Trade Secrets
Managing employees may mean making allowances for
occasional prima donna behavior, in return for the extra
prestige and profits a star tech can bring to a business.
Y
Photo: Bob Cerullo
Bob Cerullo
ou learn very early on in the auto repair business that you can’t do all
the work yourself. Granted, it’s easier when you don’t have to cope with
inexperienced “helpers,” but doing
it all yourself limits the number of
jobs you can take and the profits you can make. If
your shop is going to grow, you need help. But as
soon as you hire your first employee, you become a
shop manager, too.
It’s the smart shop owner who knows which jobs
he can trust to each of his employees. After a while,
you develop a feeling for what jobs certain technicians like to do and can do quickly and efficiently.
Some techs love doing timing belts while
others would rather do a brake job anytime. Some
techs like the quick jobs while others relish digging
in to a lengthy engine or transmission overhaul.
The key to success for any shop is having technicians who have a broad range of skills and a will-
A superstar technician can earn extra profits, speed up the work
flow and help a shop build a good reputation. But is all that worth it
to have to put up with the baggage a superstar may bring with him?
ingness to tackle any job that comes along, no matter what. Cars, like any other machine, are predictable and come with a repair manual. The people who repair them, on the other hand, can be unpredictable and a challenge to work with.
As a case in point, let me tell you about a fellow
I’ll call “Mr. Primo Donna.” This guy is a born technician who loves a challenge and isn’t cowed by anything mechanical or electrical. He embraced onboard computers from the very start and was checking fault codes before scanners were available. He
was counting Check Engine Light flashes and
watching voltmeter needle dips to tap out fault
codes before many technicians even understood the
concept of on-board computers.
One of the first to take the ASE certification
tests, Primo is certified in all the categories offered
for passenger cars. He’s a great diagnostician and a
shop owner’s dream when it comes to attendance,
accurate diagnoses, minimal comebacks and maximum profits.
He once owned his own shop but hated having
to deal with the customers and the paperwork. In
his more than 25 years as a technician, he has accumulated a wealth of experience, which he
brings to the job every day. Perhaps one of the
most important attributes is his good judgment. I
get along extremely well with Primo, and I believe we share a mutual respect for each other. I
certainly respect his expertise and I’m sure he
knows it. When it comes to the tough jobs, we
consult and try to reach a mutual agreement on
the best way to go about solving a problem.
So what could be the problem about having
Primo Donna working in the shop?
Primo is a top gun technician and he
knows it. He’s a profit producer and he
knows it. He’s also an incredibly moody guy
and everyone in the shop knows it. There are
days when he won’t talk to anyone. He has a
highly developed sense of right and wrong
and doesn’t hesitate to chastise other technicians in the shop when he thinks they’re
malingering or doing something stupid. If he
even has an inkling that another technician
continued on page 8
6
September 2003
Trade Secrets
Editor & Publisher
John Lypen
248-312-2700
Managing Editor
Paul M. Eckstein
Art Director
Harold A. Perry
Detroit Editor
Tom Nash, AF-SAE, STS
248-312-2708
Technical Editor-at-Large
Karl Seyfert, CMAT, L1
Senior Writers
Bob Cerullo, AF-SAE
Mike Dale, SAE
Dan Marinucci, AF-SAE, L1
Bob Savasta, AF-SAE, ASE
Mark Warren, AF-SAE, CMAT, L1
Contributing Writers
Ken Layne
Bob O’Connor
Paul Weissler
Contributing Artist
Russell von Sauers
Production Manager
Jennifer Herrmann
Production Coordinator
Ann Ehlert
248-312-2700
Circulation Manager
Dale Boehle
516-227-1401
Director of Brand Marketing
Lori Aemisegger
248-828-0000
Research Director
Catherine Smith
Classified Advertising Manager
Donna Butera
800-858-3137
National Sales Manager
Dave Marlowe
248-312-2720
PUBLISHED BY
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President & Chief Executive Officer
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8
September 2003
might be stealing or selling unneeded parts, he goes ballistic.
Primo will not often ask for a helper,
but when he does, it has to be just the
right person—the one he’s getting along
with that day. And there are certain vehicles he balks at working on, too. He’ll always do the job he’s assigned, but then
you can hear him grumbling all day
about the stupid engineers that designed
that particular vehicle. He gets particularly annoyed when a fellow technician
tries to pull his chain. If he asks a question of another technician who worked
on the car he’s now working on—like
“Did you check the timing?” or “Did you
gap the spark plugs?”—he expects an
honest answer. If the technician gives an
evasive answer or, heaven forbid, lies,
Primo will berate him in language that
would make a sailor blush.
Primo is into fairness. He’ll get angry if he feels he’s getting a disproportionately higher number of the
tough jobs. He once became enraged
when he had to do a job that had
been assigned to another technician
late the previous afternoon. When
that technician called in sick the next
morning, Primo was sure he did it to
duck the tough job. He didn’t talk to
the guy for six months, but the silent
treatment didn’t start until Primo berated him in no uncertain terms the
next time he came in. Strangely
enough, though, he never hesitates to
help solve a problem that’s stumping
another tech in the shop.
One of Primo’s pet annoyances is when
certain customers hang around watching
him work. He’ll actually walk away from
the job and not return until the person he
doesn’t like is gone. Yet, if he likes a particular customer, he’s happy to have him
hang out while he works.
As a shop owner, it’s a delicate path to
tread when dealing with superstar technicians like Primo Donna. The question
is, do his good productive qualities and
his hard-to-find diagnostic skills outweigh his sometimes disruptive superstar behavior? Is it worth dealing with
the social problems he creates in the
shop in order to have him in the shop to
do the work? Is a superstar worth making special allowances?
In the case of Primo Donna, I felt it
was worth the trouble. I took the time
to analyze what kind of an environment
I needed to keep Primo happy. I found
that putting him in a remote section of
the shop away from the other technicians worked very well. When he didn’t hear or see the other techs, he was
better off—and so were they.
Primo was such a good technician that
I hired a helper for him, but only after I
had him interview the job-seeker, too. Actually, this particular guy was a perfect
choice because he and my superstar tech
hit it off right from the start. They had
identical ethnic backgrounds and while
both spoke English fluently (Primo was
born and raised in this country), they had
a common second language. When Primo
needed a hand, the helper was the one he
called. They eventually went to lunch together every day and fished together on
Primo’s boat just about every weekend.
The helper told me that Primo had
become his best friend. In fact, when
the helper got married, Primo was his
best man. Oddly, having his own helper
seemed to have a calming effect on Primo. He did less complaining about certain cars and the engineers who built
them. He seemed to relish the teaching
role and having someone he could trust
to work with. We even arranged a discreet hand signal so Primo could alert
me when a customer who was hanging
around was getting on his nerves.
The Trade Secret is that while your
first impulse might be to get rid of a
cantankerous superstar technician,
there is no discounting the importance of having people with a high
skill level in your shop. Sometimes it
takes only a little rearranging to keep
a superstar happy. Sometimes it’s
money, sometimes it’s time off. Or it
might just be moving his toolbox to
another part of the shop.
The key is to sit down and discuss
what it is the superstar wants to make
his work easier. Obviously, there are
limits, but if hiring the right helper with
the prima donna’s approval solves a
bunch of problems, that can be a smart
business solution...so long as giving superstar treatment to one tech doesn’t
wreak even greater havoc with your other employees.
You can contact Bob by e-mailing
to [email protected], or writing
to him c/o MOTOR Magazine, 645
Stewart Ave., Garden City, NY 11530.