Episode 124 - The Fallout from Hiring the Wrong Person with Ashley Jo and Jeremy Bloom

The cool thing about Jade is that Jade has a different subset of experience, right. And so she worked in the medical field, and she worked in a vet's office. So things where people are, like, super emotional and upset don't face her. And she's just like, but your car's broken. This is how much it costs to fix it. Here you that's that's actually we've had a couple of criers work for. If. The customer got upset, they got upset. Did you know David's a closet crier? I can see that, but

I'm a closet crier. I get in the closet and cry. Why did I open a shop? This is such a bad idea. What the hell was I thinking? I think that that's mandatory, isn't it? Yes. The cry in the closet. Yeah. I don't know. So we had a conversation a while. Back, introduce Ashley Jo and Jeremy Bloom from I don't know where. Oregon. I know Oregon. That's it. Astoria, Oregon. Astoria, Oregon. I thought it was Bord, Oregon. Bored Oregon. Well, I'm from Boring,

so maybe that's. Where you're getting that's. What? Itville? Tennessee Wattville. It's whiteville. No, it is, but you call it wobble whiteville. God almighty. You need some redneck training. We're talking about service advisors. What about them? I'm trying to put context to the story. We're talking about service advisors, and he was asking, should you hire a service advisor that has experience, or should you hire someone that doesn't?

Depends on what you're looking for, basically. Should you promote from within? Do you try and make a service writer or do you try and find somebody? Because they're kind of tough to find, but backstory. We've done all three. Have any of them worked? Loretta's been with us on and off. Yeah, right. Loretta has been with us on and off for eight years. This is the

first time that she's been with us full time for very long. But in the past, the people that we've hired that were service riders were like they did not fit our company at all. They were like car salesmen. Didn't have the small town feel, didn't have any empathy. They were just kind of terrible. And then the people that we who was it? Oh, Tim. We promoted Tim from within, and he was actually pretty good at it, but he had some home stuff going

on, so that didn't work out. The thing is that it's a very unique skill set, and so bringing somebody from back of house, usually they don't have the skill set that makes them good at that because they're two different types of people. They're two different types of skills. Now, they might be a great estimator and be able to do that. They might be able to throw the estimate together, get the estimate right, and the whole nine yards. But being able to communicate what a car needs to a client,

that's why service advisors were around in the first place. Right. Is because the technicians weren't necessarily that good at it. So I hated all of that and decided that I wasn't going to have a service advisor. And so that's what we did. We got rid of that whole concept of calling and presenting. We don't do that at all. What do you do? We just send them the estimate and. You just go from there. They get a

DVI. You set the stage up front. Hey, I'm just going to let you know we're going to inspect your vehicle. We look at the entire vehicle just so we get a game plan the vehicle needs. We do it with every single vehicle that comes in the door. You're not special. Okay, give the keys. Then they get a text alert. Hey, your car has been checked in. We'll let you know when we start the inspection process. Then they get another one saying, hey, the car is being inspected. Put the cap on that.

The car is being inspected. We write up the inspection, lots of pictures and brief notes. Turns out his technicians write dissertations on the notes and they're so long they've written them and then have them ready to copy and paste into the inspection to write a book, essentially, about everything they need on this particular vehicle. Are there footnotes? What's that? Are there footnotes? I'm sure there are footnotes like the main. And then they get so we recommend

service or fluid needs to be serviced. You keep it brief because it turns out nobody reads the notes. They just look at the picture and the picture says, it's red. That's it. I really hope nobody listens to him. And from my experiences, they don't. Right. They skip past his voice. They can do that all they want, but I'm just telling you right now, aros were within dollars of each other and I did no calling and presenting. We don't call them present. Really? Hang on, I have to say this.

I had to knock on wood because. I'm my arrow so far this year is flat. That's not what I'm talking about. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm just hoping that neither one of us gets sued. So I have to prove that the notes on my repair order keep me out of trouble. Better than the notes on your repair order. I'm not you out of trouble if you're doing a state inspection, fine, put them in there on the state inspection. But it is asinine to put a 45 word

note into this box here. The customer is not going to read about the need for cleaning off the oil that may cause a fire. I don't know what you're putting in there because I guarantee you there is no amount of notetaking that is going to completely absolve you of all liability. Of course not. Well, then what's the point? What is the point? Say, well, I'm not going to get sued for if it

catches on fire, but if it goes careening into a ditch. I forgot to put that note in because I hadn't thought of that, and I hadn't had a lawyer review it. So what am I going to do? You just carry really good general liability insurance, dear. That's what you do. Anyway, I'm right? Is that why you price shop it? I do not price shop it. I've been with my insurance guy for forever, okay? He's not very good either. He's a nice guy. He's a sweet guy.

He's a customer. So you kind of like you're stuck. Anyway, so I have a question. When the customer calls and says, hey, I want to talk to somebody about this quote, you just say, Look, I sent you a picture. Yes, that's exactly what I don't say, like that. I don't say like that. Did you look at the picture? Yes, you're right. I don't know what I'm looking at. I don't know what I'm looking

at. I'm saying, okay, well, shit is broken. See this? What, you want to park the circle that's broken? They're like, okay, yeah, it's not supposed to be like that. Anyway, it's 268 99 to fix it. And they're like, oh, okay, well, go ahead and do it. No, I need you to click it on the app. Okay. Yeah, we'll wait for you. You can do it now if you want. Okay. Make sure you sign the bottom. All right, thank you. Hey, by the way, I'm going to need parts money. That's what we do. That is what we do.

What? You act like it's weird. Here's the thing. I have a track record. It turns out that all of the sales training is unnecessary. Maybe just at my shop, but I don't know, maybe it's at every shop, and all of it is just fluff. Not Cecil's classes. They're great. So when I ask you, like, what are you looking for? Is if you're looking for somebody to sell, I need this close rate because there's some shops that like right, right. You don't get mad at me. I'm not disparaging you in any

way. Was I mean to him? I can't mad at you. He's an idiot. I just don't want to say something mean to you now, because all I can think of is, god, this dude's an idiot. You can say that, but I've got proof. I've got hard numbers. It works. I don't have to call and sell anything. No, officer, he's trying to sell me something I don't need. So dude, I sent you pictures and an estimate. You can hit no at any point. You can hit no. So what are we doing here?

