First day

Dr.Jass

Dr.Jass

Pastor of Muppets
Well, today was my first day getting familiarized with the store at which I'll be helping for a week or two. It went pretty well. It was great to be doing something useful: checking in stock orders, putting parts away, and getting familiarized with the computer system. The CarQuest setup is vastly different than Auto Value's system, which suprised me. I'm not saying it's better or worse, I'm just not used to it yet. All the function keys are different, of course, and I'm being trained by people that solely use the mouse (the slow method). Worse yet, at least on their system, the response time sucks. At today's technology level, waiting 3-5 seconds for a screen to change is completely unacceptable... and this is a system that's almost brand new! I even answered a couple of calls... one person dialed wrong, and the other was an old woman looking for the owner's wife. No actual customers. :doh: I did bill out a few invoices, and no, neither time did I answer identifying the business as Auto Value, thank God. :D

It was great working with the brothers again, and it was a lot of fun talking about my first stint there, 25 years ago. One of the guys, who's been there over a decade, was asking me if some of the tales he'd been told were true. "Yes, Lorne and Kurt taped my glasses to my head." "Yes, Lorne used to sleep in a fort atop two stacked pallets of Oil-Dri when he came in hung over on a Saturday." "Yes, ____ did in fact have a few drinks on his lunch every day." Dude was surprised to find out that computer cataloguing did not exist in 1987: "Everything was books, and they were constantly flying all over the place. We had DOS-based computer invoicing, and that wasn't all that reliable." During that conversation, one of the owners asked me if I remembered one of them having to be in the office every day for an hour, calling to place the warehouse order. My, how times have changed.

They even have a cool shop dog. Her name is Lily, and sometimes she goes on deliveries with the guys. Valentine is giving me the once over; I think she's jealous. I didn't tell her about the customer that asked if I wanted to date his daughter (I politely refused).

I'll say this, though, I haven't felt that useless in a parts store for a long time. I'm used to running the show, not being FNG who knows where nothing's located, how to run the system, or what book's where. I know, it's first-day blues and I'll pick it up quickly.

All in all, a good day.
 
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Your the man! I knew you will excell at this like everything! It will be intresting to see if their busness picks up while you are there. :shifty:
 
Good stuff Doc!

What did the guys daughter look like?

I can relate to the FNG thing. Where I work, they have their own system of repair unlike anything I've been used to. I'm used to being the lead hand, and calling my own shots... took a while to get used to someone else holding the reins.
Then the bastards take on a pile of resto work for the winter, and I'm back to being the go-to guy. Love it! :)
 
Resto, I have no idea what she looks like. I may have passed on a supermodel. I was introduced to the man, and over coffee he started complaining that his daughter still lived with him. One of the guys asked me if I was single, and I responded, "Yes I am."
He turned to the customer and said something to the effect of, "How about Jass?"
"You want to date a single gal with 1 kid?" he asked.
"No, no I don't... at least not when her Dad's asking me!" He chuckled about it, but if I'm going to date someone it'll be on my--our--terms, not because her Dad says there's a new guy at the auto supply that would like to talk with you.

I have to say this, being employed by guys at the counter with you? I didn't realize how much I missed that, even though I'm not technically employed. I understand running a business, and though I'm not criticizing, I'd do it a little differently than the brothers--but that relaxed atmosphere of "C'mon in, have a cup of coffee, and take it easy" is a great feeling. I also noticed that while smoking in a public place in MI is now illegal, there's still an ashtray on the counter. It wouldn't be nearly as awesome if it wasn't stolen from the local strip joint. :dance:
 
I know exactly what your sayin about the guys at the counter. I want to get back into the parts biz, badly...
 
Dr.Jass said:
that relaxed atmosphere of "C'mon in, have a cup of coffee, and take it easy" is a great feeling.
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We have a locally owned store like that, complete with coffee bar and seating area often abuzz with the old guys jawing. My old man is often one of 'em. [smilie=::


Here's hoping good thingswill come of this.
 
If that ashtry is from the Nugget I would guess that it wasn't stolen. It most likely walked in on it's own!:D
 
You know that it's appreciated when one of the owners tells the driver, "Give him a ride home, and take him anywhere he needs to go. Grocery store, gas station, liquor store, whatever." Even though I needed groceries, I didn't go there. We made a quick pit at the smoke shop (he needed snuff, so I'm not 100% at fault) and I later walked to the store. He needed to be there to deliver parts.
 
