause it takes a half hour.

19:26So 2 guys times, I just make sure I say this out loud. It ends up being an hour. They call, you charging us $185? Which our labor rate's $217, but for that we charge the maintenance rate. You charging us that? Well, man, we gotta put two guys. I'm in the wrong motherfucking business. And Lincoln and them guys don't really know what to say.

19:47They're not— the word track is me. I was like, you're actually in the right business, man, but you don't know how to run your business. That way your fucking truck is broke. It's from California. It's got 6 bald tires on it, duct tape holding the roof on, hasn't had a DOT since Reagan was in office. Your driver, since we looked it up, just got outta jail after a 12-year stint for one, he went into one time for grand theft or breaking and entering, then another time he went back in for extortion, an old lady.

20:19He does not have a CDL, you know, all this shit. So they're like going off on us Give us this bad review that we tried to charge him $50 a day storage, which we charge $50 a day storage after the 7th day when you don't pick something up to kind of boost people into picking stuff up. So he gets this 1-star review and we never even did anything.

20:38These guy didn't like our price. We got 2 hours for a diag on a diesel, which was a MaxForce, which is not a lot of time. When anybody knows a fricking MaxForce engine, they're a pain in the ass and an hour to get it in, which is technically a half hour, 2 guys to drag it in. Cause a tow truck, puts it up on bumfuck Egypt.

20:55We have to tow it all the way down the alley with the forklifts, all the way around, two guys and jockey it into the building. It's a 26-foot box truck. This just doesn't happen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it takes time. Yeah. So they're mad about— they got one-star review. The guys are like, oh my God, what? I'm like, who cares? Just answer it back and fuck them.

21:11Yeah. Like, we're gonna get one-star reviews, and anybody who's gonna look at that, yeah, they're gonna be like, okay, whatever. When you're talking a few minutes ago, it just reminded me of like a drunk at the bar. And sometimes, like, the bartender's got to cut that person off for their own safety or for their own good. And that person is going to be pissed and going to be mad.

21:32But sometimes, as the professional, you know what's best. And you've got to get the customer out the door. Yeah, you know, a lot of these shops I've heard over the years are like, you know, a lot of the tire shops, you can't take this vehicle out. It's dangerous. We can't let you take it. Well, you're not the police. You cannot stop somebody from taking their vehicle.

21:49Years and years ago, a lady brought her Granada in. So that's how many years ago this was. Yeah. And she never changed the oil on it. We took the valve covers off it and it still had the imprints of Ford in the sludge. Oh man. She wouldn't let us do it. She picked it up, she drove it down the street. It caught on fire at the light right there at 10 Mile and Grand River.

22:11They sued us. We went to court and Steve Garrett went up and he said, "What happened?" Steve laid out the whole thing and he said, do you have your badge and your handcuffs with you? Steve's like, what are you talking about? The judge looks at it and said, you're not a police officer, ma'am. He's not a police officer. He told you you weren't taking care of your car.

22:28You chose to take it out of there. The car caught on fire. That's not on him. He can't hold you, hold your car hostage. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we, we won. That was years and years ago. I don't know how the today's world, the new world, it would work, but You know, if something's dangerous, we get, we write a disclaimer, customer declined it, da da da da, we make them sign it.

22:49That's the only thing we can do. Why even get in that mess in that battle of trying to hold their car hostage? Exactly. I don't think, you know, that's the thing. Like you're going to get these guys that they spend all their money on everything else besides fixing their vehicle. It just happens, right? But that always goes back to, you know, we as us as an industry, we've discounted, we've done inspections for free, we've done free estimates, we've done free diag, we've done all this.

23:16And what we've done as shops is discredited what we do. Do you see doctors, chiropractors, dentists, anybody going, come on in, we're going to go ahead and give you a free teeth cleaning? Nope. They don't fucking do it. They know their value. Yeah. They know that. Okay. The industry with them is you go to college, you get out of college, you have a big note to pay.

23:39It's never even been in consideration in all the years to do anything for free. So they never have because they've never started. Okay. I'd be willing to bet you at one time they would do the insurance write-off in the medical field sometime or another. Now, now they say, you know, hey, you have balance due, balance billing, they call it. My wife informed me, they call it balance billing.

24:01Hey, your procedure is going to cost, $1,900, your insurance company pays $900. How do you want to pay that $1,000? That is something that's changed in the last couple years. Think about it. Yeah, because before they would just bill you. Well, nobody was fucking paying them. Yeah. So now there's like, how do you want to do it? Now they're like, if you pay cash, we'll give you a bigger discount.

24:20Yeah. So now I notice like when you go to— and I talked to us about this before— I'm like, let's get a procedure. They're like, they want to get paid before we go in. Yep. And if you don't have the money now, they say, well, we're gonna have to reschedule you when you get the money. So they've stopped doing that. But here we are having these shitty shop owners doing stuff for free, and we have people coming in all the time for free.

24:41We had a guy yesterday come into Motor City. Here's another story. I'm gonna tell a lot of stories during this thing just so people understand what's going on. Guy has, uh, dual propane tanks on the front of his travel trailer he rents out. One's leaking. He calls up, hey, this thing's got to go out Friday, it's a rental. Do you think, guys, think you can repair the propane?

25:02Well, yeah, we should, we have in stock, shouldn't be a problem. Okay, I'll stop by. Stop by and drop it off. I'll just stop by. Stop by and drop it off. Okay, fucker never heard. He's gonna stop by. He stops by, Pat happens to be up front, the thing's leaking. He wants Pat to get a wrench and go out there for free and start fucking with it.

25:22Jim's like, no, you can drop it off, we'll get it checked out. Fuck it, I just won't then. I'll just have him use one propane tank. When we were gonna spend our money and our time doing it, he was hit all the time in the world. When it was gonna cost him a nickel, he was gonna freak, you know, he was out.

25:41Wow. That just goes to show you once again, what was he worried about? The money, 'cause he doesn't have any. And guess what he is not? He's not your customer. You guys might think I'm an arrogant dick and stuff like that, but I guarantee you one thing is the guy who's gonna be fricking in the cheering section, rah rah, with their pom-poms, is the flat rate guys.

25:58'Cause guys like me, when my guys were on flat rate, weren't getting screwed. Yeah, yeah. 'Cause I wasn't doing shit for free. If you didn't have a diag on it, you weren't allowed, the policy was you weren't allowed to fucking touch it. And it still is hourly. We're not doing this shit for free. But a lot of these shop owners, once again, they go back to the fact they're broke, so the customer's always right.

26:17We need to do this, we need to do that. I mean, do you have any stories where the freaking people bend over? You're in the cell phone business, my God. Everybody wants a free cell phone. We'd have people that say they— if their cell phone went out, like, so coverage went down, that they would literally refuse to leave our building, like, until we got up on our, on our poles and fix this shit.

26:36That's how, like, ignorant people are sometimes with their, with their shit. Think about this. You have a problem and you walk into it. You have a problem. You walk into a shop and you want to take a guy out who's talented and everything. You want him to come outside with his tools, his knowledge, whatever he has to do with scan tools, test light, whatever, tell you your problem.

26:59Then if you decide to hire him because you like his price, at that point he could charge you. Tell me what's wrong with that fucking picture. And that's what a lot of these shop owners do. You walk outside with these guys and they're fucking broke. The reason they're— how you can tell they're broke, they're asking you to come out and look at it right there.

27:16They're not coming. How many people come when they come into your shop and go, hey, I'm really in a pickle, I have no problem paying you an hour labor right now to talk to your guy or walk out there? I guarantee I don't think I've ever had anybody go, I'll pay you for your time, an hour for your time. Yeah, to come out and look like this.

