I ended up working at a shop with a crazy manager. Within a few weeks he launched fireworks at us in the shop. He bragged about pushing an employees toolbox into the parking lot because he was a no call no show. Which was a lie. I now work with the guy. He told me his newborn son's life was in jeopardy after birth and was being kept in ICU. He wanted to be with his wife. Understandable to me, a guy with that much stress working on people's cars is a liability. He said he told them what was going on. These 2 things aren't the only things he did, I could go on and on.
Why didn't I leave? I had been shop hopping for a bit. Kept ending up at places that are okay with sketchy shit. If I wasn't climbing a 15 foot rickety old ladder to get tires down, I was doing box truck tires on a small rusty jack as the only support. To a hiring manager, my resume looks like dog shit. So I decided to stay at this shop and just learn a few things and dip. I needed to get out of basic oil and tires, because doing that only pays a few bucks above fast food wages.
Once I did learn some basics on brakes and alignments, I took a job somewhere else, for barely anymore money. But there's more potential here for me.
During my last 2 weeks I worked my ass off, because it was reminding him what he was losing in a few weeks. The other 2 employees had already moved past oil and tires, so they'd just refuse to do anything that wasn't a repair job. One was old though, so I cant blame him. The other was a young guy, which was incredibly annoying he would just refuse to do anything. I could do 4 truck tires (F150, RAM, Silverado 1500) in half the time that they're supposed to take. One time I managed to do them in about 40ish minutes.
Boss would often ask me if I think it's going to be any better at the new shop. Id just say yes. He tried to offer me a raise, which I would've refused regardless unless it was a massive raise, like 50%. But he offered me a raise slightly under what my next shop was paying. I didn't give it a second thought, just flatly said “Nope” and walked away.
He'd keep talking about how nothing is going to change and blah blah. He said he can't pay me much to do oil and tires. I laughed at him and asked him
“So how long you going to tell people it's going to take to do their tires when the shop is empty? You may have to tell them it'll take longer than usual. Maybe 2 hours to do some Civic tires? Maybe 3-4 hours to do some truck tires? Id say that's pretty realistic. But if I was still here you could tell them it'll probably be done sooner than what they actually call for.” (Sedan tires call for 1 hour, truck tires call for 2 hours) I said all this with a big smile on my face. Then walked away laughing some more.