April 2018

I like glowplugs. They get on with their job without making a fuss, quietly performing their assigned function before shutting off until they are needed again. I wish my staff had more common with a glowplug than they do currently. As it stands, they are constantly asking something, take too long as far as I’m concerned and tend to disappear off for a cuppa far too often for my liking. That’s one problem. The other kind of problem I have is when they are too good, too self-contained and don’t ask questions. So a bit too much like a glowplug. I can’t win can I? I know, I’m a standard grumpy old man today. It’s cold and I’m sorely in need of a cuppa myself. Despite this, I really tend to lean more towards technological, slowly heating metal rods at the moment. Why all the glowplug analogies? They are on my mind, that’s why. Many of my customers run diesel cars these days, about half in fact, in line with sales over the last few years as you would expect. One of my regular customers came in complaining of his diesel-power estate being a bit of a smoker of late. Now, it wasn’t me who dealt with this, it was one of my boys. I know this customer and his car fairly well, and the fact that it was producing smoke at all would have surprised me. My team are fairly stable and they know the customers and their cars too. The particular technician who took the initial query should have thought it a bit odd, and asked a few questions. But he didn’t ask any questions. Over a period of a day and a half he checked everything that could have been wrong and caused it to produce that much smoke. I was distracted by other jobs so when I cottoned on to what was occurring I was as annoyed with myself as I was with him. A phone call and a little light interrogation of the customer later, I am fairly certain it was the glowplugs. Apart from anything else, my little Duracell Bunny of a tech has checked everything else thoroughly. We changed them and ding! Everything was fine. From a diagnostic standpoint he has done the right thing, and he has followed the procedures that I drilled into him. So why am I glowering at him instead of congratulating him for doing the job right? I suppose it’s the difference between doing the work and running the business. When you have a car to fix, and that’s all you are worried about, you can focus on that one thing until it is done. Or perhaps two or three, you can bounce between in some cases. When it is the whole business it is a different story. So here I am glowering at my star pupil because I see the bigger picture. Of course, Mrs P is glowering at me for glowering at him, so maybe I should dip my lights, refocus my view and congratulate my team member for making my job so much easier. Of course, I am going to have to remind him about customer communication, right after I mention that I should have reinforced the importance of talking to the customer in the first place, like Mrs P just reminded me. Oh to be a glowplug right now… AFTERGLOW-PLUG 66 AFTERMARKET APRIL 2018 TEABREAK: MEMOIRS OF A MOTOR MECHANIC www.aftermarketonline.net