I think I like Lynn’s better if it were for Bush. It speaks to both his self-entitlement and his idiocy.
It’s hard to say as we’re in Summer now. Believe it or not, Summer is a very slow time for us and winter is our busiest season.
The carwash industry’s biggest competitor isn’t itself, it’s home car washers.
And the funny thing is is that we reclaim a lot of our water, so we’re more environmentaly sound than them, our microfiber soft cloth wont retain grit like sponges do, and we are open even in sub-zero temps due to floor heat.
Fair enough.
That sounds like a very long non-compete to me. Are we really going back to the 80’s jobwise again? That sucked the first time around.
The funny thing about non-competes is how often they are enforced, IE: Seldom. VERY seldom. It is well worth your potential gain to push it because, usually, it’s your employer, who has lawyers on retainer, who fights it and wins because non-competes remove your ability to use your skills to support yourself.
Sounds like lawyer bait to me. Would make me a mite nervous.
While I agree that rich bosses don’t have a monopoly on stupidity, I think that part of the grrr factor is that this particular boss COULD shut the car wash for a day and REPLACE THAT FRIGGIN’ CHAIN without taking a hit in his pocketbook. If the place was barely scraping by, and he faced potential bankruptcy if he did pay for the chain because the money just wasn’t there, then yeah, I could sort of see his point. Still, this industry seems to be maintenance heavy, and any reasonable owner would make sure that maintenance would be included in the budget plan.
The chain broke AGAIN this morning on my second car of the day. We were down for three hours on a sunny Saturday fixing it. This fucking sucks.
:mad:
For your boss, yeah. You still get paid, right?
Yeah, but it sounds like his job is a lot harder when the chain breaks, and it screws up his hours if it happens near the end of the day.
You know, depending on where you are, this is incredibly bad advice. Where I am, they are enforceable and I’ve seen quite a bit of case law that says that. YMMV
I’d reccomend asking the boss to come down for a long talk. Show him in person the problem, explain what’s hapenning, and how it’s affecting business. Say you’re not sure what the manufacturer’s specs are, but that this particular chain isn’t doing the job. You can either continue to lose money on the chain* or have it taken care of.
Point out that not only is the chain killing your business now, it’s taking much longer and having much more downtime. Additionally, customers are coming up and finding its closed for repairs, and they might just decide to leave permanently for the comeptition which isn’t having that same erratic downtime.
Lastly, show him what you do to repair it and why it’s so hard. Explain that you are doing your best to keep it working, and that while you are happy to talk to him and keep him updated, the constant streams of phone calls are disrupting the repair efforts. I particular, you might suggest that you are not a trained repairman and are having to do this anyway.
You can also hint that you might be leaving for greener pastures, but only play this card if you think it might put the fear in him.
Yes, he can fire you for cause, which will mean no unemployment and a lower chance of getting any furture job.
OP, get your resume out there and when you have a solid offer, then go in an talk to your boss. Tell him you like the job other than … Asjk hos to “fix” that portion of your job. If he goes ballsitic, or refuses, then resign amd take the other job.
I’ve seen this kind of “stupid greedy” many times, and it’s generally in second generation wealth. The child has to show their parent that they can be even tougher, but they generally haven’t done a hard days work in their life. This asshole wouldn’t call every five minutes if he’d ever been in a greasy pit working with machinery that could easily pinch off a finger if anything goes wrong.
I do know some second generation people running businesses who are decent, hard-working and treat their employees well. But they seem to be the ones who have done every job in the business themselves and fill in for the employees when needed. But my brother, the plumber, left a job making six figures because the boss (who was a plumber) was retiring and letting his useless son (who has never plumbed) take over the business.
My condolences. Maybe he’s figuring that, if you keep patching the chain, eventually you’ll have replaced every single link.
That’s actually not a bad idea, gaffa. How much of this chain can you replace at once?
He’s actually third generation wealth, but yeah, he does act like that and he hasn’t worked much in his life.
And LOL at the bolded part. Maybe that’s his evil Monty Burns plan!
Our type of chain can only be replaced where there are cotter pins that hold links and/or rollers together. A standard section is three feet between two rollers, and those links cannot be individually removed, only the whole section from roller to roller can. The chain also has a “masterlink” section where each link in that section can be removed singly, which is how you tighten the chain every so often, as it stretches over time with the load it bears every day.
In the last three days I have put twelve feet of new chain into the mix, and another three foot extra masterlink section for a total of sixteen feet. The chain is about 120’ long on one side, so about 240’ overall. Think of a big bike chain in a perfect oval with big honking sprockets at either end, one of which is powered by a hydraulic motor.
As an aside, how do you post multiple qoutes in a single post so I don’t have to answer another member with a seperate post each time? I looked through the FAQ’s for the SDMB, I must have missed it.
That has not been my experience. I have been fired for cause, and collected unemployment. And as for jeopardizing future employment, your permanent record is vastly overrated.
With hard manual labor. 
I do it by cutting and pasting the bits into a separate text editor, manually adding the QUOTE= tags.
So… what I’m thinking is… put like three of the sections together. Next time the chain fails, pull the pins on the section to the left and section to the right. I suspect it might be easier to do, anyhow, they’ll be slightly less bent. Replace three sections at once.