I'm not upselling a thing like your boy over here, the Canadian guy. I'm not upselling a thing. I don't upsell. Oh, that was an interesting article, wasn't it? Anyway, so if you're looking to hire somebody that wants to sell, that's a very specific skill set. And that's what you want is I want this close rate in this much work estimated on average in this close rate, and I will find the cars. So I'm going to bring in 50

cars. Every car needs to have $4,000 estimated on average, and I expect a 60% close rate or a 40% close, whatever the number happens to be. If that's your business model, then you're going to hire a very specific type of person, and that person's got to hit that close rate, and the aro is going to be what it is. But as long as the numbers all work out, it's going to be cecil. Says I should just hire a shop manager. I shouldn't hire a service. That's what that's

the route. I mean, we don't call everybody's a manager because they're all on salary, and technically they're all managers. They are managing things, just not people necessarily, but they have things they have to manage for the Department of labor. That much you're not so sure. What was the discussion we had at lunch today? What did I say that I didn't. Say that I didn't want to name anyone. I don't know what he's talking about anyway. So they're all managing

stuff anyway. I need a person that can check in the vehicles and can, without any hesitation ask for money without having fixed the thing. Specific skill set that is jade would. Be legit at it. She would be really good at and be like, hey, so thanks for the approvals because I love that green, green, one red or one black, I guess it's black, isn't it? Yeah, green, green, green, one black. I love that. And then you dump it all into the ro, and it pops up $3,800. And then he

gets on the phone and he's like, hey, I appreciate the approvals. I'm going to need $2,200 down to get started. You want to go ahead and take care of that now? And that's it. And he does it like he doesn't care where I would be like, don't change your mind. Why are you service Advisor was going to be so good. Just like, here's what happened with the other Service Advisor. I kind of feel like that's actually somewhat common with owners, though, from what I've seen,

is I'm good at dealing with customers. I'm not the best service writer because I have a leading heart and I have too much invested. I can't say, Here, here's your bill. Take it or leave it. Yeah, 100% emotional. Too emotional, exactly. Well, Quantum, he feels bad. No, he doesn't. He does callous. Like, he's not of course not Kurt or anything like that. He is invested in it, but for him, it's just a checkbox. Did I check it off? Yes or no? And

then he moves on with his day. There'll be another car. There'll be another car. He does not put emotional weight on that discussion. I see. Oh, we didn't get that sale. My business is going to fail. Tomorrow, and I'm going to have to go back to work somewhere. This is all Lucas. Can I have a job? No, I'm broke, too. Yeah. So you need to decide if that's the person you want to just hey. I'm just envisioning the conversation that's going to happen after Cecil listens

to this episode. I'm going to set him off. He's not going to like it. But here's the thing. I have found that presenting things, the customers don't understand anything you're saying to them, like sway bar, leaks are worn out, struts are leaking, tires are unevenly worn. You're going to need an alignment. Looks like your oil cooler is looking too. So to take care of all that, it's going to be $2,400, $68. Would you like me to take care of that for you today?

I don't know what you're saying. That whole process there, that whole process, I think it feels icky to me. I've had to do it. I don't like doing it. And I found, turns out entirely unnecessary because this may have been necessary ten years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, for forever and backwards. The consumer is different now. I can see that. I can agree with that. It comes in waves for us. We'll have, like, all summer. We didn't even hardly talk to anybody in the phone. We just

sent stuff. They approved it. It was great. But now we've kind of switched back to people who want to come in and talk about it. And I'm like, I don't want to talk to you. Inspection and look at the picture. Call. And they want to have that conversation anyway, they call us, and they're like, I don't know what this is. Tell me. And then they're like, I still don't know what it is. Is a $3,800 bill, sir? Yeah, you want to go ahead and take care of that? Now, here's the thing.

I think that right now we've seen some change, right? We've seen a little bit of development in that area where people maybe they feel a little more pressure, so they want to know a little bit more about what's going on, and they want to know that they're doing the right thing for their car. We've got clients, and this is really up to them on how much engagement they have with us. We've got clients that just want it texted and emailed to them, and they just deal with it. And

then we've got clients who want to talk to somebody, right? And I've got a lot of clients who that is how our brand was built is that I'm counseling them on what's going on with the car. And that's why I call them service advisors, because it's our job to advocate and advise them, right? For me, I spend a good bit of time like, if I'm in the shop, I spend a good bit of time developing an

estimate in such a way that it's like, hey, this is Lucas's List. And so it has L's on it with a little Apostrophe or something that indicates, hey, this is us. And this is the things that if it was my car, my wife's car, this is what we'd be doing. That's a good idea. This is why I do this, right? So I'll take a few minutes and I'll go over and these are the things that are important to me as a professional. And it would be something, something I do on those vehicles

that are mine to make sure it stays safe and reliable. These are things I just want you to know about. They may come up down the road. This is not something I'm worried about right this minute, but this is my way of showing you and educating you about your car. How is it when I envision that I see an L with a heart around it? Oh, that's a good idea. None of what he just gammared on about is scalable. It's not scalable. It's got to have Lucas on it. And if Lucas isn't

there, didn't we. Decide early we aren't going to scale our businesses? You just said the other day, scalable. In the sense that dude we just had in

here is doing 90% of the work that isn't like actual wrenching. He's doing the diagnostic work, he's doing the service advising, he's checking in the cars, he's calling the customers, he's selling the work like, holy crap, how do you have time to do anything else that's your entire day? Yeah. And he's like, oh, I stopped working at

five. I used to work all day long. It's like, well, yeah, I get it, but if you need to take yourself out of the business and say, I don't know, go on vacation or hey, we got to go record a podcast in Utah, who's going to do this? Lucas's list with Lucas, isn't there? It doesn't make any sense at that point. But the thing is, I've got a team that's able to do that without me. Yeah, it's called green, yellow, red. Hey, just letting you know if it's. In yellow, if there's 25 reds. If it's 25 reds,

it's 25 reds. Last time I looked at your car, it was like, shit, man, my car. My car is in great shape. What are you talking about? Do you ever get the big dent in the back of it? We have to go eat. But he doesn't realize we've got another 45 minutes to go anyway. I'm going to get a podcast episode out of this thing. It. So what were you saying? I'm saying that it's not scalable to do something that intimate and so you have to do something a little bit different. You use the green,

yellow, red system because it's in there. Right. Makes sense to use it. Why can your technician not say, hey, here's the things that if this was my car, I'd be really focused on. You put that in as the philosophy in part of the inspection process. I like that. Well, that's what you do up front. Everybody understands, like, hey, what does yellow and what does red mean? Don't just make it all red. It's like, hey, can this weight they make it yellow.

