Man writes this online after boss ordered him to ‘overcharge customers’

I worked for a Midas garage, one week we got a new service manager, and up until that point we always inspected, estimated and sold our own jobs.This new guy wanted to inspect the cars and then check the estimates. Early on a Saturday morning, a girl in her 20’s with a baby came into the shop and said her brakes were making noise. I took the ticket, test drove the car, and then pulled it in the shop and then inspected the car.

I found the LR brake shoe had gone metal to metal, i miked the drum, it was ok, wheel cylinders and springs,hardware all ok. I estimated the ticket, it came out about $150 to fix the car. I went to the new service manager and handed him the estimate, he went and looked at the car. He didn’t even take 30 seconds, and he said i needed to add wheel cylinders, hardware kit and 2 drums to the estimate.I told him all the parts he wanted to replace were ok, he said do it, i just shrugged my shoulders and walked away. He went back to service desk, i walked into a completely crowded waiting area, stood in the middle and the room, and proceeded to tell everyone in the room, what the new service manager wanted me to do. I turned around and went to go get my truck to load my toolbox and leave.

The service manager tried to stop me from loading my box on my truck. At the time about 5 customers came out and helped me lift the box into the truck, and then started streaming at the service manager. They all wanted their cars put back together and taken off the lifts.It got so bad, one customer called the cops, the service manager called the owner.The cops and the owner showed up, i was putting the girls wheels back on, the owner came over to talk to me, i told him what happened and what i did.The owner went over to the service manager who was surrounded by all the pissed off customers, and fired him.I decided at that point i was still going to quit, because the owner was just acting, he told that service manager to do it. At that point, a few other techs were packing their shit up too.

As i was walking up my to truck to leave,The girl walked up to me, and thanked me. She asked if i knew another shop that could fix her car, i decided i would fix it myself, so we went to the parts store,got the parts, went to my house, and redid the brakes. Not to make this whole story even longer, That was in 1989, we’ve been married for 24 years now. That service manager, couldn’t get a job at any shop around.