32. Dangerously Slow
Hired a guy as a mechanic. He owned several of the types of cars our shop specializes in and did well in the interview; however, he quickly proved to have hobbyist-level skills.
His productivity was sloooooow! I always give new hires work on my own/family vehicles or a shop vehicle before allowing them to work on a customer’s car. In this case, he was given a front brake job on my stepson’s older model.
This is a gravy job, 20-30 minutes on average. This guy took almost 1-1/2 hours, lost a part, started cross-threading a bolt, overtightened a bolt till it broke not once but three times, and asked too many dumb questions.
Finally, it was finished. I took it on an extended road test, including on the freeway. There was a scraping noise that wasn’t going away. In fact, it started getting worse.
Got it back to the shop, lifted it on the hoist to inspect the brakes, and found both the bolts holding on one of the brake calipers were TOTALLY LOOSE. Like, didn’t even try to tighten them loose, only 2 turns or so.
If one of them drops out, the caliper rotates out into the wheel and locks it up abruptly without warning, which on the freeway will make the car suddenly swerve to the right and tumble. My stepson was driving 450 miles back to college that night!
I called the guy over to see what happened, and he looked like a guilty dog. With as much composure as possible, I explained the above to him and told him I had to let him go. He understood, packed his tools, and was gone.
The interesting thing was, a week or so later, his sister (who had never been there before) dropped off her [brand of vehicle we specialize in] and hadn’t heard the news about her brother’s employment demise. Without skipping a beat, she proceeded to leave her car anyway, dismissing the matter of her brother with, “Eh, not surprising…”