Today, I actually answered a few calls and made some sales for myself. They were happy to see that, so I thought that in order to keep myself busy and useful, I'd go out and stock and face the front. I don't think that had been done in quite awhile. Otherwise, I tinker with the computer or walk around the store familiarizing myself with locations.

I had a call for a clutch for an old LoadStar dump truck; we couldn't get one. I don't miss Auto Value, but I miss having those resources (they have a heavy-truck division). Anyhow, this was just a standard retail customer to whom I'd never spoken previously. The customer initially identified it as a LoadMaster (which is a garbage-truck company in the town from which he was calling) and I asked him if we were talking about a LoadStar or a LoadMaster. He confirmed it was the dump truck, at which point I changed my voice to impersonate Rick Moranis in "Spaceballs" when his mask is down: "Just what I thought... Load Star!!" I heard him spit coffee, and after he recovered from laughing he said, "Dude, don't do that shit to people!" I was just glad he caught the reference.

I came from an aisle to discover the two brothers talking about how they were going to pay me. I told them, "Damn it, guys! Don't worry about it! I'm not, you shouldn't be either. You have bigger things happening than putting a few bucks in my pocket." Randy, the more smart-ass of the two, looks at me and says, "We gotta give you something, Robes... I figure you're worth three, four, maybe five bucks." My response was, "That'd better be per day!" "Day?! That's a week!" :D Yeah, those guys have been calling me either "Robes" or "Ro-buzz" for 25 years. Regardless, they commented that they were impressed with my performance and see initiative there. Well guys, that's just me doing what I have to do. I only have another day to know this stuff before the reality hits of three people missing from the store (technically four) while the family goes on vacation.

Another blast from the past: I walked into a small room in the basement, and saw the machine for relining brake shoes and clutches. :doh: I remember doing that for cheapskates that didn't want to buy reman shoes or discs back in the '80s. Yes, they were remanufactured back then. After being out of aftermarket parts stores for years, I recall my greatest relief upon re-entering that business was that clutches, brake shoes were no longer remanufactured, nor were wheel cylinders. For those of you not old enough to remember those days, yes--there used to be a core charge both, and you had to bring in your old ones to get your $5 or whatever back. Those core piles were the scourge of the auto-parts world: beat-up, nasty boxes with a large circle of rust and brake fluid around them. No one ever tried to get the shoes or clutch back in the box correctly, either, so they were usually pretty disheveled piles. God only knows how much asbestos I inhaled from moving that crap around back in the old days.

I guess being back in that store takes me all the way back to the start, and brings back a lot of memories. I found a Filko ignition box, and had to ask Randy what brand we'd had prior to Filko (which they stopped carrying around, oh, '90 or so). He said, "Niehoff. We had Jack Niehoff." I remember making that joke, and Lorne and I did the change-over back in late '87/early '88. I remember that way back then Niehoff was a premium brand, and Lorne and I wondered about this whole Filko thing.

They tried to pay me when I left today... why can't they just accept the gift?!
 
Dr.Jass said:
They tried to pay me when I left today... why can't they just accept the gift?!
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they have the same problem you do ya stubborn bastard LOL..thus why we called on strettchy



i remember the good ole days of bar stools in parts houses...i think some napas are the only ones still doing that...as for relining yeah..ive seen that done back then...these days you gotta goto special shops like otts friction supply to get that kind of thing done....but its nice being able to PICK your surface type..and on "oddball" stuff it saves a fortune and in many cases makes the impossible possible
 
Filco went away? I seem to remember buying some filco stuff that too terribly long ago. Some years to be sure, but not more than 5 or 8 I would think. As for niehoff, yep, I always understood that to be a premium brand. That's the brand of points my mother had put in her 2 cars. She would never swap them over to HEI (even though I bought her a reman HEI distributor for the '71 skylark in late '95), but she ran good points in them. No doubt she would have changed them herself if she'd been physically able to.
 
The stools where there because everything was looked up in a book! It took longer but at least you got what you ordered!:doubt:
 
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