27:32Yep. No, they just want you to come out and look at it real quick and Tom was wrong. Yeah, that's exactly it. So they can go do it, or they went to the— I had O'Reilly's driver come in yesterday, number, uh, 6 injector was bad on a 6.7. Yeah, I plugged our scanner into it at the store. I said, okay. He said, yeah, um, it needs a number 6 injector.

27:50Will you put it in? No. Why? It needs a number 6 injector. So you're that guy that thinks that the scan tool says number 6 misfire, it's an injector, so we just go ahead and put an injector in it and fix it. Then when it doesn't fix it, you're going to be mad at me. So what we're going to do is we need to re-diag it.

28:12Well, I don't need you to diag it. Well, I'm not working on it then. If I can't diag it, I'm not working on it. Oh, did you look up the kit? Does it come with a line? I'm asking, does it come with a line? Why would it come with a line? Because they're one-time use lines on a 6.7. He didn't even know that.

28:27He's gonna walk in with a fucking injector, probably out of the bag that was rolling around on the floor of his truck, go, well, you put it in, then it doesn't fix it. Well, you did something. I didn't fucking do nothing. It still has a misfire number 6 like it did when it came in, but you told me But we've always discounted it because we're broke.

28:42A lot of these shop owners are broke. Yeah, I'll put it in for you. Fuck it, I'll write it up like these guys. I'll write a disclaimer up, man. I fucking write a disclaimer up. Yeah, I'll put your fucking ejector in. If it goes bad or it's bad when it goes in, you got to pay me again, bro. I'm a lawyer. That's a lot of these assholes say online.

28:59I'll put a customer's part in, I just write a disclaimer. You're a fucking lawyer. ChatGPT knows it's even not a fucking lawyer. ChatGPT, how he starts out goes, I'm not a fucking lawyer. But a lot of these guys are like, yeah, I'll just fucking write up a disclaimer and they'll sign and I'll be good. Oh, okay, buddy. See how your disclaimer, because half you fucking people can't even spell or write.

29:24People in our trade, me included, we're not the best spellers. We would never win a spelling bee. We're mechanics, like, you know what I mean? Or tech. So, you know, so we've talked to customers, you know, that our knowledge has no value. We get pushed around, you know, we've— they've discredited us. We kiss their ass, you know. We were so worried about them going down the street.

29:46Kind of like we were talking about last week, um, when you're slow, you don't have to get new customers. You just have to get your, your, uh, your competition's customers by your marketing. Yeah. There's plenty of customers to go around. So they might get along just fine at the other shop down the street, might not get along great with you. It is what it is.

30:08You're going to lose customers. And what you end up finding is you end up, it's kind of like your friends over the years. The ones that you kind of are like-minded with, you stick with them. You guys kind of stick together. Once you really aren't, you grow apart or whatever. People change political affiliations and everything like that. I mean, you could literally piss a customer off.

30:26Think about in today's world, one of your techs can be out back wearing a fricking red hat. Not even a MAGA hat, and they see a MAGA hat and they get all— for a red hat— and they get all butthurt and they freaking leave and give you a 1-star review. And you don't even know what the fuck— they give you a 1-star review.

30:39That's how, that's how catty people are nowadays. Yep, yep. So you lost a customer, you even know why you lost a customer, why? And they're like, oh my God, we're losing all kinds of customers. There's been weeks we lost a couple— had a couple customers that just act like assholes, and you know, we kick them out. We just, I— we just kick them out.

30:56Um, We pretty much are pretty under control as far as a lot of people don't get kicked out anymore, but we have a lot, we have a lot of stop loss in place or stop guards or whatever gaps or whatever you want to say in place. Our process is kind of weed them out. Hey, this is what's going to cost you right here.

31:13So if they're cheap, automatically we start going, it's going to cost you this. And then they're like, oh, then we need, you're going to do a minimum of this. Oh, this. Oh, Okay, once we do this, once we get the approval, you give us the approval, we're going to need 50% down. Oh, so we've kind of, we kind of like narrow them in like cattle in a chute, you know what I'm saying?

31:32Because let's face facts here. We kind of came to the conclusion, like I said before, that if you can't pay half the bill, the deposit on it, you don't have the other half. Yeah. Yeah. What are you going to do between now and this time to cover the rest of it? Right. If you can't get the half right. And customer service is a big deal, like I've said before, but your knowledge has value.

31:53Your experience has value. Your training has value. Okay. All the years you sit there and beat yourself up in them bays fixing stuff like that. And all the guys, uh, all their, their knowledge pooled together is, you know, collective of 100 years, 50, whatever. Right. That just didn't come easy, but we've discounted it. What with the free, that's why, like, It's almost like people have got— customers have gotten confused because there's so much free.

32:20Free brake inspection. Like, you get these fucking piece of shit tire stores and brake stores are like, free brake inspection. Okay, let me tell you something. If the word says free, you better hold your ass. Because is there anything free in this world? Well, and we keep on using the whole medical thing. It just makes me laugh because I picture a customer coming into like a doctor and being like, ooh, that's a lot for that surgery.

32:42Like, I don't like that pricing, I'm gonna leave you a 1-star review, or can we knock $500 off this? Like, that just doesn't happen. And it's like funny to even think about it that way. So why— at what point did it become acceptable that like the auto repair industry has to feel bad for Mrs. McGillicuddy because her Volvo got broken— broke and she doesn't have the money to fix it?

33:04You know what I mean? At what point did that become your burden? No, you're right. And you know Tree Services called me a little bit ago. We have a truck here and the bills to redo this truck's like $17,900. Hey, do you think you can like, let's just go ahead and round it down to $15,000. Let's just go ahead and round it down.

33:23Yeah, that would be a fuck no. He's like, you said that quick. I'm like, I'm not discounting. I don't have the fucking kind of margins in it just to give fucking $3,000 away. All right, well, how about, I said, how about this? Zero. Right? Oh man, you know, seriously, you know, that's not that bad. I said, okay. So then I said, I sent him the link because he wants to lock his place in for September and stuff like that.

33:47Calls me back, they want like $150 for use my credit card. I ain't fucking paying that. I go, it's just money. Didn't you just tell me that? I go, about the discount? He starts laughing. I go, no, seriously, like you didn't give a shit. I was going to give you— you wanted $2,900 off, but you have to pay $150 more. All of a sudden it's a big fucking deal.

34:02I go, guess what? He goes, why? I go, I don't want to fucking pay it either. That's why I asked you to pay it. If you don't want to pay it, that's cool. Cool. Fucking bring me cash or bring me a check. And you know, when the check clears, we'll fucking talk. Well, you don't trust me? Nope. Don't trust anybody in today's world.

34:17Everybody's shady. What would you do if somebody from the church walked in? Hold my fucking wallet because I definitely don't trust them fucking people. Bad example. Bad example. Yeah. It's like, you know, people always use the religious thing over the years in your shop, you know. Hello, brother. You know, can you give me a I work at the church. Can you give me a discount?

34:38No. Number one red flag on hiring people. If they mention their religion, their faith, anywhere in their resume or their application, do not hire them. Do not even interview them. Don't waste your time. They're already scammers. Yeah, no shit, right? You know, the most expensive customer, if you really stop and think about it, the customers that you have to constantly kiss their ass because you're scared of that one review.