If I have to come out and ask, I'm mad. Hey, can this weight yeah, mark around it. Trick question. Every single time it's a trick question. They don't know it. They will now. They listen to the podcast in the shop. Then they get mad at me of things. I say, how are you mad at me? Which one? Episode 32. I don't remember what the hell I said. In episode 32. He says some pretty nasty things about your people. Nasty? No, I love my people. You kidding me? That's his way of showing love. It really is.

That's his words of endearment, right? That's his love language is hate. I don't know how that works, but it does. It's fairly effective. Do you guys require a phone call to the customer? Yeah, we typically do. I like, oh, no, we don't. We just send it. And if the customer doesn't call by the next day, then we call them. I have never had more I don't have a call anymore than when I do that. If I just send it, people get. So because you're not telling

them up front. It's up and down, though. Sometimes people are like, yeah, I saw it, I'll get back to you. I don't know, but remember Adam Rath? Adam Rath's like, hey, listen, if they've not approved in an hour, we're calling them like, hey, what's going on? Hey, what's going on? Typically, if they're not so it's not an hour for us. It's usually like two to 3 hours. If we don't see approvals coming in two to 3 hours, they don't have

the money for it. They don't have the money for it. That's legit. Yeah, for sure. And so you see what you do? What shop management system do you guys use? Tech metric? Oh, man, sorry, you guys. Anyway, so we have the ability to. See we still love you. Yeah, we'll just edit that out just for next time you say, I'd rather not say and we move on. That's what you do. You know what you should do every. Time you ask it? You should have your finger on the button.

Shopware. What shop management do you say? Shopware. That's a good idea. So on the subject of the DBI and all that, though, how often do you guys run into issues with somebody brings their car in for an oil change, new customer never seen before, they bring it in for an oil change. Okay, so we do a full inspection on it, present all the problems to them.

And they're like, I brought this in for an oil change and you're telling me I need $3,000 worth of work and they're pissed off about it and think you're just trying to three to. 5%, depending on what we're working on. Would you shut up and let somebody else talk? No, you're wrong. Three to 5%. And the three to 5% is only at one point in time, and that is when the advisor did not tell them this was going to happen.

When the advisor doesn't tell you, hey, I'm going to look over the vehicle. Would you like me to make you aware of any safety or reliability concerns we see with automobile and anybody in their right mind? What are they going to say? Yes. No, hang on, hold on. On our digital inspection, we have courtesy clean and vacuum that people can approve. We have the courtesy inspection and we

have quality check. In the last month, I would say at least 30 or 40% of people have declined all three of those, including the quality check. Well, here's the thing. All of those are automatically on my tickets. Automatically on the tickets. And so when I tell them that, if they say no, I don't want you to alert me to any safety concerns. What do I know about this client now? Yeah, I've got a wolf in the shop. I need to be careful with this one. Right. We don't ask the lady with the airbag

story. That's the whole way I knew she's like, I don't want to know if there's anything wrong with the safety systems in my car. I don't care about any of that. Then why was she fixing the airbag? Because she wanted the light off. We don't ask. We just tell them, hey, if they don't want me to inspect, I want you to inspect my vehicle. I'm sorry. We inspect every vehicle. We do, too. Yeah. It's a liability thing, for sure. Plus a

CYA thing, of course. Well, here's the thing, though. Is that the only reason because I'm still going to do it. The only reason I ask is because I'm trying to find out what kind of client I'm working with. Yeah, but I don't know. I still want to inspect the vehicle. You're still going to do it? So it really doesn't matter that you asked. You're still going to do it. I still want to present it to them or send it to

them so they can see the vehicle and they can just decline the work. And if they call and said, sir, ma'am, you can just decline all the work. We just need to let you know what's going on with the vehicle. Yeah. I have a professional responsibility to alert you to the condition of your automobile. That's my job. That's what I do. Now, one of the things about especially if you've got a newer vehicle and I pull that car in, we'll run a lighter evaluation on a 21

22, right. If it's below 50,000 miles and it's a 21 22, we'll run a little bit lighter evaluation and it still checks everything. All of the safety stuff, all of. The what do you mean by lighter? Well, I mean, my typical peace of mind is over an hour. It's because of the books you guys are writing and the way you guys are taking pictures. It's goofy. I don't do it. I know you don't do it. Yeah, I did try to talk to Eric got butthurt. I'm just saying, like,

change it up. It's weird, but the whole, like, I can't send the DVI and the estimate separate thing, like, we got to get that hashed out. I can't switch the set. I'm going to have to figure something out. It's going to be an issue. Of all the things you call weird, that's weird. I have to be able to send the DVI first. Can you guys send the DVI first on its own? They check the

DVI, and then you follow up with the estimate. No. Well, you can send it separately, and then if the estimate is written already, they'll see that. We don't want that, though. You send it the DVI before you have the estimate written. The minute we have the DVI, we clean it up. We send it. Yeah. So that way you can have them scared. So they're like, I see all these red. They see it, but they begin to think about, hey, this is what I need to

do. They'll do a little bit of research on their own. They'll have some ideas, and so then they come back, and they've already made the decision to approve it. So then when they get the actual estimate, it's not that big of a deal because it's like, I've already made up my mind. I really think I need to

do this. They've already put the money in their head. Right. Instead, when they look at the estimate, when they open it and they see the estimate and that's what they see with it, it's like, oh, my God, I don't have that kind of money. Right? They didn't have the chance to have a non emotional response to it. They open it up, and they see

the dollar amount. They don't look at all the reds. They just see the dollar amount, and they're like, whoa, where are you coming at me with $3,000 for? Did you see all the reds? No, I saw $3,000. Well, you have to send the DVI. They have to look at it first, which is why we have it separated. Although we were looking at he started floating or trial running, mushing it all together, just into shopware. Not having the two separate systems, I. Was trying to expedite it for the service.

