Sometimes it is a single moment in time that impacts your day like a bus hitting a wall at freeway speed. Other times, it can be a series of seemingly dissimilar events all coming together as if by some dark and sinister plan to drive you insane. Whatever it is and however it occurs, the results can be devastating.
Today, it started with breakfast - something you wouldn't normally associate with high stress. However, when the restaurant owner is also the "morning" cook and can't seem to open up the same time two mornings in a row, breakfast quickly becomes an adventure in stress management. Normally, I refuse to let anything destroy my day before it has even had the chance to begin. After all, it's just breakfast and getting upset about oatmeal isn't reasonable when compared to everything else that is likely to happen when the doors to the asylum are thrown open and anyone with a day-pass can find their way to your door.
This morning's assault occurred precisely at 7:30 just as we opened. The weapon of choice was the telephone, and for a change, the target was my father and not me. I suppose I should be glad the anger and frustration were directed at someone else, but in a small family business like ours, an attack on one constitutes an attack on us all. Regardless, it's hard not to be drawn into a conversation that warrants a response like, "Well, I'm sorry you're disappointed and angry ..."
The customer in question had his vehicle towed in about two months ago after a symphony of terrifying noises accompanied by a reluctance to move forward in drive. By the time it arrived at the shop, however, it moved through all the gears without a sound. Fortunately for us, the vehicle's owner was going to be out of the country for a month, and we would have four weeks to find and fix the problem. Or, so we thought.
We drove the vehicle more than 100 miles without any trace of the problems the customer had experienced. I e-mailed, expressing my frustration with a vehicle that would not "symptomize." The customer e-mailed back, frustrated with our inability to get the vehicle to fail.
In the end, we decided to let the fates dictate our "next steps" and the fates complied. The vehicle was towed back to the shop after two months and more than 2,000 miles of driving. Only now it was broken, and we were able to determine what was wrong. The transmission had failed completely, and that's what prompted the 15-minute litany of disappointment and frustration that started my father's day.
Just as I was losing my composure with the customer's lack of understanding and appreciation for the 2,000 cost-free miles the vehicle had been driven since we had it last, Bill Cannon called. I'm not sure we ever got around to the reason for his call because the minute I recognized his voice, I let loose with a 15-minute diatribe of my own. I was disappointed and angry, too - disappointed in our industry for not doing a better job of communicating the realities we face to the motoring public and angry with the customer for what I felt were unrealistic expectations. I told Bill there were days when being a part of this wonderful, incredibly complex industry made absolutely no sense to me at all. And then I wondered out loud just what things would be like if we all just stayed home for a day or two.
What would happen if the "Aggravation Quotient" finally bubbled over the top and all of us just said the hell with it and stayed at home for a while? What would the motoring public do if we just weren't there one morning? What would they do if we all decided to take a day or a week or a month off? How does a Professional Automotive Repair Technician's Appreciation Week sound to you? It sounds pretty good to me!
Do you think they would notice we were gone? Or, do you think there would be a whole new appreciation for who we are and what we do when we returned ... if we returned.
In an effort to calm me down, Bill told me about a different and yet strangely similar crisis unfolding in his part of the world. It seems that since the proliferation of managed health care, more and more of the "better" doctors in the Philadelphia, PA area have abandoned the practice of medicine. Some have abandoned the HMOs. Some have moved to other states where the problem is not quite as bad. And, some have left private or group practice, leaving a rapidly expanding vacuum in their wake.
Bill suggested that as the situation worsened, the only medical services available would be those provided by the "Hacks" and the "Quacks" - those individuals who by training or by ability did not have the same options the "better" doctors had.
If you have the luxury of choice: decent insurance or a "good" PPO, this may simply be a matter of minor interest. But, if you are unfortunate enough to find yourself at the mercy of the hacks and quacks, if someone you love is left with no alternative but questionable medical care, it is a very real personal crisis.
We may not have the pervasive influence of the insurance companies to deal with in our industry ... yet, but we certainly have experienced more than enough stress, aggravation and anxiety to drive the best and the brightest out of the industry into other less stressful occupations. In fact, just about every one of us knows someone good, someone caring, someone talented and professional to a fault who has opted out.
How many aggravating customers does it take before you just can't or won't take it anymore? How many phone calls like the one that started my father's day today?
We've already created an environment so unattractive we can't coax the next generation of technicians to join us. What happens when those of us who remain decide we are too weary to continue and make the choice to move on? What happens when we want or need to find a less stressful alternative? Who will be left to take care of the motoring public after all the "good guys" are gone? Who will they turn to when there is no one left but the hacks and the quacks?
The answer is not very appealing because if something doesn't change very soon, there may not be anyone else left. You see, the future is all about the freedom of choice and who owns it. Who stays and who leaves is not always just a matter of desire. More often than not, who stays and who leaves is determined by who can leave and who cannot: those individuals who have someplace else to go and something else to do, and those individuals who find themselves left without a choice.
Certainly, there is a transient population of marginally skilled individuals who drop in and out of our industry from time-to-time depending upon the economic climate. They can be found in almost every industry, but those are not the individuals with which I am concerned. They have all the options anyone else in their position might have. They can be plumbers helpers or do construction cleanup just as easily as they can swap tires, change brake pads or flip hamburgers ... and they do. They move from job to job, from industry to industry without leaving so much as a trace.
The individuals I am talking about are those who by perception or by reality find themselves boxed in, unable to make a move. They can't generate the income they are making in our industry somewhere else; yet they don't have the skills, the abilities, the opportunities, the courage, the initiative or even the desire to improve. They are frozen in time and space.
You see it isn't the bottom of the industry we are losing, it is a growing percentage at the top: individuals who are taking advantage of the other opportunities available to them simply because they can.
If you are smart enough to run a successful automotive service business with the high-touch and high-tech demands that we face today, the odds are high you could run a less demanding business at least equally as well. And, if you are comfortable with the technology and smart enough to diagnose and repair today's high-tech cars and trucks, you can probably do just about as well as any plumber or electrician you know.
So, the question has to be what keeps those doctors with the options to leave in the greater Philadelphia area? I'm not sure I know. Maybe it's the Hippocratic Oath, a sense of responsibility or just the pure joy of practicing the profession they were called to and trained for: the road they were pre-ordained to travel.
What keeps you and me serving a motoring public that hasn't a clue just how difficult it has become to serve them? I'm not sure I know the answer to that question either. It certainly isn't the early morning phone calls that accuse you of everything from ruining the chances for world peace to giving the dog worms.
If I had to guess, I would say it has something to do with the fact that if we don't do it, if we exercise our options and leave, the motoring public really will awaken one day to find itself at the mercy of the hacks and the quacks. Most of us find the thought of that unbearable. We do what we do despite the early morning misery of phone calls like the one my father received because we know that in most cases they are rooted more in ignorance than they are in malice. And, because we somehow recognize that if we leave, all that will remain are the hacks and the quacks.
Perhaps, most of all, we do it because we have something to prove - to ourselves, to our clients and to our industry. And, that is that we already are the professionals we have worked so hard to become. We are not to be counted among the hacks and the quacks because we have remained true to our profession despite the options we may have.
We are not here for the money, the security or because we haven't anyplace else to go. We are here because of a commitment to excellence, a need to serve and because being here isn't just a matter of what we do, it is more accurately a measure of who we are. We are here because here is where we choose to be.
However, that doesn't mean that the thought of an "Automotive Technician's Appreciation Week" isn't appealing, especially after a phone call like the one that started our day this morning.
