Joey is a mechanic with Foreign Car Service in Alexandria, Virginia. He tells us the best part of his job is the access to all the exotic cars that roll in!
Transcript
>> I also do customer service. So I'm checking in customers, doing estimates, doing parts sales, just to let them know what's going on with the car. But we take in as many cars as possible. We have 10 techs right now and basically get a car in, check it over. There's a lot of obvious stuff sometimes that we can just see. We want to let the customer know whether or not it needs to be replaced immediately, if it can wait, or if it's something to watch out for. Yeah, there's the basic stuff. Just repairing brakes, performing oil changes. That stuff's simple. The good part about that kind of stuff is you're accomplishing something, you know, all the time. This is a ware bar indicator. This little notch right here. Once the tread is worn down to the wear bar indicator it's basically letting you know that they need to be replaced. What we see very often, there's obviously I mean it's a simple tire. A lot of people may not think about this, but the way the tire is structured you have your sidewall, you have steel chords right here that are attaching the sidewall to the tread of the tire. There's a ware bar indicator in all one, two, three, four, five, spots on this tire, to let you know if it's getting close to be dangerous to drive. With us it can be seasonal. Sometimes right after Christmas we can just not have a lot of business so guys that are getting paid on commission aren't working aren't getting enough in. And sometimes in the summer when we're slammed, you know, if you get paid on commission obviously you make more. But we try and keep our guys - because we've had the same guys for a long time - on hourly wage and we just take care of them all year long. This is a 2006 BMW, and it has up to 12 control modules. Obviously the alternator, the battery alternator, crew shift -- crucial part in making sure all these control modules function correctly. And that's just kind of the way that taking care of cars these days is now. There's a lot of electrical components to it. It's not as simple as it was, you know, back in the '70s and '80s. It's just the way that technology's changing. So yeah, just kind of checking this car over. Customer will need tires soon. It's nothing immediate, and you know, I would -- I'm always completely honest with what needs to be done. You know if it's a safety issue the customer at least needs to know about it. And this customer takes very good car of his car. >> Thanks Ben. >> So I'm not going to make any money off of him [laughter].
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