We one of the things that we're running into is it's taking too long to process. Right? And when we're in a bigger shouts. It'S your notes and the way you take your goofy push. Dude, it can't be the notes. The notes don't take me any time. It takes Eric time. Poor Eric. He's the only one that does that. What does Terry do? Terry writes common sense notes that are just pretty basic, kind of what your guys put. Okay. That's why Eric got hurt,

because you're a douchebag picking on one person who's doing it. Okay. How big are your notes? I don't know. They're pretty short for the most part. For the inspection? Yeah. I make them write pretty detailed notes on the diagnostic anymore, though. And it's funny because now we look back on things, like, two years ago, and we're like, the fuck are we looking at here? There's

no information here. Well, that's what we run into, is like, hey, if it comes back or if it goes to another shop, I want them to be able to look that and say, yeah, so we write. It for other shops. That's exactly right. But that's different now. That's not an inspection. If they're paying me for diag, I. Want to book we have inspections for the diagnostics,

so, like, there'll be a drive test inspection. There's inspections for tear downs and stuff, so that stuff's all saved as a separate inspection in our system. And I do typically write books for that anymore, because, like she said, I'll go back and I'll look at something, comes back a couple of years later, and I look at it. I'm like, I don't even know why we replaced that. There's no notes. We replaced this. I have no idea why. Right, exactly. Dude, that's tough. We were smaller.

It was easier because there weren't so many people to try and keep straight. I know. I still remember, though. I still remember all of it. Yeah, I remember every it's like a scar. It's like a broken heart. Every car. I remember this lady came in. She was mad about this, and when we fixed this, and then we replaced that, and then that went haywire. Because you put emotional connection to every vehicle. It's not that. No, they just I'm just telling you. It's like a stab

every single time a car comes in the door. I need the money. But I'm just telling you, I hate working on cars anyway, so shopware had integrated their DVI. They always had the DVI, but it used to be, like, their notes section, and then you kind of had an outline, hey, check these seven things, right? And then you would just make notes in the notes section about the seven

things, and then that was the DVI. And then they decided that, hey, we want to put instead of the checklist, we want to actually put findings under the checklist, which was everybody that would come into Shopware would immediately ask for that. They're like, Why can't I have that there? It's like, okay, whatever. And so they did. They made it like that. And it looks really good on the customer side. It looks really slick. It makes sense. It flows

nice. It's a nice presentation. Which, again, eliminates the need for the phone call. But the problem now is, like, hey, I need them to look at the DVI, and then I need to be able to send an estimate after they see the DVI. They need to be able to see the DVI. I'm 99.99% sure that's one of the coming things, right? The ability to turn off the estimate on and off. Right. So that could be turned off. They can't see that while you're building it, and then you can turn it on. That'll

fix everything. Yeah. I hope that it's not like, toggled separately so you can toggle it all in one spot. I hope they don't do that. And it's an on off button, like Hide don't Hide, or Hide and Reveal. Anyway, so I've got a question. Yes. We had a long, tough conversation a while back about a situation in your shop. Tell us a story. So at what point was I out with that person? He's no longer

with us. So that's where you were at the point of tears and not to know what to do because you didn't know if you should keep him, if you should send him, if you should try and fix it. Well, I should have let him go then. The phone call should have been enough of a clue that it was time to just let him go, but I didn't. Well, tell the whole story. Tell how we got here. Okay, well, let me start at the beginning then. All right,

so a year ago last month, this guy came to us as a Eurotech, which is super hard to find in my area. There are none, right? And we made him a job offer. He used it to get a better wage at his current place. Fine, whatever. We were pissed about it, but we were like, Whatever. In July, he rolls into the parking lot with his toolbox, and he's like, I'm here to work. And at the time, we were fully staffed, so we're like, all right, I guess we'll make this work. You can just do diag because I

don't have a lift for you. So we brought him on, and I think it was a week or two later. Was it a week or two later when he's like, hey, I need to take some time off to get sober? He had apparently been drinking at work. He told us that that was acceptable at his previous job. And so he took a couple of weeks off, came back, and was with us from

early August until right after Bimmers. When he walked out again, he told me that I didn't know anything, and I didn't know anything because I wasn't in the shop anymore and I needed to go out into the shop and work on cars, and then he would respect me. And then after Thanksgiving, he asked for his job back, said that his wife left him, and he was just in a really bad place, and he really missed us. And my bleeding heart was like, all right, you can come back.

So early December, he came back, and then I think that we had our phone call in March. Or was it like February? I think it was March. And David, are you looking at him. Going, why you let this go on? I'm laying no. He told me no the second time. But by the time bad things were in the shop, I knew shop morale was sucky. I didn't know why. We live in a super gray area. People get seasonal depression. They talk about it all the time. I didn't know that he was the cause of

the really bad morale. I didn't know until the person that I brought to Vision that moved out here from Maine put it on paper in his resignation. And shortly before that, another technician quit. And he's like, I can't work with this guy. He had some stuff going on. So we weren't sure if it was just, like a maturity thing or if it was, like, actually how old was he? The one that quit because of it? No. The one that had already quit. Not the resignation letter.

I think he's 24. Okay, so Young kind of got stuff going on at home. He had already worked for us once before, and when he quit, it was comical. I don't want to call him out or anything, so I'm not going to do anything identifying. But we weren't sure if it was, like, overreaction and maturity or if it was something really going on. But then we got this letter from the guy that we took to Vision, and we were like, all right, this is a real bad situation. The one that

no longer works for us. He had told the service rider in the office to get in a car and to back it out into a spot in the parking lot. I'm like jumping around. Sorry, there's a lot. And he didn't adequately explain to her that the brake pedal was not in the car, and she didn't have the foresight to look down and see that there was no physical brake pedal. So she turned the car and hit another car in the parking lot, which caused an insurance

claim. They asked him for a drug test, which he failed, and then he passed clean in two weeks. But then he failed the retest because they came to talk to me about renewal, and they were surprised that he still worked there. And so we had to retest him, and he failed that one. And instead of waiting to see what came back, which eventually came back clean, the second time, he blew my phone up. Blew his phone up and resigned. And I had already told him he couldn't come back. He was

emailing me. He was like, texting me at, like, ten at night, eleven at night, five in the morning, talking crap about all the employees, talking about how they didn't deserve to be there, talking about how we'd be so much better off without all of them. After he quit, I contacted these, like, six people, I think, that left in the time period that he was there. You lost six people over this one tech? No. How much time? A year? No, not a year? No. Between August and March, 6 people? Six

technicians? Not all technicians. What? Not all technicians. Some of them were office. Oh, yeah, some of them were office people. You just lost six people? Yeah, some of them weren't there very. Long, but still six people. Right. All of them identified him as the cause, a big part of why they left, specifically him. So I reached out to a couple of the interns that we had over the summer that didn't end up staying on, and I said, hey, I want to let you

