Is there any one profession that gets bashed more than Auto Mechanics?
 

I hear it every day in my business, see it all the time here on the forums, and out in the world I will agree, there are some hacks out there, but.... This is a hard business. Even the best get stumped all the time, bolts get broken, stripped. can't get parts, parts come in wrong, and god forbid that after tightening 500 some bolts a week for 20 years, someone forgets to tighten one, or maybe tear a gasket, while trying to set a water pump down in some hole that no human hand can reach down in. .
I'd love to see some of the people who whine about the service they got try to hang in our shoes for just one week.

Lawyers

Politicians?

Usually that's a subset of lawyers.

LEO's get bashed more. Anyone with a keyboard knows how to do it better.

You have my sympathy, running a shop cannot be easy.

Car salesfolk, salesfolk in general, lawyers, IRS agents, etc.

Is there any one profession that gets bashed more than Auto Mechanics?
 

It looks like wrenches aren't even in the top 5 of most bashed professions.

Jim, this maybe but if you're at any social function and ask this same question, bet the answer is different. At the end of the day it's the 'system' mostly, not so much the players

Federal employees.

Teachers . . .

Especially during July and August.

hookers-

I agree.

With lawyers and federal employees, the hatred is deserved.

I'm a real estate agent, so yeah...

Ministers (especially anyone on TV).

Dentists and Veterinarians are starting to get a bad rap now too.

Dentists because they always want to sell you the latest tooth whitening crap, or that they stick every kid in braces now-a-days.

Vets because they charge crazy ass prices for procedures on mutts and stray cats. I know people that have come from the Vet with a $10k bill for a 20 pound rescue mutt!!

people complain about the price of mechanics but they think of nothing of the price of lawyers.

Home improvement contractors.

i did. he took 33k out of my 100k after getting hit by a car! very simple case. the problem is ALL lawyers hold to the 1/3 price so what can you do. you cant say if you dont do it for 15% i will go somewhere else.

we had a sign up in the shop i worked in but cant remember exactly how it was worded. went something like this:

be patient, we work on over a million models, your doctor only works on 2.


i put realestate agents in with lawyers.
they are selling something that does not belong to them and want a lot of money.

not sure how fed employees fit in with lawyers.

The exception is Dueller and other lawyers on this forum...you can't paint them all with the same brush. Besides Dueller tells a great story .....:):)

He said bashed, not banged.

Old joke:
Lawyer are unjustly judged. Its only the 90% of lawyers give the other 10% a bad name.

Correct. Thats doctors. :D

I'll second the Realestate agents getting bashed. My wife is one. (a good one) There are many many of them out there that are crooks, back stabbers, liars, and cheats.

I think car dealers/car salesmen are at or near the top of the list. Something about buying a car that really gets people's hackles up.

That's possible, but I'm not sure. My own experience with mechanics is generally good, with some limited exceptions.

Wrenching ain't pretty. You mess something up, you suck it up and fix it. Can't say that for some of the other professions offered up here.

No doubt car salesman are second to none............because its all true. Going into into a dealership unprepared is akin to taking midnight stroll in a bad neighborhood

Last week, I paid a HD mechanic $225 for 15 minutes of work to finish my clutch install. I had run out of talent and he saw someone with an expensive race bike and a nice truck, and decided to bend me over. I had no choice, so I paid. I confirmed with him twice that he needed to tighten the primary bolt to 165 ft lbs (factory spec). When picking up the bike, I confirmed with him again that he had tightened it correctly. I drove across the country to Daytona and in my 2nd session on the track, the bolt came out and trashed my primary cover. It could have taken out the cases, so I was lucky.

He did not tighten it. I am an absolute dunce at mechanics, but I will buy every tool necessary and watch every youtube video out there to avoid mechanics again. In my experience, 90% of them are worthless. YMMV.

That is exactly what I am talking about. How do you know he did not torque it? You are running a Harley at sustained high rpm on the track and a bolt comes loose, and right away, the mechanic is a deadbeat. Maybe he did in fact torque it, and it just came loose from all the vibration. I am assuming that your race bike is operating outside of conditions that a stock Harley was made for.

when it comes to MONEY, it really does not matter what profession. just wait til a family member dies and it comes time to sort out property/money.

Nope, I have experience with this bolt, from the last guy who didn't torque it. I've torqued it myself and its been fine. 100% sure on this.

Very probable, did not mean to come across as a dick, but as a mechanic, I know that no matter what breaks after I have serviced it, it is always my fault. I'll put a muffler on, and then when the water pump starts leaking two weeks later I have somehow caused it. Been down this road so many times.
I was doing an inspection while the customer was waiting a few years back. My lifts were all full, so I did it with floor jacks. When I was lifting the first wheel, from under the control arm, the car slipped on the jack. the car did not fall, just the jack pad moved over and stopped against the frame. Made a horrible noise, but zero damage, other than a scratch on the bottom of a rusty buick control arm. For the next 3 years, no matter what was wrong with that car, it all started that day, when the jack slipped. I am sure he bad mouthed me to all his buddies.

