Wednesday’s Pets.

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Please send in your pets pictures to the email address at the bottom of the page.

Bear Claw, My grand dog, Daisy, she has 2 sisters, one 5 months and one 2-1/2 years. She will only lick you to death

Daisy.

Ron M., Guy on the right of the pic is Sir Charles the Especially Cautious. Very likely saved my dumb ass about 25 years ago. Saw me in distress (rather massive myocardial infarction), ran to get Milady (pic left) who got me to emergency in time for some nitro and prep for stents.  Strong woman.
Next memory I have after the lights went out was lying on an OR table with a nurse shaving a spot on my groin which I’d never considered shaving.
Came too again in a ward with a big tall Doc in a smock and a squad of interns in tow tryin to scare me into modifying my lifestyle, my diet, and my entire daily routine.
Good dog.  Even better wife.  She can cook.  He could only eat. Long gone, now, but not forgotten.  Aussie Shepherd.  True gent.

Sir Charles the Especially Cautious.

I Lived This Story

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I’ve been turning wrenches since I was a child.

I went back to school at 29 to a Community College to get a degree in Auto Repair. As you know, Community Colleges offer two year Associates Degrees.

After one full year, a Ford Motor Company sponsored program opened up that was very limited and hard to get into. For one you had to get a Dealership to sponsor you and it was only open to 24 candidates, every two years.

So I managed to get in and I kicked it’s ass. After THREE years of going to a TWO year college,I graduated Phi Theta Kappa, made the Dean’s List 3 times and hade a 3.71 GPA.

The whole time being half drunk.

I’m sure I could have gotten a 4.0 if I had really tried.

I went to school for 3 months and then worked at the Dealership for 3 months, getting paid to learn and getting college credits for it.

I worked there for 9 years.

There were days that I drove 30 miles to work, sat there all day with nothing to do and drove home, not making a nickel because it was all Flat Rate, otherwise known as Piece Work.

That started happening so often that I finally decided that I couldn’t afford to work there anymore.

It finally got to the point that I had had enough and went to work as a Field Mechanic for a well known local equipment rental outfit at a SIX DOLLAR an hour pay cut and was still taking home just as much as I was working at the Lincoln/Mercury dealership.

In those 9 years I bought THOUSANDS of dollars worth of tools and tool boxes plus going to seemingly never ending training update classes.

So when I say that I lived what this story is saying, It is the absolute truth.

Back then, in the late 80’s Ford was screaming for new technicians to work on their then new computerized vehicles. When I left in 1999, Ford Motor companie’s premiere vehicles had 11 computers in them and they all talked to each other through one twisted wire that had another one twisted to the first one for redundancy. They called it Multi-Plexing.

The wiring harness that went through the Firewall and completely wrapped around an engine shoe horned into an engine bay had One Hundred and Eleven Wires in it.

That was 27 years ago.

What they have now for technology is Light Years beyond what I ever fought with and today’s cars are downright ridiculous to work on.

Yet the pay is not really that much more than it was back then.

Once again, Ford is screaming for new technicians, saying they have 6.000 empty bays with no mechanics in them nationwide but this time they are screaming into the void because the word is out and nobody wants to have to go through all of what I did for no more money than some chick sitting at a desk typing data into a computer makes.

So their cries go on deaf ears. Which is absolutely self inflicted and well deserved.

The very first thing that needs to happen is for them to scrap the Flat Rate pay system and guarantee their techs a Living Wage.

This video is well worth the watch to see what the state of Vehicle Repairs are in right now and you can guarantee that it is going to get much, much, worse.