know I'm sorry. I didn't know what was going on. Nobody told me directly, and I didn't see it. I wasn't in the shop enough to see the things that were going on. Sure. That takes some serious guts to do that. So kudos for doing that. And that had to hurt, right? Yeah, that had to suck. We sit in here and we listen to that panel yesterday, and we hear how frustrated the technicians get with owners. But I don't think that many technicians realize this is not uncommon. It's not

uncommon. No. This happens to shop owners quite a bit. It's happened to me in the shop. Who's the shop manager? Who's doing the front work? Who's doing the back work? You're a technician technically, right? Yeah, technically. I do a lot of diagnostics. He's working more in a foreman role than he does diagnostics, but he supports the technicians more than expedites. Make sure they have the right parts. Make sure they don't get I can't get anything done. Every time I walk through the shop, it's,

hey, come here. Hey, come here. Okay, so you're in the back making sure the technicians are and then you were in the front and not in the front anymore? I'm in the front, yeah. Okay. I actually didn't realize until after he left that I was actively avoiding going into the shop. Yeah. I was, like, a week or two after he was gone, and we've had how many people came back? Two people came back. One might come back after he left. And I didn't realize that I had been

avoiding going into the shop. Going into the shop, being at the shop, I was pretty miserable for the last couple of months, but physically, going into the shop and being around him, I was actively avoiding it. In my case, I went through the same thing with the tag, and I've told the story plenty of times. I'm not going to go back all through it, but I went through the. Start from the beginning, he threatened to put a hole in this, and every single time I annoyed him,

he was going to squeeze water all over me. He's going to need a bigger bottle. Get a spray bottle. That's a good idea. Like a doll. No cat. But it was very much the same thing. Right. I didn't want to go into the shop. I put my blinders on. I was trying my best to avoid it. I thought, oh, he's a good production tech. He's getting stuff done. A lot of what he did came back, and I always came up with a reason that it was coming back. I never,

ever just said, look, he's just got to go. And it was really because I think at the end of the day, the reason I held off on it is because he was so toxic. I knew what it was going to be. I knew he was going to flip out. I knew he was going to go haywire. There was no doubt in my mind. My coach was telling me, this dude's going to go crazy. You might even want to call the sheriff's department before you fire this guy. Right. And he did. He scared you.

No, firing scare me. It was there. Why even bring that up? Call him and say, hey, you can't be here anymore. My point is that it was a situation that I just wanted to avoid. The shop wasn't actively, in my eyes, burning down around me. It was right. I didn't realize I was killing the culture and everything else because we were getting workout and things were happening, but I always had a reason.

Part of it is I feel bad. Right. I hated firing people. That was really the only person I had ever fired was this guy at that point. And I realized that's probably the worst experience I'll ever have, firing somebody. I don't care. I got it the rest way, whatever. But I think that I did something very similar. I didn't want to go in the back of the shop, and so I disconnected from that, and it caused me to not realize how bad it had gotten and how bad his work was and what he

was doing. Right. And it was an addiction thing, too. But listen, this is super. He was addicted to alcohol, was an alcoholic. Was he drunk at the shop? No, he was never drunk at the shop. Was your guy drunk at your shop? We found out after the afterwards that he would go out and drink at lunch. Which aligns were they, like, red flags that you looking back, you're like, yeah, he was drunk that day. Oh, yeah, for sure. We got emotionally close to him. We felt bad after his

family left, we invited him over to Thanksgiving. I brought him into my home, so it was hard to just like, all right, we can't do this anymore. There's a reason that programs which offer therapy and counseling and rehab and addiction help have such strict rules about how they handle it, because that is a big way to get into a situation where they can't help them anymore, is because they are emotionally blinded by that person. That person can become

extremely manipulative. That person can become extremely controlling. That person can say hurtful things that make you think it's almost like narcissism, right? All of a sudden, you see this whole different side of this person that you thought liked you and this and that. And a lot of it is just the addiction. It's not necessarily who they are, but it can cause you to make poor decisions when dealing with them. And you've got to be careful getting close for that reason to somebody like. That, it

makes me feel really bad when I look back on it. And I didn't know that he was harassing the employees the way that he was. He was apparently messaging them after hours, harassing them as well, like, all night. He was apparently like he'd walk by from the stories that I've gotten from people, he'd walk by and make sideways comments while they were doing something like a timing belt. So then we had one guy, that man, he struggled with a subaru timing belt, and we could not

figure out why because it's just such an easy job. And we were trying to figure out he ended up putting the tensioner in and not taking the pin out. So it screwed everything up, right? And we were watching the video, and we didn't realize what was happening when we were watching it. But he would go over there and talk to this person like, every 20 minutes. He'd swing by for a few seconds. We assumed that he was giving him help. Afterwards, when one of our employees came back,

she was like, no, that's not what was happening at all. He would go over there and make comments and make him feel bad, make him feel like he shouldn't be there and couldn't do the job. And I feel super responsible because I'm there to take care of them. These people are like my family, and I didn't even know it was happening. Yeah, this place of person is a monster. Holy crap. I don't think he intentionally was a monster. I think that at some

point, we never are. Look, I have been a monster before, right? And you become bitter. It hurts. Things don't go the way that you think that they go. Life's not happening like you think it should happen. Things get hard to look in the mirror, and I understand that. But when you're addicted to something, that's hard to

do, right? When you're addicted to something. And the problem is that it's like if you're an alcoholic, right, you feel bad if you don't drink, so you want to go have a drink while you're not drinking, everything's okay, but then you go have a drink. And all of a sudden, you start running your mouth a little bit, and then you start to talk to yourself, and you start telling yourself stories, and all of a sudden, that story turns into something else. And

it's like, well, that person did this. Well, and that person did that. And you will start telling yourself stories. And all of a sudden, that logic and that reasoning portion of your brain is no longer logic and reasoning. It's allowing this story you're telling yourself to get out of control. And so if addiction goes too far, it just turns into that in a big way, and everything in your life can become that story. Everything in your life

can be, this person did this. There are people who have had spouses that have ended up murdering them because they had told themselves such a story. And a lot of it, I think, comes back to addiction. Right? Okay, so perfect. In the mountains here, he sends us. A picture, to my horror, of his arm handcuffed. And I'm like, great. So that says PNW Automotive down your shirt. So that's great, really, thanks for representing. And he's like, I got a DUI, but I'm going to get