There is a certain smell to it. A friend got a disability settlement, and instead of paying her and letting her take care of paying her lawyer, the court ordered a portion distributed (I think it was 1/3) directly to the lawyer. It was her money, she was the one disabled. Why didn't the court just give it to her and let her and the attorney sort out payment for service?

Fred, a part of it is that they can come back to you. If a doc misdiagnoses an illness and it takes you an extra month to get well, or an attorney screws up a filing and you lose a case (happened to me), they just say, "Well, let's try again - at my usual rates." A mechanic generally has to keep trying until he gets it right and gets paid the flat rate once.

I know exactly what you mean on the unrelated defect being blamed on you. I have done some work on friend's cars and gotten the same. (Worst one was when I changed a valve cover gasket and was almost made responsible for the transmission rebuild needed 6 weeks later!) This comes from idiot owners that have no clue but automatically suspect the mechanic. I think it comes from the helpless feeling that the mechanic can screw you over (being in the know) and the suspicion that mechanics want to create more work for themselves by sabotaging your vehicle. (Most good mechanics have plenty of real jobs).

I believe it is a tough job, but as others have mentioned, there are a lot worse ones out there. Used car salesmen certainly are higher on the list. ;)

G

I've got a bunch of them. Good friends, buy a nissan altima for a car for their daughter. the car ran, but did not move, it needed a clutch. I put a clutch in for them on the cheap, and when I am test driving it after I am done, I hear a rod knock. I tell them about it, and right away, it gets ugly. I have certianly done something wrong, left something loose. There is just no possible way, that I could have created a rod knock by installing a clutch. Heated words were exchanged, and I finally told them to take it to the Nissan Dealer on my dime, if the dealer found anything that I did that would have caused this, then I will take care of it. The dealer did not, and they still wanted me to pay up for the damages. We still do not talk.

Imagine that you were responsible for maintaining a couple thousand pieces of rotating equiment in a plant that has a replacement cost of around $5 Billion.
imagine that most of that equipment is decades old, some of it was installed back in WWII.
It's almost all one-off, custom designed and engineered, and has been modified many times over the years.
Some parts are available, others are not. The operating conditions and rerquirements are well beyond the original capability or design, and the environmental requirements would have been considered impossible 20 years ago.
Stuff that has been running 24/7 for 50+ years and it has to keep running 24/7 or you're not doing your job. Replacement for some of the bigger pieces of equipment could easily cost over $10 mil each and take a year to get.

imagine that if one of the critical pumps or compressors or turbines goes down, $$$ millions are at stake. It gets fixed fast and right or someone loses a job.
It doesn't matter the cause, it could be due to a lightening strike or a power failure or earthquake, the cause is irrelevant.

So there ya are, and a process unit is down due to a mechanical breakdown and Joe public is on the 5 o'clock news crying because gas prices are too freaking high and is ignorantly accusing the industry of manipulation, and the question is almost always asked by corporate: "who needs to be replaced?"

So there's the VP you report to wondering if he should stick out his neck to protect yours, or allow the senior executive VP to sacrifice you to protect them both.

So imagine yer living at the plant, working 20 hours and sleeping 3, you know that the plant is losing the equivalent ever hour what you make a year, you can't get the parts to fix the machine for 3 months, the bosses are calling from corporate every 4 hours asking for an update and every time you give it to them they say "this isn't going to end well", And you're asking yourself if you should keep trying to prove em wrong again or if you should just tell em to shove it and walk away before they can throw you under the bus.

But you're too stubborn to give in and you keep pushing the union workers who are nowhere near as motivated as you are, and you keep teaching them and keep coming up with solutions to problems no one has seen before, and you manage to save the day, again. Barely.
Just so you can go sleep for 8 hours before wondering what freaking crisis is going to jump up next and wondering if the next one will bring down the house if cards.
You look back on the good old days when life was sooo easy, when all you had to do was pull wrenches.
Sure ya made a fraction of what you make now, but you didn't have to deal with all the BS.
Things were so much simpler then..................

This go for everyone in the service industry. Most people, I found, don't want to work or do thing half ass unless its their own business. But, there are some very good and responsible ones out there. when you find them hang on to em'.

I my business, I use sub contractors all the time. The ones I use are the same ones (for the past 15-16 years) each and every time because they are trained (by my OCD I like to think). Sure, they are a few bucks more, but they do exactly what I want and I never have to hear, "we have always done it this way".

i love my toyota mechanic. honest as Abe. fast, and pretty fair with pricing.

last time i was there, i dropped off an XL pizza. the man switched out a hard to reach brake light (and tranny shifter lock) switch for free. he owned a cool plier i didnt have in my arsenal. took him seconds. figured i would pay him and his team back with some pizza.

he is a good man.

a subset can include prosecutors who are similar to cops, so I think that covers it all