35:01And the customer's always right montage bullshit are the ones that drain all your resources. They're the ones that call 5 times a day. They're the ones that complain about the pricing. They're the ones that talk about the timeline. What about the warranty? What about this? They call just to say fucking hi, but they really wanna know when their car's gonna be done.

35:19'Cause they don't even, I've had customers literally that are a pain in the ass. We'll sell 'em, say, we'll just say we'll sell 'em a 10-hour job. No, okay, at noon. And they're like, call at 4:00, is that car done? Is that truck done? No. Well, why not? I approved it at noon. It's a 10-hour job. Like, they don't even have no concept.

35:41So them are the people that keep calling. They rile up your service advisors, everything else like this, because everybody's been trained that, you know, if you bitch, you get something for free. Okay. I'm here to tell you, if you bitch at our shop and we mess something up, I'll be like, yep, we did that, or we messed that up and I'll own up to it.

35:57But if not, I'm like, I don't know what to tell you. Like, we're doing our best. You know, it's not like we wake up in the morning and go, let's think Bob's coming today. Let's fuck Bob's day up. Let's raise Bob's car up on the hoist, call him up, tell him all his brakes are grinding 'cause they are. Then let's drop the fucker.

36:14Let's drop the hoist, the car off the fucking hoist. And let's video our doing it. How many of you people wake up in the morning and say, I'm gonna fuck somebody's day up? You don't wanna fuck, you wanna go through your day just like everybody else wants to go through their day. Quietly. Like, I do not want to sit there and deal with bullshit anymore.

36:33Like, as you get older, like, I don't know about you, I don't like fucking surprises. We talked about we're in the surprise business. Surprise, I broke this part, and you know, the guy's supposed to be picking it up in a few minutes. Like, so my point to that whole thing is like, these customers that are always on your fucking nuts are usually the biggest problems.

36:49They're usually the ones that always give you the hardest time. They give you the baddest review. They're They always think they're right. They want you to do everything. They want you to hook 'em up, do this, do that, and all that. And that goes back to the customer's always right. Somewhere along the line, there's people that went in there and fricking told everybody, just go in there and bitch and scream.

37:06You'll get what you want. And there's professionals that do that shit now. Absolutely. Now, something I've been thinking, uh, just wondering, I know you say things that most people wish that they, they wish they could say that, or they— and I'm asking, I'm saying it this way because you just, you communicate honestly and you say these things. And how many times do you, do you break a truth to somebody and they just, they just go with it?

37:32You know, because I say this because a lot of times your guys, I'll hear like, are surprised or like, you just got this guy that was complaining about $199 to pay an extra $450, you know. And you've done that a few times when I've been here where you've got somebody to pay more than what they were bitching about. And so what's that percentage when you just break it down and say you don't care, you have the confidence, this is the way it is.

37:52How many of the people, how those people, what percentage of people do you think go forward with it? I would have to say 99%. I very seldom, if I get involved in selling something, a deal, and you can, my wife can come here and sit next to you, I usually sell it. Yeah. I don't do the salesman thing. I don't, I agree with them.

38:07If I agree with them, if they're right, I agree with them. I don't agree with them if they're wrong. And I tell them the fucking facts like that guy. What sense does it make to put your fuck— a new spindle on? For the people who don't know what a spindle is, your bearings ride on, your wheel turns, okay? They lock up, it twists, you can't get the bearings out, so the wheel won't roll.

38:25So we're going to cut that one off and put all new bearings and everything back on this, then we're going to leave the other 3 all fucked up. What sense does that make? I tell the guy, think about what you're saying to me to try to save X amount of dollars. It's going to cost you 4 times more. You're going to go down the road.

38:43And I'm not trying to— I don't tell scare people. I'm like, this is what could happen. You're nuts by not doing this. You're better off not doing anything and pushing this thing into the frickin', like I said, the river or throw it in the dumpster or the junkyard, whatever, whatever it is. I tell them the truth. And sometimes people really get fucking pissed, really pissed.

39:02But you know what the funny thing is? A lot of times they'll frickin' settle down. They usually buy the shit. Yeah. My son-in-law Jonathan, there's a landscape company that came in and they had a dump truck with an electric hydraulic pump. So it has like an AC compressor clutch on the front of the pump. So you flick it on and it would, brrr, the pump would work and you dump it and you'd have to shut it up.

39:24But if you drove it down the road, you would burn the thing up. It would fucking turn blue and melt. Well, he had a new driver. And I put a new one on at the start of the year and he got a new driver and it came back 2 weeks later, it was blue. And I told the driver, I said, you fucking drove with this on.

39:43And you could watch their body language. She got, no, I didn't. I go, yeah, you fucking did. So Darren was the owner's name. He comes in, he's like, you need a warranty. I said, I'm not warrantied. They won't warranty it. He drove with it fucking on. He didn't drive with it on. He fucking told me. I said, what do you think he's gonna, the way you act, you think he's gonna fucking tell you?

40:00So we got in a big argument. I told him to fuck off, take his truck, This was years ago. Fuck off. Fuck everybody, including his dog. He was being such an asshole. I said, I'll fix it, but you're paying me. You're paying me for the parts, you're paying for labor, you're doing it all. He got mad. I told him to fuck off and leave.

40:17He called me about a half an hour later and he said, you were right. I was ranting and raving about you. And he said he may have left it on once or twice. And would you be willing to take care of that for me? I said, absolutely fucking lutely. I stood by what I knew and did not bend. I was willing to lose that customer because think about it, if I would've bent over that time, he knows I'm going to bend over.

40:44Absolutely. He's still a customer. We'd laugh about, there's been several of them. There's another guy that does concrete that he freaked out about his Isuzu, needed a turbo exhaust, a bunch of shit. He came in there and he told my guys on the phone, he left and I ended up coming in. This was a couple years ago. I ended up coming in and he was there.

41:03He's like, I am not spending $8,000 on that truck. And I'm like, well, your estimate's $12,000. And I went through it. He bought all of everything, all $12,000. When he walked in the door, he said he wasn't gonna buy $8,000 after I got done with him. And I just don't lie to these people. I tell 'em, this is what you should do.

41:17And then they always, the number one thing is, do you think this truck is worth putting the money in? That's what they always ask you. Do you really think it's worth putting this kind of money in? And I always say to 'em, listen, If you were to go buy this truck on an open market, not knowing nothing about it, and put it in your fleet, it would just automatically work.

41:31Would you do it for $12,000, which your bill is? Well, yeah, I would do that. I said, you know this truck, you know the history of this truck, you know if this truck's already had, you know everything. If you put $12 grand, you're going to slip it right back into your place. It's got your plates, your insurance, your— it's set up for you.

41:44What's the downside? And a lot of times you're like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Or I got another customer, he's been a customer of mine for a long time. I made fuck ton of money off his trucks. They're such pieces of shit, they break every other week. I told him last week, I said, these trucks are getting to the point now where I can't keep fixing them.

42:00As much as I want to keep freaking putting my kids through college and everything else with these trucks, he laughs. I go, dude, they're getting to the point where I can't even get parts for them anymore. He's like, I fucking know it, they fucking suck, blah blah blah. He's like, you know, I go, when your mechanic tells you he doesn't want to work on your shit, you might want to listen.

42:16But you know, I do have that thing. Like, what you see is what you get with me. I'm brutally fucking honest, and that's the way I sell stuff and everything. And people get butthurt. They just— but then they call back. And I've been here where people have called back and they're like, okay, just do it. Yeah, because I don't— like, you know, like the salesy guys, and they start talking all these— oh yeah, version— I'll give you a discount, I'll do that.

