Ford CEO Jim Farley said that he’s got 5,000 jobs that pay 120K dollars that he can’t fill. Ok, let’s talk about that (more). This had HUGE traction on Facebook- with over 1200 shares.
Part 1: The “$120,000 mechanic job” headline, and all the fine print
:Record scratch: how does a top-level, award-winning technician end up taking a year off in the middle of his prime?
Simple (real) answer: I was fired.
Here’s the short version.
The employee parking lot at the dealership was a joke. My truck was broken into twice and stolen once. I carry a concealed handgun legally and was not going to leave that gun in a vehicle that kept getting broken into.
So I locked it in my toolbox drawer, inside a backpack that went back and forth from my truck or motorcycle.
Yes, that broke the company’s “no weapons on property” rule in the handbook. Yes, I did it anyway, because I was not going to let some thief steal a firearm. Ironically, is a pocket knife a weapon? Darn near every technician carries one. Is a screwdriver or 3-foot pry bar a weapon? I digress.
No one was threatened. No one saw it. No drama. It stayed put. I’m a responsible gun owner.
The reality in that service department: gun culture was normal. The majority of the techs were gun owners. The service director had me install new sights on his carry handgun. Several people in the building were doing some version of the same thing; I wasn’t unique. I was just the one who got caught.
One technician decided he didn’t like me and called HR. Next thing I know, I’ve got police officers walking me out of the building and a crowd of people saying “sorry to hear”… knowing full well they should’ve looked in that tech’s toolbox too.
Twelve years, gone.
I tried other fields—oil field, sales, plasma tables, even trains. Nothing stuck. Like a bad habit, BMWs pulled me back in.
Walking Back Into The Lion’s Den
I decided to go back to a dealer and just be a company man.
I walked into the service department, sat down with the service director unannounced, and told him—very plainly—that a unicorn wanted to work for him.
He said yes. I started a few days later.
I came in as a tenured Master BMW technician:
- Multiple BMW national awards
- Fast
- Accurate
- High ethics
- No shortcuts
Top of my game. Nose to the grindstone. I didn’t know anybody in that store, so I buried myself in my work.
I started crushing hours. That alone made me a target.
“The new guy must be getting fed.”
The foreman wasn’t the best tech, the best leader, or even a solid diagnostician. I can’t name one thing he clearly excelled at. He had something else more than anyone:
- Time in the building
- A talent for politics
Instead of using what I brought to the table to his advantage, he tried to get rid of it.
The “I’ll Bring One To You” Game
Here’s how “starving out” a technician looks in real life.
I’d show up at 7:00 a.m., ready to work. There would be a 1–4 inch stack of repair orders sitting in the foreman’s office. He kept the tickets locked up in there.
I’d ask for work. He’d say:
“I’ll bring one to you.”
Then he’d sit there doodling on a notepad, pretending to be busy. Clearly stalling.
I’m standing right there. He could hand me three, if he wanted to “load me up” and keep me busy for a while. That was the usual thing most dispatchers did. Here’s a warranty job, here’s a gravy job, and something else. Instead, he’d wait 20–30 minutes and bring me a single oil service or some tiny job.
I’d knock it out in 20 minutes. Then:
- Another 20–30 minutes waiting
- Another tiny job
- Repeat all day
“I’ll bring one to you” became a running joke in my head. It also became a slow choke chain on my paycheck.
I watched cars I had previously inspected and estimated, go to other technicians for the repair work I had already found. It was always a “mistake” and never intentional. Sure.
One week, I recorded 34 oil services.
That is a waste of a master-level tech. It’s also a quiet way to push someone out without ever saying, “You’re fired.”
I’ve seen the same tactic used on weak techs as well:
- Give them garbage work
- Starve their hours
- Let them quit on their own
No confrontation. Just slow suffocation.
Double Standards Everywhere
At the same time, in the same shop:
- Other techs were running side jobs through the parts department with special “off-the-books” pricing. There was literally a side-job parts pricing setup.
- They finally announced, “Techs doing side jobs must pay for their parts instead of running a monthly tab.” That tells you how long it had been going on.
- Some techs did side work in their bays, on the clock, right in front of the foreman’s office window. He knew. Everyone knew. Nobody cared.
- Favorites had their own private stack of work.
- Techs were dating parts department staff and the warranty administrator. But that wasn’t a “conflict of interest,” apparently.
The special stack of tickets for one favored tech even had a name: “The Donald Stack.” If your name was Donald, you ate well.
When I started building my own future outside the dealership —on my own time— that suddenly became a “conflict of interest.”
Side jobs in the bays? Fine. Side jobs at your house? No issue. Starting a business? Not OK.
This is how a lot of “we can’t find good techs” stories actually end:
You had one. You pushed him out.
All I wanted to be was a company man:
- Show up
- Work hard
- Make a good paycheck
- Go home
The building wouldn’t allow it. The whole place was broken—people, processes, tools, even the structure itself.
Dispatch Games And Backstabbing
In a flat-rate shop, who gets which ticket and when decides who eats.
At this store, the foreman controlled all of it.
Common games:
- Gravy jobs (easy, high-pay work) went to people he liked
- Problem cars and low-pay warranty jobs went to whoever made noise or was in the doghouse
- Tickets sat in a drawer until the “right” tech was ready for them
The result:
- Techs accusing each other of being “fed”
- Jealousy when someone turned high hours
- A culture where being good at your job made you a threat, not an asset
Meanwhile, the client loses. There were technicians literally standing around waiting for jobs while work sat in a pile.
The shop stops asking, “How do we serve our clients best?”
Instead, the unspoken question becomes, “Whose turn is it to get screwed this week?”
