Ask a PepBoys employee anything

Hey Veeky Forums, I work as a service adviser at the Service and Tires section of my local PepBoys. Basically the guy who takes your order for the mechanic.

How often do you contemplate suicide?

Surprisingly never. I work at one of the top stores and everyone around me is competent. Autozone on the other hand...

>I work at one of the top stores
>PepBoys

Sometimes I take cool looking shits too.

Are there any respectable "fast fit" autocentres? I mean literally anywhere in the world, I'm UK and we have places like kwik fit and halfords and despite the bad reputations people still go there for fucks sake. Actually worked at halfords for 6 months but left as I didn't enjoy ripping off customers.

...

Why do you guys hate it when I order parts online with a discount code and pick them up in store? Do you just hate doing your job?

Not sure what you mean by "fast fit".

Basically. Get commision off every service I sell on top of $10/hr. Not a bad job for a college student going into automotive engineering.

No idea. I don't work in parts/retail.

Have you thought about getting a real job?

>college student going into automotive engineering
I wish you all the best in your future career of drawing brackets and fluid lines.

Damn you got a job as a college undergrad? No certs or anything? Thinking about finding a spot like this or an oil change gig

I had the same job, without a doubt it was the worst job I ever had.

Nobody had a clue what they were doing, everyone who worked there was pissed off and stressed out.

Do you get corporate calling your stores, like multiple fucking times a day, pretending to be customers and taking up literally like an hour of you day, while you always had about 3 or 4 things you needed to get done besides waste time with them?

My last job was pushing carts at Walmart from 4pm-1am, 5 days a week with 8am class. I'm loving this job.

I'm probably going to get into Solidworks design which I'm fine with.

Sounds like you had a shitty store. No problems here, everyone knows their shit and it's always calm except for peak hours.

No offense but why am I not surprised that someone on 4chin was a cart wrangler

I hope you were the best at your job keeping those fucking paint scratchers on wheels where they belong

Must be. Our manager had no idea what he was doing, he would come in the morning and puke in the bathroom after he read his daily report. People said it was because he was stressed out, I think he was just a drunk. He was also a huge douchebag and everyone hated him.

I'd get calls from corporate all the time, they'd pretend to be customers and ask you questions and shit, like take up 15 minutes of your time, multiple times of the day, when I'm trying to do like 5 different things at once.

Customers were the worst, we'd besically just give away free shit all day because the customers knew if they called corporate to complain, we'd get in trouble. If any customer complains to the corporate hotline, the store gets in trouble, doesn't matter if their complaint is valid or not. Some guy could call in and say every employee in the store pissed all over his UFO in the store parking lot right before his lunar trip, and we'd get in trouble.

Maybe it's changed though, this was over 10 years ago. I just remember constantly having to talk to corporate, when I was like the lowest guy on the totem pole, and they never bitched to my manager about anything.

It was my first job freshmen year of college. It paid great but was too much stress for a stoner trying to pass classes. I don't smoke anymore.

I didn't even touch carts too close to cars. It wasn't worth it. Managers there always on your ass, you could be coming in with a line of 40 carts but if the coral was empty because of peak hours you would get yelled at.

>I'm probably going to get into Solidworks design which I'm fine with
I doubt any employers would be.
get into catia or pro e

Damn, sounds hectic. Most customers here are fairly reasonable but you do get that one customer who thinks an oil change should take 5 minutes when it's a Saturday morning and all the mechanics are backed up already. I know one of my coworkers has been rude every so often so he gets complaints but worse the service manager is gonna do is cut hours if he doesn't straighten up.

Never heard of those. We learn Solidworks in class and AutoCAD if we need it. You might be confusing what a design engineer does and what a mechanical engineer does.

Too much stress?
Damn sounds like the perfect stoner job

I remember a customer complained to corporate one time that we only filled his washer fluid 3/4 of the way up when we did an oil change. Corporate calls me with him on the line, bitched at me for an hour (I wasn't even there when they did his oil change btw), I kept saying just bring the car by and we'll fill the fucking thing up. They weren't happy until I agree to give the fucker a $100 gift card.

There was also this guy who came in every 6 months with 33" tires on his truck, claiming the wore out every six months, and we'd give him free tires. They give him all new tires, like $900 worth. I asked why, and they said we broke something on his front end that caused the tires to wear out. I was asking what the hell did we break, and why couldn't it be fixed, nobody knew. Guy also took the old tires with him. Turns the fuck out, the dude would just dismount and sell the new tires, put the old ones back on, and come back 6 months later for new tires. I did all this research on the shit, found the guy's ad selling the tires, brought it to my manager, and he just shrugged and didn't do anything about .

Actually, manager was probably in on it, now that I think about it.

All kinds of fucked up shit like that when I worked there.

