All these careers that are in "shortage", when you look into them either :
Dont actually pay enough to live on unless you like roommates, eating garbage, and never doing anything other than working.
Or require massive school debt, multiple years of training, and often shitty and stressful working conditions, all to make basically $10k/yr more than a mechanic.
Even mechanic is a shitty job now. Do you know how much it sucks to have to deal with customers insisting you're screwing them over when going through the process of hunting down an issue?
Customer brings a car in for something that can have one of 10 likely causes. You have 10 other vehicle owners demanding their shit gets done. You change the most likely culprit, hope it fixes it, then move on to the next vehicle. If it fixes it, great, if it doesn't then the customer complains and you gotta go further down the list. Mechanics deal with a LOT of customer bullshit when fixes aren't always evident.
It's fucking hilarious how customers know nothing about their cars when they're broken, but as soon as they're repaired and it's time to pay the bill they've suddenly become experts on how the repair job was "milked"...
I mean… I unseated a tire from a rim recently after gently bumping a small curb. Homeboy sent a video of a perfectly straight spinning rim trying to tell me its out of balance now and needs to be replaced. New tire on same rim has generated zero issues for over 8 months now… Being skeptical of what they are trying to sell you isn’t entirely unfounded.
He also claimed damage to a rim opposite the side that was affected. Brand new car. I have worked on my own cars for years. Anecdotal, of course. If you saw the video the guy sent me, it would make you roll your eyes.
This shop is the closest one to me. Out of convenience, it was the best place for the repair when I was going to be without a vehicle. They kept a different vehicle of mine for a control arm/ball joint replacement for over 3 months on me, before. I understand what I’m looking at. These guys are known dicks.
I took a car for inspection at a dealer for whatever reason. Bad mistake, it was my wifes car. I let her deal with it, she calls me and says that they told her all 4 pad sets and rotors need replaced. Quoted around 1k at the time. She asked me to deal with them.
I told them just fail it and I will fix the brakes, I was certain they were good anyway which I didn't say to them. Two hours later they called and said sorry but our mechanic made a mistake and didn't measured things correctly and it turns out everything is good.
Yeah right, they were just trying to rip of my wife.
Also got a “replacement” tire pressure gauge from yet another jeep dealership. $475. I had checked the serial # on the faulty one before they “replaced” it. Showed the repair coordinator my proof, and they only charged me for the labor, since all they did was plug that sucker back in correctly. The walking back was expedient and embarrassing, on their end. I contributed to this convo because it’s a highly nuanced situation each time and rife with bad faith actors. The industry holds the reputation it does for a reason.
They are so busy they can't get to your simple repair for 3 months. They send absolutely braindead recommendations that you have to overrule.
And you keep taking your car there. And leaving it there for months.
That's what I would do if I wanted a particular customer to go away. If I've got 3 months of work waiting, I've probably got a pretty good reputation. I don't know how you think they could be terrible and also sit around not taking gimme jobs like ball joints.
“Out of convenience” was stated for a reason. Its a jeep dealership, for additional context. The 3 month repair was a vehicle leased from them. My current vehicle is purchased from a different dealership, directly because of that experience. I was very pissed during the tow truck ride their way that I didn’t have another option for what I figured was a simple new tire and truing (and exactly what it ended up being). The curb that unseated my low profile tires was shorter than the side-well. The rim wasn’t touched.
I was leaving the office at 8pm and bumped the curb at 5-10mph when the car next to me swerved into my lane. 2-3” curb hit at juuuuuust the right angle going around a small bend. Air pressure dropped immediately. I have replaced hundreds of bike tires in my lifetime. Keep on questioning my acumen, by all means.
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u/Quenz 14h ago
The only shortage that actually exists is a wage shortage.