You "intentionally" slowed down? That is not being honest, that is being a dishonest fuck head. That type of bullshit is grounds for termination. Don't be a fuck head.
Okay, let me address some of the criticism I’ve gotten on this issue.
I have no delusions that service writers GENUINELY believe that work can be done faster just because the customer is waiting. My issue is with how most service writers (in my experience working in 3 different shops, over 12 different writers) handle dealing with customers pressuring them.
Too many service writers are stuck in the salesman mentality of “do whatever it takes to make the sale” including blowing smoke up customers asses and telling them what they wanted to hear vs what they needed to hear.
In the first shop I worked in I started out as a line tech in the quick lane, like most guys in the field. And the writer I worked with would tell customers just coming in when we were 5 deep on vehicles getting oil changes, rotates, etc that THEIR vehicle would be in and out in 30 minutes. There was no fucking way that was going to happen unless you just drain and fill them, don’t check anything and pencil whip the mulitipoint.
She expected things to still be done properly AND have all 5 cars gone in 30 minutes, and that just wasn’t going to happen. But she told customers what they wanted to hear and then would bitch because an oil change wasn’t done in 5 minutes (we were allotted 30 minutes per vehicle) because she screwed the pooch and promised something she couldn’t deliver on. But it wasn’t her fault, OH NO, it was my fault because I was too slow.
The real problem is communication and honesty with the customer, and that fault lies with the writers. They need to tell customers what they need to hear, not just tell them what they want to hear in order to make the sale. Some customers are just impatient, have unrealistic time expectations and expect everything to be done yesterday, but I’d say 90% of the problem is caused by writers and shop owners overpromising delivery times and then blaming the techs instead of themselves.
The reason I’d work slower is because expecting me to just rush through a job faster than it can be done undermines the work that I do and makes customers think everything can be done in 15 minutes. Oil drains the same rate whether the customer is there or not, brake lathe takes same amount of time to turn rotors whether they’re there or not, etc. and I was attempting to educate them on this fact by drilling it into their heads. Some writers learned that lesson and saw their customer satisfaction ratings go up as a result, others, like the dumb bitch I used as an example before, was just too stupid to understand it and never seemed to learn, she was also one of the lowest ranking service writers because of constant complaints of “x said my vehicle would be done in 20 minutes and I sat there over an hour!”
You can lead a jackass to water but you can’t make them drink, some writers wised up and were better off after learning my lesson, others not so much, they were too stubborn, didn’t value the work that techs do, and only cared about making the sale so they’d get their commission.
TL;DR - the issue with waiters 90% of the time lies with service writers, not customers.