42:38I'm like, no, this is my fucking price. I'll do it right. I'll stand behind what I fucking do, and I have a good reputation. You want to do it or not? You know, but that comes with a lot of years of me beating my head against the wall to know my value. Okay. You know, I don't even know I should say this, but I said, fuck it.

42:55So we moved into our new house, the neighbors, they checked us out, which we checked them out. Yeah. We live, you know, way off into a field and there's one house on the other end of the field, basically. And they checked us out. They kind of knew who my wife was through bowling. So Jenny, who is my neighbor now, knew a lady that Marilyn bowled with and asked about Marilyn and me.

43:21And they already knew who I was because of my podcast. And he has— they have friends that are in the automotive business. So they all— everybody already fucking knew who I was, which is kind of crazy. It's pretty crazy. Yeah. But they said that Marilyn is a very humble lady. For somebody who has money, she's very, very humble, very down to earth, very nice.

43:42Like, you wouldn't know my wife is wealthy. You've met my wife. Oh, yeah. We both wear— we dress normal. We don't walk around like fucking some of these people that think they're wealthy. Like, we don't, you know, and we share what we get with people. You've seen that too. Yeah. I'm not a greedy ass. Like they say, all shop owners are greedy.

44:01No, that's not fucking true. I don't. I take care of my people. Okay. They all, you know, but that comes from standing up for what you believe. And that's where I kind of believe that the customer's not always right. Because if you let your customers run your business, what are you going to get? A customer running your business. Customers don't give a fuck about you.

44:19No, nope. You know, you said you've seen in the cell phone business, you know, they're like, well, you give me a free cell phone. Well, somehow or another, we're going to make you pay for that. Yeah. Yeah. You remember when they first used to, they used to put it on you, but they would finance it for $7 a month for a phone for 2 years and it would come with a case, charger, thick battery, thin battery.

44:39Yeah, no, I remember the whole process and how they changed it. Yeah. You know, yeah. So here's the other fucking problem we're running into in this business. We have the internet expert. So they come in and they watch all these videos. So they take a bunch of videos that they've watched and they've done all this research there. They have a little bit of knowledge on how something works.

44:59They want to come into your shop and tell you all how it works and everything. They've already tried it 3 times at their house and it won't work. And the seal they tried to pound in is leaking. This is falling off, but they're going to tell you exactly how you do it and exactly how much it's going to cost you. And if you start pushing back, you have to understand the customer's always right.

45:16So you need to fucking listen. Well, once again, here we go. We're not— the customer's not always right. It's us. Your customers will end up respecting you. Start looking at them and tell them, no, we're not doing this. We're not putting your parts on. We're not doing this. And this is why, you know, there's different word tracks you can use for people, but we're not doing it.

45:35You know what I'm saying? It's like, you're too expensive. You're too expensive. I may be too expensive for you, but look at the other 20 vehicles that are out in my parking lot. I'm not too expensive for them. You know, every fucking concert has seats everywhere, right? This is a good analogy. I just popped into my head. You got seats that are close to the fucking stage.

45:52Them are the guys that'll rip the check, right? Then you got the guys that really wanted to go to the concert, but they don't have enough money, so they sit way up in nosebleed. Same with Tigers game, any sporting— okay, there's seats everywhere at a concert, right? What does that tell you? There's different freaking echo— what is it? What do they call it?

46:07Echo, echoes. I don't even remember the word now. The different types of people as far as where they're at. Echelon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where they are money-wise or rungs or whatever they want to call it, depending on what religion they are. But you know what I mean? Seats everywhere for everybody. Yeah. So your customers, you want close to the front row. Them are the people that are going to give you the least bit of problems.

46:28How much problem do you think I give somebody when I go to buy something? Knowing me and I go to a professional, they come and say, here's my price. What do you think happens? I might ask them a couple of questions. Yeah. And say, okay, go ahead and do it. It's already in my mind that I'm going to do it. It's just picking the right company to do it.

46:44And it's even more surprising to me nowadays that when they actually show up and do it. Yeah. And they don't have a hard time. Like Motor City Floors has done 2 floors with me. Every time they hit the fucking nail on the head, they always fricking over-fucking-deliver every time. Professional communication, everything. They're great. Okay. Apple Heating and Cooling, when they came and did the thermostats at the house, the new house, them guys came, they did everything that I would have done.

47:11Okay. It's kind of surprising if you guys think about it nowadays, but, you know, every one of them guys I will guarantee you, you start giving them a hard time, they'll tell you to fucking get lost. Why? Because once again, them people make money and they're professional. They will take care of you. They'll bend over backwards. But the minute you start mistreating them or their employees, they're not going to stand for it.

47:31And that's how I am. I think what it comes down to is having a standard for yourself and setting that standard and having that confidence around it. You know what you're, what you guys and the service and level of service you provide. In so you can be confident around that. Yeah. I'm just looking through the mix. I'm already way ahead. Uh, uh, uh.

47:57Oh, here's a good one. Here's a good one. The decline in the blame customer. Mm. So a lot of times you get these customers, you know, that they decline something or you recommend something and something fails and they forget with their short timers that you recommended it. For instance, a tie rod, you recommend a tie rod, you recommend brakes, the brakes are at 10%.

48:30The guy forgets about it because he doesn't want to do it. He has declined. He starts heading up north and starts grinding. We've had them call us up and say, My truck was just there a month ago. Now the brakes are grinding. What the fuck? 9 times out of 10, my guys will know the customer already. They'll pull up the repair order.

48:48If not, and be like, sir, you declined the brakes on this date. That shuts them off. Record keeping is key to keep the bullies off you or the blame customers off you or the customer. I'm the always— I'm the customers, therefore I am always right is a good idea. To keep the records so you can kind of back up what you say.

49:06That is a really, really good one because you're right, the customer isn't always right. How do you win? And it takes— and you still might get a bad review, but how can they really be pissed off when you have all the evidence there? It's the same thing with the insurance guy and, uh, and having all the calls and all the things documented.

49:24How can they, how can they battle it? Yeah, um, I actually am an absolute freak about data. We record our phone calls going in and out of the shop. We have emails, we have text message, our program geotags them, you know, so that we already know their IP, I shouldn't say geo, IP addresses. So we have all the stuff. So like for instance, this old man, when he was giving us a hard time with that motorhome and said, you know, I didn't agree to all that, we have the phone call, him agreeing to it.

49:56We also have him, signing the estimate and sending back and giving us a deposit. So we have a whole trail of that because I never want to be blamed for something of being a crook when I can look at something and go, look, here's all the data right here and this is what happened. It was upfront because, you know, as well as I do, customers lie.

50:16Absolutely. Customers lie. You don't think if you get a customer mad and say you're just a manager and the customer's mad and it makes it up to, say, the owner or the general manager comes in the office, They are going to throw you under the fucking bus as a manager. And if your boss or the owner is a pussy, like a lot of these guys are, they will take the customer side over you even though you did nothing wrong.

50:38How does that make you feel as an employee? What does that do to morale? Oh, absolutely. Shoots it in the foot. Absolutely. My guys were laughing. They're like, you're not going to put air in the tires? I go, fuck no, we're not putting air in the tires. Because my thought was, what does that show? What does that show that guy? That guy shows that he can call out.

50:54Have a temper tantrum, mistreat my people, which I don't mistreat my people. He's gonna come into my shop, mistreat my people, yell and scream, not get his own way. He finally got the insurance to give him his own way, right? Yep. And then he's gonna call my guys and go, yeah, and by the way, would you be so sweet as to put air in my tires?