Eh, would be great for a stoner who doesn't have to pass 3-5 math/engineering classes a semester.

I'd get customers who would wait for our lot to fill up, then come and want an oil change, knowing we wouldn't get it done in half an hour.

But I'd bust my balls to make sure those assholes got through first. One time a dude was stunned when i told him we got it done in time. The fucker didn't even bother bringing any money with him, because he expected to get it for free.

I told him I'd give him his keys back when he paid, he complained he had to be at work soon, I told him tough shit, parked his car in our fenced lot so he couldn't get it until he paid.

That was typical of our customers. I was a huge dick to that guy, but that shows just how pissed off I was at customers coming in wanting free shit all day.

Holy shit. Worse I get is someone doesn't understand why they have to pay the steer/susp eval fee when they get their alignment done thanks to the eval results.

So at your store, if it wasn't done by the time promised, they got it for free? Fuck. If there's one thing that surprises me working here, is how many people drive around with near bald tires.

You might wanna start looking at job adverts and see what experience employers require.
I'm not a design engineer, I work in engine performance and emission calibration.
However I share the office with a dozen or so 'design' engineers all of which use Pro E.
Solid works and auto CAD are considered a bit pleb tier at a professional level.

No, just oil changes, it was half hour wait or free. Like i said, people would wait for our service lot to fill up, showing we were busy, to come in and get oil changes, knowing they could get a free one. I'd work my balls off to get the oil changes done on time, everyone else would just give them free oil changes, think nothing of it.

That reminds me of one time our alignment machine was broke. Like every alignment we did came back with problems, they figured out the machine was broke. So I say, "So we're not taking any alignments anymore?" and they looked at me like I was crazy and say sure we are. "So uh, what do we do when they come back because we fucked up their alignment?"

Their answer was to do another alignment...on the broke alignment machine.

I got sick of that shit and looked at the alignment machine one day, it was out of calibration, took 15 minutes to fix it.

This is also how I figured out our alignment tech was illiterate.

I have though. All entry level and internships just say autocad or solid works. I'm in SoCal so maybe it's different where you are.

We're your mechanics young guys? Here some of the mechanics here are so old they need help clocking in on the computer but god damn if they didn't know how to fix anything.

people drive off with dangerous tires or metal to metal brakes all the time at my work its scary

>when I was like the lowest guy on the totem pole,
fyi to be the "lowest guy on the totem" pole means you are the most important.

The more you know

A few were. Most were pretty old. The illiterate alignment and suspension guy was about 70.

Obviously the oil change guys were young, stupid, and fairly dangerous. More than one dropped a car off a lift when I was there.

How does one even drop a car off the lift? Were they not as secure back then?

I work for Pep Boys too. I'm in the Parts and Tires department though. Which side do you think is more worth it?

>How does one even drop a car off the lift?

Just by being a total dipshit, i suppose. They're not any safer now than they were 10 years ago.

I remember standing right there and watching this one fat tard lifting a jeep up, got about 5 feet in the air and one of the pads let loose, whole back end of the jeep fell off, bounce and two feet in the air when it hit.

The fat tard just laughed at me like it was no big deal. I don't think it broke anything, if it was anything but a jeep I'm sure it'd be all fucked up. I didn't even do anything to the idiot or report him, I'm sure I'd end up in trouble somehow if I did.

I wasn't there but one kid had an s-10 on the lift, didn't secure the back end, and the s-10 did a backflip off it, landed right on it's cab, crushed everything. Kid didn't even get fired for it, everyone acted like it was no big deal, just another day at pep boys.

Probably parts. When I worked at the service desk, people would call the service desk all the time looking for parts looked up. It was pretty clearly explained what department to call on the answering message, but they'd still dial service for parts.

naturally, I was required to look parts up for them. So I basically did both jobs, if you work in parts at least all you have to do is parts.

Yeah I get like at least 5 or 6 calls a day asking for quotes on oil changes and shit like that even though they have to go through the prompts to even get our phone to ring. It's irritating man. People don't know shit about their cars.

Our phone would have dial 1. for parts, and like dial 5 for service. So the motherfuckers would listen past parts, and three other things before hearing service, and decide to dial that.

I got sick of it at some point and started saying, "OH! You wanted the PARTS DEPARTMENT kind of obnoxiously into the phone," when I got those. Until one time some guy was like, "Well, you can look them up, can't you?" and I had to admit I did, and he goes, "Well look it up! Fucking little bitch, damn..."

So I looked them up for him. Dude totally bitched me out. I went home and drank for like two days after that.

Why don't you actually work as one of the mechanics? You know, the guys that get dirty that make bank and fuck all the bitches.

What delusional world do you live in where a mechanic gets with a lot of women, let alone make good money.

i dont know about you, but mechanic is a more attractive title that "service writer"