out of it because I just had open containers in the back. I wasn't actually drinking. And we're like, It's not how that works. Also, why is that in your car? Also, can you make better decisions? And for the last four months, all we've heard about is how he's going to get out of it. He's pushing out the court date, hoping that the police isn't going to show up, the officer isn't going to show up, and he's banking everything on that. He is so solid set that he is not going to have any

repercussions. Convince the police officer was a problem. Exactly. That everybody else 100% that he was set up, that they came after him, and it wasn't fair, and it's not right, and it's not okay what they did to him. Exactly. Going to go in there, and he's going to prove that this is them that did this to him. Right. Do you guys do debriefs when someone leaves normally? I try to. You lost six people in a very short amount of time. Did you do a

debrief with any of them? I think I did on two of them. Two or three of them? Yeah. But I couldn't get no one of the females. I couldn't get her to come back in. Maybe. Let me explain. Are you talking to all the current employees after the one that left leaves? No, actually, we've never done that before. So if you sit down with them, you find out lots of stuff that you didn't know was going on, and all of a sudden they're gone. And they're like, yeah, I hated that person.

They were miserable to work with. I mean, we've heard that in the team meetings. We've heard that since then, but we didn't sit down with them with the intention of, well, not finding out what was going on. The problem with together is that they don't say things in a group setting that they will tell you one on one. They don't ever. You have to sit down with everybody that hey, after what's his name? We'll call him Bob. Hey. When you know, hey, Bob's left. Anything we need

to talk about? Is everything okay? Questions, concerns, comments? Let's talk about this. Everything's good? I hated Bob. Okay, great. I don't know. Yeah, we probably should do that. I mean, even though everybody's talked to us quite a bit, they've all talked to us, like in a group. Yeah. You might want to sit down with them, especially after something like that. You might want to just do one on one for a little while and just talk to them just to make sure they get some

stuff out. I feel like a lot of it like you were saying, Lucas. I know for myself personally, everything that went wrong, I had some kind of excuse for it, some rationalism every single time that wasn't his fault, because we. Thought a lot between the two of us, because I'm on the front side going, all right. And I didn't look at his comeback rate until after he left. In the last month that he worked for us, was it 24 cars came back? 24 cars

were comebacks. That makes our reputation look like crap. But it was 24 out of 40 cars that he worked on. Oh, wow. So it was like, that's disastrous. But every time that I would talk to him about it, he'd be like, well, this reason or that reason or the other reason. And he didn't know what the number was then, to be fair, he just knew that they were coming back. The thing is that what I learned from my experience is a firm stance, right.

And so I went through a situation a while back where we had a technician who worked for us, super great guy, I mean, fantastic human being. Had a lot of stuff going on and lots of issues. And the thing was that we had a firm stance, and it was, we're going to talk about this. Tell me what's happening. Tell me how it happened. Number one, mistake. Okay? We all make mistakes. Help me understand. Let's talk about it. How are we going to prevent this? In that case, information was falsified. No if,

ands, or buts about it. Information was falsified. You clicked a button that said you torqued the lug studs. You didn't even put the lug nuts on it. Yeah. There are certain things, though, you've got to make one and done. I agree. That would have been a, hey, I'm going to let this one go, but this ever happens again, you're gone. And then within the

span of the next mistakes that came back were one and then another. And those two mistakes came back at the exact same time. And I sat him down and I said one of them was a safety. And I said, I cannot do this. I will not do this. Help me understand. In 99.99% of all cases, I would be terminating you right now. I'm willing to develop a program and a system, but we're going to have to do something different here. And everything you do is going to be quadruple checked by somebody else.

We're going to make sure this doesn't happen again. He left the bolts out of the brake caliper. Bolts weren't even in it. And so I said, this is not okay. This is absolutely, 100% not okay. He says, well, I can't make enough hours, and that's why no, you're not making enough hours because we're not giving you work because we don't trust you. Okay. I backed it down, was trying to give you easier and easier jobs. That clearly

did not fix things. So here's what we're going to do. And the very next day, he came in and turned in his resignation, and 18 cars came back directly after that. Every car he had worked on came back. That's how it always happens. Technician leaves, and all of a sudden you get piled up. A lot of them. Yeah, I will say the technician that just left me, we haven't gotten anything back. Yeah, but that was five. That was a different situation. He left because his boss was a complete

jackass to him, and he was making fun of him. He was picking on him nonstop. He questioned for his own good, of course. Yeah. He's on a podcast talking about his personal decisions and his personal life. He cuts the lawn at the shop. He's cutting my mom's lawn right now. Fantastic human being. Nick, you just got to drop the anchor and come on back. I might even give you a raise. Nick, I just want to point this out. I am to the point in my life, I've never

been one that worries about heaven or hell or anything like that. That's never been concern of mine. But I am somewhat worried that just sitting next to this man is probably going to get me struck by lightning at some point. Have you ever seen the episode of south park where cartman gets struck by lightning? You watch a lot of south park. I love south park. You do remind me of cartman. I can't watch south park with my kids, obviously,

for obvious reasons. Oh, yeah, for sure. But I have been showing them old simpsons episodes, like seasons one through eight, a few episodes from ten, but one through eight, gold. Every single one, I just laugh and laugh. My kids don't get the jokes. Like, what are we watching? Well, it's just a cartoon, and it's kind of funny, and there's some childish humor in there, but they don't get, like, the pop reference 90s pop reference or the older references from the old twilight

zone episode. They have no idea. And I'm laughing. Maybe we should start watching the simpsons. You guys never watched the simpsons? Well, I mean, we have. Yeah, just not together. It's been like decades. And you've seen all the memes, like how the simpsons predicted things that don't watch the simpsons. That's not what no, I mean, yes, they do that, but you got to watch the commentaries, because they will explain that, okay, there's three jokes in this seven

second sequence. There's three jokes in there, but I thought we could squeeze in one more joke in there, and they just build the absurdity. It's like, well, that's kind of funny, but that's absurd, that's funny. And then another layer, and then another layer, and that kind of love and that's art right there. They're just trying to squeeze that extra stupid joke in there just to make it that much funnier. They don't do it anymore. The new ones are just awful. You can't

after season ten. So not only do you have time to watch cartoons, you watch people talk about the cartoons. Maybe we should stop calling people. We'd have more time to watch cartoon. I moved