51:12And you know what? My guys would've done it if I told them not to, wouldn't tell 'em not to. I got 'em when I got here, Jim already, he's like, I already told him. 'Cause I called him that night when it came through. I called him up and I said, we will not be putting air in that man's tires. It's a matter of principle for me.

51:26And people on the podcast would be like, you're gonna be like, you're a dick. Fuck that guy. He wants to call and act like an asshole and treat people like shit. Fucking go treat people like shit at Bell Tire. Well, and what I noticed too, it's like the other guy that called up and said, hey, you know what, I was wrong. You have respect for that.

51:42Yeah. Like if that guy would have called up and been like, you know what, I was an asshole, I'm sorry. I, you know, like I imagine it would have been a different conversation than just avoiding that he was an asshole 3 or 4 times or however many times it was and then ask for a favor. I would agree. And you know what, my mind— you've been around me long enough to know my mind does not work that way.

52:00Like, I don't consider— like, if I fuck up, I'm like, ooh, I fucked that up. I don't have a problem like, I screwed that up. Like, sometimes I get excited to go out, the guy— tell the guys, oh, just fucked that up. Not because like I think it's great, because I think it's important to them to know that I don't think I'm better than everybody, and I want to hide it when I fuck up.

52:20Yeah, I fucked it up. So what? I'm human. You know what I'm saying? Like, absolutely. My wife has that big thing with me where you're like, you're never wrong. I'm fucking wrong a lot. I just have to make more decisions. Think about if you make 2 decisions a week, you have a 50-50 chance of being wrong. Absolutely. I make 300 decisions. By statistics, I'm going to be wrong more than you.

52:415,000%. I have to make decisions on the fly all day long, every day. Yep. Yep. So you think about it, I'm making decision, decision, decision. So my decisions are a lot more than her decisions. You know what I mean? And a lot of times my wife, when she has a big decision, who she, who comes, who she comes to, and we talk about the decision.

52:57So we kind of come to the decision together. Yeah. You know what I mean? Piles on to the amount of decisions you have to make. Yeah. So you go back to the, you know, this all comes down to standing by your people now. Yeah. What if you're, what if one of your employees does something wrong? Do you throw them under the bus in front of the customer?

53:15No, no, no. And I've seen this happen where leaders have managers or whatever. People have said, oh my God, this sucks. And then the thing it does is it magnifies the mistake that you made. It magnifies that you have shitty people. And what happens is they come in and they do business with you again and they're like, oh, well, you know, I think so-and-so messed up.

53:37They start now. Equating and trying to get discounts and stuff because you threw that person under the bus. It just trains them just like you're training your people now. Yeah. Um, there's been times where I necessarily don't like how something was handled at my shop and the customer be standing there and say, this just happened, this just happened, and this is why, or this is what.

53:58And, and I look at it and I think to myself, yeah, I wouldn't handle that way. But I don't stop and go, oh yeah, Mr. Customer, you're right, this guy's a fucking idiot. He shouldn't have did that. He shouldn't have did that. I think that's a conversation that I should have behind closed doors on that customer. So at that point I'll be like, okay, figure it out, fix it, whatever we do.

54:14And then say, hey, you might not want to do it that way. The word track, like yesterday, Monday, Phil wasn't there and Lincoln answered the phone. He was a fucking asshole. And I could tell the guy was going to waste his time and Lincoln could tell the guy was going to waste his time. But Lincoln was a fucking dick. Yeah. And I said, Lincoln, you're being an asshole.

54:32Because the guy basically said, and you got— I gotta take it for what it's worth. A lot of these guys call, yo, I have a 26-foot box truck, and you're like, okay, how much to put a roof on it? And you're like, fuck, what kind of fucking box truck is it? Is it a box on the truck? If it's a Freightliner, doesn't mean it's a Freightliner fucking box.

54:51It could have a Morgan, a Supreme, a fucking Mickey, whatever. Yeah, so a lot of these guys don't understand that. My guys are just like, oh Oh my God, because they get this call 100 times and it's a waste of fucking time, you know. So Lincoln's like, what kind of box truck? And I'm like, he— I'm like, just tell the guy you can't help him because he's a fucking waste of our time.

55:10But I'm like, you sound like a fucking asshole. He's like, oh, you know. And I'm like, pull up the fucking phone call. And he's like, yeah, I sound like an asshole. Now if I would have started yelling at him on the phone, the guy on the other phone go, what the fuck is going on? What the fuck is going on? So I don't throw my guys under the bus and I don't expect them, you know what I mean, to take shit from customers.

55:29And if a customer really gets irate or something like that, a lot of times they'll handle it or they'll get Jason if I'm not there and Jason will get rid of the customer. Like, listen, you're not— you come in here, you're yelling, you're hollering. Like, we didn't, we didn't design it. We didn't engineer it. We didn't fricking build it. We don't sell the parts.

55:46We don't— you know what I'm saying? We don't— this is— you didn't break it. We didn't break it. We're just the guys here you brought it to. We're the guys unfortunately have to give you the bad news. And your man is screaming at us. What is this gonna fucking do? You know, it's so funny because again, you think about going to the doctor and doctors tell you that you're dying of cancer and you never hear of— have somebody screaming at them like, it's your fault, like, why are you delivering this news to me?

56:09But you can scream and yell at the mechanic. That's pretty much it. I just— it doesn't make— equate. It's so crazy. But you think about it though, it's like you go to Best Buy and there might be a Karen fucking screaming and yelling at their fucking kid. Uh, yeah, absolutely. Like, what are you fucking doing? Yeah. Yelling at an 18-year-old kid that he's passing through.

56:27Yeah. Yeah. He's literally passing through. It's like yelling at the kid at McDonald's. Yep. And this goes— just a little bit of a side thing. I had an argument with a guy and he's like, fucking people at McDonald's, they need to make fucking $15 an hour. I said, you're going to get fucking $30 hamburgers. I said, do you realize if a guy makes $9 an hour and he's putting cheese on the cheeseburgers, or forgets to put cheese on the cheeseburgers.

56:52You think if you pay him $15, he's going to remember to put cheese on the cheeseburgers? No, we are dealing with a kid that started out— McDonald's was a job that was designed for fricking kids, basically. Okay. It's set up for young people getting a grasp on the workplace and getting structure and all that stuff like that. Yep. You're not going to change people by paying them more money.

57:13Okay. So firing the customers— what most— this is where most shoppers— I already talked about most shop owners. Get uncomfortable. They think they're going to lose revenue. Here's the better question. I like this part of it. Okay, what if you keep costing you money because they think they're more than they're worth? What if them people are a mental suck on your people?

57:34Think about this. Think about a customer that you had at the cell phone shop when you've seen that fucker pull up. And I can give you, in your business, cell phone business, I could tell you who you people hate when you're on commission. The old people with the cane with their AT&T bill and they come walking in, excuse me, excuse me, my bill, $3.53 more than it was last month.

57:57Can you help me? And you know, if you get a bad review, you're fucked, right? Yeah. She's probably not leaving a review though. So you're sitting there going to have to help these people and you're watching everybody else selling iPhones and selling this and you're over there with this Miss McGillicuddy. Okay, so we all have that customer. So what about that customer that has the absolute piece of shit car that comes back every other month because you didn't freaking tell them to buy the— in my year, in my back things, it was a Ford Probe.

58:24They were the biggest piles of shit around. They were there every other fucking week in the shop. Loved them. But goddamn, I don't know how some of them people afforded them. They have the repairs over and over and over again, right? Oh yeah. So then were the people like, hey, I was here last week, can I get a discount? Hey, this— since you did this, this is what's going on.

