Stick Bills™

I have a statement issued today by Pep Boys, CEO Mike Odell announcing how profitable Pep Boys has been this year, and how much more money we (Pep Boys employees) are being paid. Trouble is, it is all politics, subterfuge and propaganda (lies for the lay folk). I am a Master Technician of 20 years experience. I am smarter, wiser, and faster at my job than ever before and yet I am making less money this year than ever before regardless of my competency and qualifications.

Is it the economy you may wonder? The answer is yes though indirectly. Pep Boys has had issues with inventory (and still does…though it is better than before), operations streamlining, and uncontrolled spending for some time. Our last CEO Jeff Rachor was paid a compensation package of approximately 14.5 million US dollars for less than a year of service with us, and from the service bay perspective, his ideas were not sound to say it very politely.

Now we have Mikle Odell (again) and while there has been progress made in some areas, what progress there has been has been very over-rated. Is the company back in black (AC/DC rip-off anyone?) this year of 2009, though it has come at a grave cost to many of us (employees). We lost a lot of money and time training for something called drive up service.

We have lost money (locally) because of equipment that was repaired over and over again, was inoperable for more than half the year only to finally be replaced with a new piece of equipment that works at half the cost that was already spent on repairs, not to mention service tickets lost during that time. Pep Boys is taking advantage of the economy to shaft their own employees and pay them less, pocketing the cash to pay off debt, and open 25 new service centers this year alone.

I work in a shop that is not busy enough to support all of the technicians that currently are employed and they just hired a new one this week we’ll have fun splitting 100 labor hours a week between us just so we don’t have to make any customer wait on anything ever that’s the plan at least it’s the Pep Boys way.

An example of this fraud on the part of Manny Moe and Jack towards their flat rate employees is their packages. Flat rate as defined by Pep Boys is that we are compensated at an hourly rate as provisioned by the Pep Boys labor guide or Mitchell equivalent. Two shocks as per the package pays 0.5 hrs to replace a set (2) shock absorbers no matter what the year make and model of the vehicle is, and Mitchel indicates 1.4 hours for a set (2) front shocks on a Chevy Astro 4×4 van.

What this means is that the job is realistically going to take at least an hour, but I will only be paid for 0.5 hour. Does this sound equivalent to anyone? I have addressed this with my service manager, as well as his boss (our DM) and his boss as well. To make this matter more complicated, other labor times have been increased beyond what Mitchell reflects as an appropriate time estimate.

It was explained to me that these increased labor times are intended to offset the other labor times that we are being screwed on trouble is, that comes at the cost of now defrauding some other customers by over charging them to offset the losses for the other customers whom Pep Boys intentionally under charges. I say keep it simple if we really want to be the We do it all for less leader in the industry, just drop the labor rate charged to customers up front and pay us what you agreed to pay us employees instead of over complicating everything and defrauding both your own employees and customers in some fancy dance of financial doom.

As for folks at the service desk being paid more, it’s only true in busy stores where much more customer traffic is present. The new concept of trying to turn us into a quickie lube is also dismal service writers doing service and lube techs (installers) answering phones, writing up customers and doing more intensive service work like front end work and brakes with no training or qualifications. I have to ask where the communication breakdown is occurring between the real world and our leaders in the Pep Boys organization this is insanity.

Feel free to ask questions or otherwise respond to this post, I’ll check back weekly and respond appropriately.

In: Employees Posted By: Repairgod [ ]