from central illinois to st. Louis for a job. They offered me a position in st. Louis, and I took it. And so I filled up my GeoMetro with my TV, a recliner, and some junk right in the back, and I rented an apartment, and I had my little 19 inch TV, and I had my DV, or I think it was a PlayStation two or whatever. I had that hooked up to it. And I didn't have money for cable or anything like that, so I watched episode after episode, the simpsons, seasons

one through eight on DVD with the commentary. Because you've already seen the episode, you knew all the jokes, but now I want to hear the commentary just over and over. And you played a few the three or four video games you had, and that was it. I ought to be young again. That was so much simpler. I look back going, it was spaghetti or tuna melts every night, because that's what chad's money for. No, I would make spaghetti

that would feed me for a week. Am I boring you with my story? My heart wrenching story about the simpsons and the commentary DVD stuff? Honey, if you thought that that was what was going to bore me about the things you talk about, you'd be losing your mind. I had this guy come in. This guy looks like a nice guy. I don't know, what was his name exactly? You're a jackass for not asking. Anyway, he comes in and he's like, oh,

yeah, we're here recording a podcast. Like, oh, I know you guys. You're that guy that calls everybody dear. Why? It's a problem. It's a real problem, because if you pay enough attention when he says dear. It's not he's like, It's a term of endearment. It is a term of endearment. He says it dear. It's always in this way, like he's getting ready to tell you how fucking stupid you are. No. Yes. Say dear to them. He's right. Can't help it. He's right. He's right. By my tone and

usage of random words. I didn't facial expressions. Listen, he's right. That's not what he was trying to do. It's just he was trying to convey without saying I'm much smarter than you, that he was much smarter. One of my technicians, he's like, I was saying, like, oh, so and so is mad at me. He hates me, wants to hit me if he sees me sometime, which is common, apparently. And he's like, did you call him dear? I go, Is that a thing? And he goes, yeah. Nobody's told you? I'm like,

no. He goes, yeah, it's super condescending. You shouldn't call people dear. And I go, I'm not trying to be condescending. He was like, Well, I know that now that I know you, you call me dear. I'm like, I don't care. But if they don't know who you it comes off as super condescending. And I'm like, really? I can't help it, though. It comes out I'm not trying to be condescending. You're just trying to prove you're smarter. That's when you do that. Trying to prove that I'm smarter.

Yeah. It's not even that. I opened a shop. Level one stupidity right there. I opened, not bought. So step one, I already made a mistake. And then I decided I was going to put that shop in an area with 30 other shops and then have no street visibility. Stupidity number two, like, I can keep stacking stupid things. I've done. The problem is over and over and. Over, these stupid things have made you so smart, the rest of us just. Can'T even I just made a lot

of mistakes, that's all. A lot of mistakes. Speaking of mistakes, are we going to do debriefs when we get back? Yes, we're going to do debriefs when we get back. Sure are. Well, that sounded like it sucked. Yeah, a little bit. Terrible. Awful. It's easy for me to say something because I've been out of the situation, but he was telling me about a situation with another couple. Husband works in the back, wife works in the front.

Very similar situation where things have all of a sudden gone sideways and the business is on the verge of closing. I'm hearing him tell me, and I go, this doesn't make any sense at some point, and I get it. You get into the weeds and you start to make excuses like you're saying, but at some point, I would have lost one person. And when I lose somebody, I take it very personally, like, I did something wrong here. I blame myself for losing that tech because I did. I did

lay into him way. Too hard. But yet at some point, it got funny and it was cathartic for me to make fun of him, but whatever. Oh, Lord, he deserved it. He made bad choices. Anyway, I still love him. I want him to come back, just not with the baggage he had. Anyway. We all have that tick emphasis. On bag, by the way. Lucas

anyway, by the way, we're working on his truck. It's at the shop. Anyway, I would have lost that first person, and I would have taken it very personally, and I would have asked everybody, and at some point, somebody would have told me. It's like, hey, it's Bob. What do you mean it's Bob? He's awful to work with. Like, you're going to lose more people. Like, I'm thinking of quitting on the second one, it would have been flamethrower to the shop on the second

person because I'm not going to. Hiring is the most god awful experience anybody, any shop owner, any manager has to go through hiring is miserable. It is awful. Writing the ad is awful. Putting it out there is awful. Interviewing and then am I making the right decision? I don't want to bring the wrong person in. And you're like, I need to get somebody in here. And that whole process is just exhausting and taxing, and I am not going to lose people. Not like that. On the second

person. Flamethrower to the shop. Somebody's telling me what the hell is going on here? I shouldn't have lost two people. What's going on? Somebody would have festive that guy right there. I feel like he's calling me dear. Yeah, just a little bit. Listen, dear. No, here's the thing, is that if you do any

research on narcissism, right, narcissism is a pretty big thing. If you do a little bit of research on it, you find out that when human beings are confronted with a narcissist, one of the things they do is they begin to blame themselves for what that person's doing, right? And that person can convince them by the things they say. Because most human beings don't say mean things to one another, right? They don't say things to be hurtful. They don't place blame. They just say,

hey, here's the situation. Here's what's going on. That's what we do as human beings. And so the natural human reaction when dealing with a truly narcissistic person is that I am going to try and figure out what I'm doing wrong because I'm the common denominator. But you don't realize they're actually the common denominator. And so I think it's somewhat understandable the decision that you guys made, because an addict is a narcissist. That's all there is to it.

There's no way around that. And I'm sure some mental health expert will come and bash me for saying. That from at least behaving in a narcissistic fashion, right. From my experiences as an

addict, right? And so the problem is that when you're dealing with someone like that. They're going to say that it's your fault. They're going to blame you. They're going to tell you why it's not their fault. They're going to put all of this out there in such a way. And I'm serious. Go watch a YouTube video about what is a narcissist and watch their behaviors and tell me that it's not the tech that you had.