58:42Them are the people that tax your people and they take more time than a guy that walks in and says, yep, I'm pretty good with that estimate. Go ahead and do it. When can I have it back? I can have it back. It's Monday. I can have it back to you Thursday. Thanks a lot. I'll get a car. I'll work it out.

58:54They're cool. You don't hear from them. You call them. They're appreciative. They pay you. Away they go. Yep. Versus the guy that calls you every few minutes. And guess what? If you say the wrong thing, He's going to pull the old, you're rude to me. What are you going to do for me now? Because I'm the customer and I'm always right. Yeah.

59:11We've always had them people. Yeah. And we get, we get to choose as business owners who we do business with, which I think is the most important thing to, to, to realize. You can fire your customers. You can fire the bad ones, get the bad ones out. You don't have to be the people dealing with bankrupts, bankruptcy clients, you know, like you, you, you don't have to deal with the scums of the earth.

59:31Get them out. Fire them. Yeah. What they do is they distract your team from serving your great customers. Yeah. You're over here dealing with this asswipe for, say, half hour when I could have been dealing with a customer that really cares about his car maintenance and everything else and making my life easy. He would have just bought the shit, been happy, and gone on with his life.

59:50And you know what the easiest way to fire a customer is? Charge them a lot of money. Yeah. I had a client the other day. She was like, man, this person keeps asking me all these questions. And I want to tell her that I charge a coaching fee to I sit down with all these questions. I'm like, so do it. She was like, what will happen?

1:00:05I'm like, what's the, what's the worst that could happen? What if she stops? What if you say it and she stops talking with you? And she was like, I'd be glad. I'm like, so throw it out there. She's like, how much? I say, tell her it's $300 to sit down with you, you know, for 30 minutes. And so she did. And the lady ended up hiring her.

1:00:21Yeah, exactly. So this goes back to how I sell stuff, what the good customers actually want. It's pretty simple. They want honesty. They want communication. They want competence. They want reliability. Think about that. You go to a shop, your check engine light's on. It's misfiring. They say, drop it off at 8 o'clock. We'll get you checked out. We'll get you an estimate.

1:00:46You show up to our training video that's coming out someday. It's almost done. Communication's great. The reception's great. When you walk in, how you doing? Would you like a cup of coffee? We have a coffee machine. It's clean. It smells nice in there. You're greeted. We tell you what's going to happen. We set the table. We're very professional. We say you're going to get a link.

1:01:08You're going to approve the diag. You, you leave. Sure as shit, you're on your way to work. Ding. Diag. Yep. Approved. I feel pretty good about that. A couple hours later, hey, the mechanic drove your car. Look at this. We found a fucking cracked spark plug. There's a picture of the spark plug. It was a misfire. But what we did notice is all your other spark plugs are kind of worn out.

1:01:26We can do a full tune-up on this thing and induction cleaning, and we could have it wrapped up by 3 o'clock. We don't give a time. I should— let me stop. We could have it wrapped up this afternoon. He says, oh man, look at the pictures. He does it, all that stuff. Boom. In the afternoon, he gets a phone call. Hey, your truck, your car's ready, man.

1:01:47I don't get off work till 5 o'clock. You close at 4. Not a problem. We're going to send you a link over. You can go ahead and pay right there. We have a Dropbox. Once you pay, we'll go ahead and give you the little code. Your keys will be in there. There you go. He pulls up to get his car at night.

1:02:00There's an air freshener. His car is clean. His invoice is on the— paid invoice is on the seat. He gets in his car, vroom, it starts up and goes down the road. Now, that would be the perfect VIP. That would be right. That would be perfect. Now, we forgot that the car got ran into after we left. All kinds of shit. But my point is that whole experience.

1:02:20How do you think he's going to feel about that? Oh, he's going to feel great. He's going to tell his friends. He's going to feel great, right? Now let's go ahead and put it to the guy that's a pain in the fucking ass. He comes in, everything's the same. He doesn't like the coffee because you fucking have Tim Hortons and he's a Starbucks guy, so he's bitching about that.

1:02:35He doesn't like this, he doesn't like that. You give him the reception, he doesn't like the price. He starts freaking out, can I get a discount on the diet egg? He already gets your guys on edge. No, we can't give you a diet egg. Discount on diet, gets an hour. He gets mad at that point. We're going to send you a link.

1:02:49Why can't I fucking do it right now, sir? We still got to check your vehicle in, do this and stuff like that. On the way to work, he's got a freaking 1962 fucking phone. The link comes through, it won't work. He's pissed off about that. Just because the guy was already pissed off about the coffee is where it all started. He's just going to keep going with being the pissed off thing.

1:03:08Yeah, yeah. And then we get to finally get the diet. He calls us back 3 times just to tell us how unfortunate it is that he has to actually go through this and accept this. And this, this is just such a pain in his ass, and this is horrible. I'm wasting his time. He does that. We call him back later. We say, this is what we found.

1:03:24I can't open the picture because once again, he's still pissed off about the cop. He's just a difficult, miserable fuck, right? And then he doesn't like this, and he doesn't like that. And you tell him, hey, we found the spark plug like we said, but you can't look at the picture. It's cracked. We can show you when you get here. Of course.

1:03:39Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, we probably should clean, do an induction clean and replace the spark plugs. Just got a lot of— you know, I don't want to flush. You're just trying to rip me off. You know, I'm going to go ahead. You know, I want— I go ahead and do the one spark plug. I don't want the rest of the spark plugs.

1:03:53This is fucking ridiculous. So you say, okay, against you. Okay, you decline this. We did the one spark plug, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He goes a month later, there's spark plugs that were kind of borderline worn out anyway, and I didn't say about. Starts misfiring again, guess what happens? He goes online, just had my vehicle worked here, 1-star review, fucking month, month later, it's doing the same exact thing.

1:04:16You had no chance with that customer, none whatsoever. Them are the kind of people we don't want. We all have them. They're miserable. Where did the term Karen or Kevin come up? From fucking people being fucking assholes. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely gotten worse. Oh yeah, this entitlement shit is out of fucking control. I mean, people are so entitled, it's unbelievable.

1:04:42They think that you want to come to work and do shit for free. Like, the big thing here at this stuff, it really surprises me when people bring their trailer in, they're like, uh, will you check my brakes? And we're like, yeah, it's, you know, an hour for us to jack it up, pull it off. You're gonna charge me? Like, what the fuck do you mean am I gonna charge you?

1:04:58Do you go to work for free? Do I call my guys, I'll go, yo, Hey, I need you to clock out even though you get paid hour. I need you to clock out for this hour because I really can't charge a customer. Therefore, I'm not gonna pay you. How long do you think I'd have employees? People don't think about like, you're paying these couple guys to come out, put the car up.

1:05:15Like you're paying them all that time. They, they just, they don't think about it. No. And do you think that for one minute when you go into Target or anywhere where there's tissue or there's this or there's that in the hospitals, we'll, we'll use U of M. There's tampons in all the bathrooms, boys and girls. But my point is, who do you think pays for them tampons and shit?

1:05:34Do you think they're free when everybody's stuffing them in their pockets because their bathrooms are over— have an overabundance of them? No, it's added into the healthcare costs. Yeah, right. So it's good. That's added into your procedure. You're paying the tampon fee in your, your procedure, right? It is just like people think stuff— going back to the thing— is free, and then the customer's always right, you know?

