Daily Hassles of an Auto Tech
Essay #5 Final Draft
AFL085-22
April 15, 2013 For a high school student growing up with in the last ten years and choosing what career they wanted, they were probably told that dealership technicians make a lot of money. If they had plenty of customer paid work to work on, they probably could make a lot of money. However, nowadays cars are much better built, and the need for service of cars is much less than a decade ago. You can also find yourself working on a lot of warranty work. Do you think that the big car companies pay their technicians very well? What about customers who put aftermarket parts on their new car? Do you think that could cause some problems? There are many daily hassles with being a technician. The biggest daily hassle for an auto technician in a dealership is hoping to get enough work to last the day. Most automotive technicians get paid on a system called flat rate. Under a flat rate system, the technician is paid by the job. For example, if a job in the “books” says it takes two hours to do, and it takes three hours for a technician to do that job, he only gets paid for two. But if it takes another technician one hour to do that same job, he is still paid for two hours. For that reason, the flat rate system does have its pros; technicians could double or maybe triple their earnings. However, there are many times when a business of the service department is slow. When the service department is slow enough that there is no work to give out, then the technicians don’t make any money. It must be very frustrating to have to go into work and not make any money. When a customer has a problem with their brand new car, they want to take it to the dealer for it to be fixed under warranty. The company of that car is more than willing to fix the car under their warranty. The problem is the car company isn’t willing to pay the dealership for the full job. It doesn’t seem fair for someone to do 100% of the work and only get
AFL085-22
April 15, 2013 For a high school student growing up with in the last ten years and choosing what career they wanted, they were probably told that dealership technicians make a lot of money. If they had plenty of customer paid work to work on, they probably could make a lot of money. However, nowadays cars are much better built, and the need for service of cars is much less than a decade ago. You can also find yourself working on a lot of warranty work. Do you think that the big car companies pay their technicians very well? What about customers who put aftermarket parts on their new car? Do you think that could cause some problems? There are many daily hassles with being a technician. The biggest daily hassle for an auto technician in a dealership is hoping to get enough work to last the day. Most automotive technicians get paid on a system called flat rate. Under a flat rate system, the technician is paid by the job. For example, if a job in the “books” says it takes two hours to do, and it takes three hours for a technician to do that job, he only gets paid for two. But if it takes another technician one hour to do that same job, he is still paid for two hours. For that reason, the flat rate system does have its pros; technicians could double or maybe triple their earnings. However, there are many times when a business of the service department is slow. When the service department is slow enough that there is no work to give out, then the technicians don’t make any money. It must be very frustrating to have to go into work and not make any money. When a customer has a problem with their brand new car, they want to take it to the dealer for it to be fixed under warranty. The company of that car is more than willing to fix the car under their warranty. The problem is the car company isn’t willing to pay the dealership for the full job. It doesn’t seem fair for someone to do 100% of the work and only get