And if you find yourself if anybody listening finds themselves in that situation, they go right now, because that was the biggest mistake I ever made. My business is I kept somebody that was like that, and if I had let them go, I'd be much further along my journey of being successful than I am right now. I hurt a lot of people, a lot of friends, a lot of family by letting that person stay in

the business. And that sucks because I know how emotional you feel about it, because you feel personally responsible for the damage that person did to other people, and you felt like you should have been there to protect them and stop it. And you can't do that all the time. But the reality is

we have to make ourselves aware of that. And to all the technicians who are out here fussing saying technicians aren't treated well, this is a perfect example of what happens to shop owners every single day in this country, is that somebody like this walks in and acts this way to a shop owner, and over time, the shop owner will become jaded about technicians. They will become jaded about people they bring into the shop because they've experienced this,

so now they don't trust anybody. And it's something that we all have to be responsible for fixing. Are you going to be quicker to fire someone now, do you think? Probably. I'd like to say so, yeah. Pay more attention to it. Don't just overlook things and just assume, well, that person probably just quit because they had their own thing going on, or that person's gone, because who knows why? Dig into it a little bit deeper and see. I think if I have concerns, then I'll talk to the

team that they're working with. One of the things that I didn't know he was doing was he was telling our new hire to watch his back because the service writer was ordering the wrong parts to sabotage him. But the funny part is that the wrong parts we'd order were the ones that he sourced himself. But if I had just asked people in the shop what was going on, I would have known. Yeah. I think that if I ever find myself avoiding the shop, that's going to probably be a

red flag for me, because I like being in the shop. Yeah. I don't know. I'd like to say I am 100% guilty of not putting more rigid parameters around what's acceptable and what's not acceptable. I excuse a lot of bad behavior and we were talking at lunch, and I go, Maybe I'm just not cut out for it because we talk to a lot of really successful shop owners and those bastards will not hesitate to fire someone tomorrow if they are not meeting their expectations performance wise, they're

gone. It's my family or yours. And I like my family more than yours. Goodbye. And then out the door they go. That level of ruthlessness, I think, is what I called it. And I don't say that disparagingly. It's a ruthless mindset to say that this will succeed come hell or high water, and I'm not going to let you stand in the way of it. And then that's it. I don't know that I got that in me. You've heard me tell somebody in our industry before that, hey, I'm almost envious of how ruthless

you can be. Right? I know it sounds crazy, but it's like, I could not do that if I tried. That emotional detachment. Yeah. I could not do it if I tried. What were you going to say? I got sidetracked with the emotional detachment thing. It'll come back to you. It was going to be a great point, too. It's going to make the entire podcast it's going to be the snippet that I share. Make this sucker blow up. These two are on. It'll blow up no matter what. Yeah.

The last one did really well. It's his pretty face. Really? Look at this face. Face for podcast? Yeah, face for Radio. You guys didn't listen to it, I could tell because you would have known that it was not on video. It was just audio because of jerks. Forget it. I'm cutting this whole thing down. Delete all right. Thanks for sharing that. We definitely listened to it. We've listened to the podcast a few times. It sucks hearing your own voice. I don't

like hearing my voice. You get over it, trust me. Listen, David what's interesting about David david's complete the opposite. He skips everybody else talking and he. Just listens to so the reason why I do that the reason why I do that I thought he was he's not joking. The reason I do that you're the only say, like, a lot of stupid things. I'm not just joking. They're just jokes. I've had to tell several people, don't take anything I say seriously. I'm just kidding. We

don't. I'm glad. Yeah, I know, right? But you get these comments and he'll sit I don't get them. He gets them and he's like, oh, yeah, that dude hates you. What did I do? You said something about Land Rovers one time. He's not even joking. We all have, though. You're going to get more hate mail. You're going to get us more hate mail. That's what's getting ready to happen.

Dude's going to be upset because we talked about it all this weekend and. I didn't this whole weekend, we have dropped stupid comments on Land Rovers at. Every single so now when my service writer listens to it, she's going to be so upset. I think that's the one is. Does she own Land Rovers? Oh, yeah, she loves them. Yeah, I do, too. 100%. No, but she loves them because she likes to drive them, not because they bring us business. Well, he thought we were discouraging technicians from working on

it's. Like what they break. Why would I discourage you from work? You want to fix cars. Land Rover is perfect place to start. And then, Minnie, what's one level above that? Jaguars are the worst. I think they're worse than Land Rovers. Flaming piles of garbage. We have two in our lot right now. Jaguars? Yeah. What years is it like the Ford Jaguar or is it Jaguar? Jaguars. No, we have four because we have two F paces right now, too. Oh, no.

Sorry about your luck. When you get back to the shop. Next, they're all. Know. I've never heard a shop owner be so thrilled about the potential of having a shop fire when the shop's full of Jaguars. Well, I hate it for you. Throw a few Volvo in there. Volvo. I like Volvo. Really? Yeah. I think they're so cool. Quirky swedish cars. All right, listen, dear. That cuppy deep. I'm never going to do it again. I'm

just kidding. The high school educator in my community was a Volvo master tech, and I said, there is no greater skill set required for being a teacher than a Volvo master technique. What do you mean? I was like, if you can tolerate those things, there is no way 16 year old kids ruin your people get. So upset at Volvo's. I don't understand. Yeah, the wire harness does melt or, like, flake away. I get that. Disintegrate. They disintegrate, so that's a thing. But they do it on all

of them. So it's like, well, okay, we got these weird, like, lights or whatever, but if you go really old, they're all the same car, just longer versions of each other. They're just, like slightly longer. Slightly longer. All the exact same. The saddle tanks in the XC. Ninety s right. The power steering. So when they decided they were going to stay in business and Ford bottom, and then they started, like, intermixing Ford and stuff like that. But the XC 90,

those were turds. Yeah, and I could see. But then that becomes a Land Rover conversation where, like, is this your first Volvo XC 90? Is this your first Land Rover? I know. Okay, don't stress. There's always just get a drip pan. And if it stops leaking, please don't drive it. Have it. But you tell them with the XC 90s, they have so many issues, and they stack up on top of each other. So if this is their first XC 90, I don't care how good of a deal you got. I'm sorry. This is going to turn into

a $10,000 adventure. I had a really good client of mine and somebody that we've become friends and we have a mutual understanding that I charge more than what he wants to pay. He's super frugal, but cool guy, right? Like, it's good.

And he had a Volvo, and it was the power steering idler deal where the gear would actually go bad and you have to disassemble everything. It's like a whole timing assembly. And so I gave him a price, and it was like $12,000. And he got mad at me and he was not going to be my friend anymore. He took it to Volvo and he said, fuck that piece of shit. He's like, they wanted 20,000. Yeah, I know. I told you, dude. What year was it? I

can't remember. I'll go back and was it one of the newer, newer ones? Yeah, it was fairly new. Like nine, maybe? Yeah. All right. You guys probably want to go eat. My tummy is grumbly. It's all David's fault. I'm sorry.