1:05:51It's just like we have fostered this bullshit. Like, you know, one thing is like my, my one, uh, my daughter's boyfriend, he has a little construction company and he has to come back. Some people want him to come back 2 or 3 times. I go, what do you do? He's like, well, I go back, I need the work. I go, I'd fucking tell him I'm coming one fucking time.

1:06:13If you don't accept my fucking quote right there, I'll figure it out. I'll go through my truck and figure it out while I'm sitting here. If you don't accept it then, if I come back, it's going to cost you. Absolutely. Oh, you're going to charge? Do you fucking drive around for free? Gas is $5 or diesel fuel $6 a gallon. Lincoln does a transportation fee.

1:06:32Absolutely. I had an interior design client that would go out and she wasn't charging for a design fee and she'd go out there and spend a couple hours and she wasn't— she was just driving to wherever they were at, sitting in their living room and wasting 2 hours. When she started charging, And guess what? Her conversion rate went up. She stopped getting people that are wasting her time, taking up her time because they wanted her to come out and give them a free consultation so they could take her ideas and couldn't go do it themselves or go pay some of their friend to go do it versus finding the clients that were like, oh, you

1:07:02charge $500 to come out? Awesome. Like, boom. Guess what? Her conversion rate went to 90%. Yeah. Think about this. You're, Calling an interior designer, decorator, whatever, that is a rich man's service. Would you not agree? Or somebody that thinks they have money, right? You expect somebody to come out there for free? And when they do come out there for free, what is that telling you?

1:07:31If somebody tells me, if I right now, if I called somebody, I said I need new curtains at my house. Yep. And you're willing to come out for free and they're willing to come out for free, I'd be like, you're gonna come out and design all this shit, you're not gonna charge me a dime? I'd be like, yeah, fuck that, they're broke.

1:07:47Yep. I literally would. I'd be like, yeah, fuck, I'm not, not happening. Yep. Instead I'm like, I had, um, there's a plethora of shit wrong with my new house, like just not maintenance shit. Like, uh, the refrigerator lights weren't working on the one side, so I called the refrigerator place and they're like, the one lady was kind of a fucking bitch about it.

1:08:07You do realize there's a $199 charge for us come out. Okay, my refrigerator is fucking the size of a goddamn baseball field. I fucking think I could afford it. You know what, when I said, oh, you have that model, she's like, you have that model in your house? I didn't fucking put it there. All I'm telling you, the fucking lights don't work.

1:08:26Yeah, yeah, yeah. But she acted like I was bothered. I said, you know what, lady, obviously this is too much for you, and I fucking hung up. And I called another lady, another place. They're like, yep, we can come out, it's $249.99 for the first hour, that includes the drive time and everything like that. And if he could take care of it right there while he's there for that, in that $249, we'll take care of it.

1:08:45If not, we'll give you a written estimate and you could accept right there on the spot. I was like, okay. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, when can you come out? Oh, it'll be 2 weeks. So fuck that. So I ended up fixing it myself. But my point was they went up $50 and I didn't have a problem with it. Cause the lady was like, this is what we'll do.

1:09:00Yep. They built value into it. You know, I didn't, and I didn't start pushing back like being the customer that's always right and giving the lady a hard time. Well, you need to change your schedule. You need to do this. You need to do that. You need to do that. And I think sometimes all these corporations are so afraid of the bad review and the customer's always right.

1:09:19They, they're so strict on their rules and how they explain stuff to people. It pisses people off like me. Like they're, they're accusatory. Like you're trying to rip them off right before you even get there. Like, you can't— they can't look at you and go, hey, can you do this? Hey, can you do— you know what I mean? Like, we're gonna do this and kind of build some value.

1:09:35And they don't do that. It's really weird. It is really weird. People don't know how to build value in, in what they're doing at all. Yeah, it's just— I don't get it. And, you know, that goes back to the customer's always right. You know, these stores, you know, how many times, like, do these— you go to Best Buy or Target and you see somebody giving them a hard time and like They're over there bending over backwards.

1:09:57And there's no matter what the cause, I sit there when I see it going on, I sit there and linger because I always want to see how they're going to de-escalate it. And I'm thinking to myself, I love it too. Yeah, they're fucked. Yeah, no matter what this manager says, they're fucked. This guy already has in his mind he's getting something for free, free dinner, free— it's kind of like my aunt.

1:10:16Every fucking time she's known to go out to dinner Oh shit. They could set soup down that's fucking on fire and the spoon is glowing red and they set it down. Soup's cold. Like, they bitch automatically. They bitch. It's kind of like when Dale Carnegie talks about in one of his books that they used to take people to dinner and see if they took the salt before they took a bite.

1:10:43Yeah. Before they even took a bite, they're salting the shit out of it. Yeah. Not even trying it. Yeah. And you know, they already had the preconceived notion that didn't have enough salt in it. And it's kind of like the cold soup. And then people always go for, oh, this is no good. I need a discount. Or do you ever go to dinner with somebody that says, uh, hey, um, I'm going to have the chicken finger.

1:11:07How many— is that a big portion for, for that $8.99? Or how many fries? How many like fries does it come with? A lot of, a lot of food. Like you're sitting there going, oh my God, this is already a problem. Think about it. You know, that just kind of goes to show you, it's statistically the people that start asking them questions are already fucking saying, hey, I'm a problem.

1:11:30Them are the same people. If you watch this, I'm going to say this to everybody out there, start watching this. When you go to order, there's two different types of personalities. When you go to order, guys like me will go, I'll have X, Y, and Z. They don't go Is it this or that? I'll have this. Questionable. Yeah, right. Yeah. There's the people, can I have this?

1:11:50And how many fries come? They're the people that are already a fucking problem. They're the two types of personalities. Now watch your wife and your kids. Yeah, you're going to watch it. You're going to be like, holy fuck, I love this human study shit. My wife, my wife, when we go to dinner, I watched it a while ago. My wife says, can I do, can I have?

1:12:06I'm like, yeah, I'll have this, this, and this. And Lincoln, I'll have this, this, and this. Mia, I'll have— or can I? Can I? You're at a fucking restaurant or they're selling shit. Sure, certainly you could have it. But do you have money? Yeah, you can have it, right? But them people, like, I watch it all the time. It's like these people have to give away dessert all the time because of this fostered, uh, belief that the customer's always right.

1:12:32Think about it. You go to Outback. Oh, how was everything? They literally go around and they fucking bait people like they're masturbators. Like, literally, do you ever go to Outback and they go around the manager has to go table to table? How is everything? Well, you know, I wasn't happy with this. I wouldn't have it. Dessert for you. Go to the next table.

1:12:52How was everything? Oh, the bread was a little stale. Dessert for you. They literally go out and seek out fucking problems they wouldn't even have had. Wouldn't even have had. Yeah. Now I can understand maybe the corporate's thinking, well, uh, We can go and ask before we get the bad review. But what does that foster? What I love is you talk about this.

1:13:13I have— you don't see many people, and this is just the way that shit service is. Most— you see a lot of these managers that like will go around and ask, how is everything? Great, great. But they're not even listening to what you're saying. They're already walking to the next table and already asking the next table how everything is going. They're not even listening.

1:13:27So they're going through and asking the question. They don't even— they're not even stopping and listening. So first off, bad question because it's just baiting a complaint. But they don't even care. They're just hitting the tables. They're not listening. Yeah. And then you do realize now that statistically— I don't remember, I read it the other day somewhere in a blurb— that restaurants don't give free meals hardly anymore.

