Flat Rate: Physical Wounds Heal

"Seat Safety Switch" (seat-safety-switch)
12/08/2015 at 11:39 • Filed to: flat rate, jeep

Some things you see never leave you. They settle down deep in your marrow, inform your worldview. Your experiences push you through the rest of your life on a trajectory of fate that you can only see in retrospect, the stunning clarity at last possible when you are no longer able to correct the mistakes, make things right, issue a rational apology that sums it all up and closes the book on the hurt you have caused others. I was a flat rate mechanic, and this is my story.

The year was unimportant; all you need to know about the times I existed in was that it was a time of excess, like many. But it was also a time of poverty, and the two existed hand in hand. Overpowered high-margin aspirational vehicles filled my bay and my work docket, complicated electronics and last-minute partsbin designs constructing the inescapable tasks which would lie on my plate once out of warranty.

Book time? It was low, that’s all you need to know, but still my customers would be stripped bare, their bones bleaching in the harsh economic truth of how fucked they and everyone else were, the intangible appearances of a functional society and their own success being less than skin deep.

After a day and night of GMT800 labour, ending in less money than I had started the work with, I retired to my local watering hole to drown my spirits. Accusations of alcoholism aside, I greatly enjoyed how I spent my time with alcohol. The problem here, as it always was, was customers.

I looked down the bar and saw a man in a corded sweater loudly explaining to a disinterested woman about how he once changed his own oil. He was practically a mechanic, he said, chuckling, trying to get her to slot him in the “handyman” category of the desirable manmeat table. Practically a mechanic.

I’m told by my public defender that shouting “stolen valour STOLEN VALOUR” into a man’s ears as you club him to death with a Snap-On catalogue is not in fact justifiable homicide. Be that as it may, my days are much simpler now.

The guard raps on the bars. “I heard you were a mechanic,” he said. “I’ve got this weird light flashing on my dashboard. Looks like a genie’s lamp. It’s a Jeep.”

DISCUSSION (10)

d15b > Seat Safety Switch
12/08/2015 at 12:03

Wo. Slice of life post.

Seat Safety Switch > d15b
12/08/2015 at 12:11

Here’s a spoiler: they’re all slice of life posts.

Rusty Opel > Seat Safety Switch
12/09/2015 at 22:15

Over the last 30 Years of turning wrenches 20 or so were spent on time I was at work; the last 10 flat rate. I will always push for clock time/salary as it lets the mechanic do his/her work at their own pace and take extra time when needed even if that is just to make the job “look” better. (think tidying wiring looms, wiping off emblems etc). Flat rate means gitter done! If you are at a place that gives you an Hour to diagnose a problem you might dig deep enough to be sure or reasonably confident of the true problem but if you get 3 tenths of an Hour... Shotgun the most likely part at it and keep fingers crossed; look at it more if it doesn’t fix it and watch your paycheck fly away.

The graphic at the top I find really interesting; by a few Months it mirrors my own gross pay (although I switched jobs in Sept. 2013). My 2014 gross earnings were 24K less than I made in 2012.... add in the extra 2400 my health care cost and OUCH! Any wonder I’d never advise anyone to become a mechanic in this day and age unless there is reform on how they are paid?

69montego > Seat Safety Switch
12/09/2015 at 22:28

Been there, didn’t take it as far as you did. never spent enough with the snap-on man to rate a catalog, but may have paid for a house with the Matco dealer.

God I don't miss flat rate

Tohru > Seat Safety Switch
12/10/2015 at 00:19

It’s not?

You must’ve been in Virginia. Or you need a better lawyer.

Mike D F > Seat Safety Switch
12/11/2015 at 11:15

It’s amazing how a system put in place during the great depression doesn’t function in an equitable manner today.

Honestly, flat rate is what’s wrong with the industry as a whole. It’s bad for the techs and even worse for the customers. We get hammered by book times and so does the customer.

We would lose a bit in the busy months, but it would be made up over the other 10 months.

Is that graphic from a specific source, not just indeed.com.

Seat Safety Switch > Mike D F
12/11/2015 at 11:18

Unfortunately, it’s from Google Image Search for “flat rate mechanic.”

I totally disagree with the use of flat rate for mechanics; I think it’s bad for the customer (rush jobs), I think it’s definitely bad for the wrench (stress levels, overtime, being forced to pay for mistakes even when they were unavoidable, not having any “skin” in the original quote).

I don’t even think it’s that good for the management or the industry.

EvilSuperMonkey > Rusty Opel
12/11/2015 at 12:38

Is flat rate where you’re payed by the job rather than the time it actually takes?

EtrnL_Frost > Seat Safety Switch
12/11/2015 at 13:43

You know, it wasn’t until this story that I realized that the aforementioned light actually does look like a genie’s lamp.

Tohru > Seat Safety Switch
12/11/2015 at 17:12

Flip side of the coin: my dad is an ASE Master Mechanic and he absolutely will not work at a shop that won’t pay flat rate. He’s a Goddamn good mechanic and usually has 40 hours on the books before lunch on Thursday. I asked him about this and he said “If you can’t make good money working flat rate you should look at a different job.”