Warranty Admins: The Silent Boss Of Your Paycheck
Manufacturers only pay dealers for warranty work if:
- The repair is diagnosed exactly how they want
- The steps are documented exactly how they want
- The story uses the right codes and magic phrases
All of that flows through one person: the warranty administrator.
If they are sharp and actually care, a tech gets paid for:
- Diagnosis
- Test plans
- Tear-down
- Install
- Reassembly
- Final verification
If they’re lazy or hostile, they can collapse a long, painful job into one tiny labor line.
Here’s a real (extreme) example I dealt with.
BMW 3 Series. Complaint: A/C blowing hot. I diagnosed a leaking evaporator and replaced it.
- Interior / dash out
- Heater box on the bench
- Evaporator replaced, car reassembled
- Test plans completed and documented
- 15+ individual punch times on the ticket to back up the work and justify each labor operation
That job should have paid about 14 hours.
I got paid 1.3 hours.
When I caught this on my flagged hours from the previous day, I was told:
“BMW won’t pay for that.”
Notice: I caught this. If I hadn’t audited and reconciled my own hours, I would have just lost it.
You are not BMW. You’re an admin. The liaison. You’re supposed to fight for ME.
There are labor operations for every step I did. They exist in the system. They just require effort on your end to select and submit them.
I did my job. I documented it. You’re supposed to do yours.
In a flat-rate world, that admin might as well be your real boss. They decide how much of your day is “real” and how much is free.
Another example:
During Hurricane Ike, we had an obscene amount of flood cars at the dealership. Work was nonstop. Shops were backed up with flood cars and regular cars, so for a while there was effectively unlimited work.
I wasn’t going to waste that opportunity. I was there from 5–6 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Saturdays from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., for about a month.
I’m waiting for my first biweekly monster paycheck of nearly 275 hours to show up… and it doesn’t. The next pay period comes by, and it’s short too.
So I go into investigation mode.
I audit my repair orders and find I’m missing almost 60 hours on the first paycheck and nearly 50 on the second. The payroll clerk thought my hours were “mistakes” when they were turned in, so she “corrected” them down to what she thought was possible.
When this was brought up, she casually said:
“Ok, I’ll add it to your next pay period.”
No “I’m sorry.” No business office cutting a separate check to fix their error. I assure you, if they’d screwed up the GM or manager’s payroll, it would have been fixed immediately.
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
Hacks, Warm Bodies, And Zero Accountability
Because of the technician shortage, some dealers will hire anyone who can fog a mirror.
You end up with “techs” who:
- Install spark plugs and connecting rod bearings with an impact gun (not joking)
- Never use a torque wrench on critical fasteners (like wheels)
- Intentionally break things to make access easier
- “Flush” brake fluid by sucking out the reservoir and refilling it
- Throw recall parts in the trash instead of installing them
When I brought this up to leadership?
“We’ll handle it.”
Nothing changed. I can’t say nothing happened—I was fired (twice lol) for politics—so I can only assume it helped speed up my exit.
Because the priority wasn’t quality. It was:
- Keep bays full
- Push enough cars through
- Hit the monthly number
Everything else was noise.
Untrained “Leaders” Controlling Careers
Foremen and service drive managers often get their jobs because they:
- Have been there the longest, or
- Shouted the loudest
At my first dealership, I was “offered” a foreman position because they “had to.” I assume it was because I was one of the top-performing techs.
The catch? It was less than half of what I was making as a tech.
While I had the technical skill, I did not have the people skills or maturity at that time to manage 30 technicians. At least I was honest about that.
Hard pass.
Most of these “leaders” have:
- Zero or minimal leadership training
- Zero or poor people-management training
- Zero or minimal coaching or conflict-resolution training
Yet they are the ones:
- Deciding who gets training
- Controlling who gets work
- Representing techs to upper management
I sat in a meeting where the service manager proudly announced:
“All master techs will be doing all the diagnosis and problem cars, and the B and C techs will be doing the work.”
Translation:
- A-techs beat their heads against every nasty problem car for low pay
- B and C techs cash in on the easier, higher-hour work that comes out of that diagnosis
- The best people get burned out, broke, and then blamed for being “negative” when they speak up
It seems that the more training and experience you have, the less you get paid.
Then management acts surprised when the top techs leave.
Why This Matters To You As A Driver
If you’re reading this as a motorist, here’s why you should care:
- The best techs are not leaving dealerships because they’re lazy. They’re leaving because they’re being abused.
- They’re leaving because the system is stacked against anyone who is fast, ethical, and good at what they do.
- When they leave, your odds of getting a real professional on your car go down.
From the outside, the dealership still looks shiny.
On the inside, a lot of them are bleeding talent through politics, broken pay plans, and zero leadership.
And no—independent shops aren’t magically better by default.
I network with hundreds of shops across the U.S.
It’s depressing how many shop owners refuse to:
- Invest in their own business, financial, and self-development education
- Learn people skills
- Train their teams weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually
- Build real systems, processes, and plans
- Train on technical skill, communication, and sales
- Push their staff to “be better” on purpose, not by accident
When I left the dealer world, I realized how much I didn’t know about business and leadership.
So I started learning. Constantly.
I still train. I still read daily. I pay five figures annually for coaching and education. I have to. My business keeps growing, and I keep ending up in new territory where I’ve never set foot before.
If I don’t grow, my people don’t grow. If my people don’t grow, the shop stagnates. And then we’re no better than the places I was fired from.
Give us a call if you’d like to schedule service with us!
832-797-9114 Woodlands- https://abr.digitalconcierge.io/link/VTiK7VrfN
281-579-8885 Katy – https://abr.digitalconcierge.io/link/I_8WH9OSR