1:13:47They're giving desserts away because they could not afford to keep giving all the free meals away. Oh, I bet. The comp meals. Yeah. Because they're going around going, oh, how was your steak? Well, it was this. Oh, fuck it. Don't worry about it. Well, let's go ahead and waive that $30. Let's go ahead and waive that $30. And what ends up happening now, nobody ever takes this into consideration.

1:14:04When they were taking that steak off and they were taking this off, what was happening to that bill? It was getting smaller, right? And how do waitresses get paid? On size of the bill. On the size of the bill. So the waitress does everything right, but the back end is not doing what they're supposed to because management's not doing their job. And the waitress just got fucking dicked out of $10 out of 10 tables.

1:14:26She just went $100 down that night because we are always singing the customers right. We're giving them free shit. Just jack your flat rate tech. Use Jack Flat Rate Tech. But right. Yeah, that's what it sounds like. It's like everywhere you go, the customer's always right is costing these corporations so much money. If these corporations think about how many corporations do you see on the news and our bullshit woke ass fucking News Now going, Jason Tracy was at Outback the other night and he got sterling service and he gave a 5-star review.

1:14:58They don't do any of that. No, they look for the bad shit. You realize that, you know, Chick-fil-A is closed Sunday, even though their religion, their whole company was built by a Christian, has Christian beliefs. They are closed on— they always go for the worst. Yep. You know, but think about this. Chick-fil-A does not have customer service problems. Oh, they don't. No.

1:15:18And they don't bend on their fucking beliefs. The first time I waited in line for Chick-fil-A, I thought it was the most ridiculous thing in the world to wait in that long of a line, but I was so impressed with how quickly it moves. Like they've just got a process down. Yeah. And you know, the funny thing is, if you really stop and think about it, these places that don't back up for their customers don't have customer problems.

1:15:38Absolutely. Well, going back to the very beginning of this episode, you talked about the insurance guy. Was it David? Who's the guy? Dan. Dan. Danny. Little Danny Boy. That's right, Danny Boy. So you talked about him. He shot himself in the foot. He literally— you guys set the expectation the customer was fine. He went and said, oh, don't worry about it. We'll get it taken care of for you.

1:16:03You don't have to pay for it. He's the one that created the whole entire problem by dropping his pants and offering a discount that he didn't need to offer. Yeah. And I know the funny thing is another Progressive adjuster called at another job, and he told us— we talked to him, we were talking about something, and he said, yeah, I work with you guys, you're always great, you guys are always fair, you always want to do shit the right way, you're not hacks.

1:16:24Yeah. So I'll make it work. And Jim says, funny you say that. And then he told him what happened. He's like, yeah, he opened his mouth and shot himself in the foot. He said he should have kept his mouth shut. He said the customer would have been happy, everybody would have been happy. But instead it was a big, huge fight because he didn't know when not to talk.

1:16:39Yep. Yep. You know, and I will tell you this, a couple weeks ago I had an insurance adjuster call me and one came in for us, um, and it was clearly there was a lack of maintenance. The roof fucking leaked. The guy did not caulk it, did not do anything. And he called the insurance company, called up the adjuster, called up and said, Kevin, what do you guys think of that?

1:17:01I said, I think the guy did not maintain his trailer. It got a fucking water leak and it got mold, and I don't think this is This is the insurance thing. This was a lack of maintenance. He said, I wish more shops were honest like you. The customer called and said, what the fuck is wrong with you? I said, there ain't nothing fucking wrong with me.

1:17:15What's wrong with you? And he said, you're being a fucking smartass. I go, dude, I go, you did not take care of your trailer. It leaked, got mold in it, and you're lying. They're not stupid, number one. And number two, I'm not stupid. I'm not lying for you. I'm not interested in insurance fraud like you are. Obviously, that says loads about your character.

1:17:32The insurance company totaled it. We got a little bit of storage out and the guy went away, but he hated us. I don't give a fuck. Yeah, I was not going to sit there and lie. And that goes back into integrity and that goes back into the customer's not always right. The customer sitting there lying to me, I'm supposed to lie for him because the customer's always right.

1:17:51I had another guy. This was a couple of years ago. It was an Arabic guy. He had a white Volvo. It got hit at the truck stop. They backed into it. They started at the right headlight. They went right down, hit the fuel tank, hit the sleeper, everything. You could literally see the crease. He got hit with a Landoll trailer, which we all know the Landoll zero gravity trailers, when you tilt them, they have a fucking point at the back.

1:18:14It's like it went right down that thing like a can opener, right? So it fucked this truck all the way up, all the way past the sleeper, the fairing and everything. But up above this in the sleeper, there's a dent going the other way. So he said, well, that happened too. I said, no, it fucking did. No, it did. And I said, I'm going to tell you right now, the door hinge is being worn out on this thing.

1:18:36You're saying that was from the guy hitting it. It was hit below the door, so the door was not even fucked up, not even hit. I said, and the dent going the wrong way, or the crease going the wrong way, like that you hit something backing up into a loading dock— you're a liar. You need to get off— you need to get off your high horse acting like you're better than me.

1:18:56I said, I'm not acting like I'm better than you, but I'm not a fucking liar like you. And he ended up coming, picking up the truck, telling me to fuck off. Why do I tell these people this? I don't bend on my integrity. I don't lie. Yeah, I don't have to lie. That's the bottom line. And the customer is not always right.

1:19:10If he's gonna sit there and lie to my face, what does that say about him? Do I want to do business with a guy that fucking lies to my face? No, because he's setting the stage for what he's going to do to you. He thinks you're fucking retarded. Like, you're sitting there looking and all the creases are going that way, and there's a dent this way, and the door hinge bushings are worn out and hanging there.

1:19:27You don't think any adjuster from the insurance company is going to come out and go— and I'm going to try to sell that to him— go, well, look, the door hinges got worn out because the flatbed went back and forth 360,000 times and wore out the bushings in the door. And when he got all done, he drove to the end of the parking lot, raised his trailer 8 feet in the air, and back up and hit the guy.

1:19:44Like, what an asshole. What an asshole that did all— like, I'm not going to get into that. Like, I don't need to get into that. And that all goes back to the fact that I do not bend. My wife says, you're so fucking black and white, it drives me nuts. Either there's right or there's wrong. I don't really— and I hate these managers.

1:19:59And you heard this term, well, I work in the— we have policies, but I work in the gray area. What the fuck is the gray area? Is that in the middle? Is that— is like, there's right and there's wrong in the middle? Is there— is there kinda Like, can you be kind of pregnant? Like, think about this. Are you pregnant? Yes or no?

1:20:16No, I work in the gray area. I'm kind of pregnant. What the fuck does that even mean? I don't even— like, my mind does not even grasp what kind of— like, you set rules for a reason, right? There's either yes or no. Pregnant, yes or no. I work in the gray area. Yeah, like, that doesn't work for me. Guys are like me, in my mind, don't work.

1:20:36That doesn't work for me. And maybe, you know what, guys, maybe in the next year everything will go bad, my businesses, and I'll go out of business, I'll be bankrupt, and I'll have to go work for somebody. I don't know. But I'm not saying that, like, you know what I mean? She's not gonna bend your integrity though, right? But I'm still not going to change the way I am.

1:20:53Yeah, yeah, take it or leave it. There's a lot of guys that like me online, a lot of guys that fucking hate me online. Guys that hate me online, you should— you fucking suck. You should be more like me and you'd be happier. I don't know, but— All right, that's gonna do it for this episode of Repair Shop Reckoning. If this helped you, please make sure to subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next.

1:21:12We drop real conversations, real systems, and real solutions every week. We'll see you back here next time on Repair Shop Reckoning.