Automotive Technician Journey Pt. 2

So I recently shared a little bit about my personal journey as an automotive technician and we got a lot of negative comments on the video so I thought I’d respond. Welcome to Mercie J auto care, that's how I start all of my videos and we do welcome all of your comments, positive or negative. I think I may have not been real clear in my communication in that last video so I actually wrote down and I’m gonna be looking at my notes to make sure that I communicate a little more clearly today. So first of all there’s a number comments about our industry and I want to say that I agree with them. We have a lot of problems in our industry. It’s a challenging time. I think we’re going to overcome it, but these challenges did not happen overnight and I think it’s going to be quite a while before we overcome them as well. One of the things we need to be aware of is it over sometime now the number of technicians that have left our industries average about 70,000 per year. During the same time, the technical schools have been graduating about 32,000 technicians per year. So if you do the simple math you can see why we’re in such a deficit and why we have so many unqualified people under the hood. Secondly, I want to share with you what I was trying to say in the video. So if I had a choice today, 2023 between a $100,000 a year job where I was working 20+ Saturdays a year, the environment high pressure, where I felt like customer service and quality were not the top priority and I wasn’t confident that my management or my fellow employees have my back or I could choose an $80,000 a year position where I could play with my kids on the weekend, spend some more time with my wife, where the management actually encouraged me to take paid time off, where I had an opportunity not to only grow professionally, but where I would be encouraged to become a better man and make a difference in my community and how about a team environment where positivity rules. I would take the $80,000 a year position and I can say that with honesty because that’s essentially what I did back in 1990. So one more thing. If we have technicians want to be treated and compensated as professionals I think we need to work on our public perception of us. If some of you were interested in continuing this dialogue, then I’ll be happy to share my thoughts on what being a professional actually looks like. I hope this helps clarify some of what I was trying to say in the last video. Until next time, as always, safe travels and blessings to you.