Quote:
Originally Posted by Roofy
I have been out of the retail auto parts scene for over a decade, but even then, I'm probably still a good couple of decades younger than the average poster on here. Even when I worked in the parts business, I absolutely HATED the way the corporate bigwigs were trying to push out the old catalogs and tech in favor of everything new and fancy. The thing that was mentioned with the new touchscreen computerized alternator/starter/battery testers, you literally CANNOT test them without entering "their" part number into the screen. Sure, if you have more than 2 brain cells to rub together and know what youre doing, you can fake it, but as some have mentioned, the push for lower skills and wages is only attracting the inexperienced newbies and high-schoolers, while anyone with experience moves on to greener pastures.
As an aside, I always made a habit of keeping the catalogs that corporate would occasionally have us dispose of, and made the managers aware that anything they wanted to throw away, I wanted first dibs. Some of that stuff is nigh irreplaceable and holds a vast wealth of information that you cannot get on the typical online lookup. Well, Imagine my disgust when I came back from a 2 weeks vacation to find that corporate had "upgraded" our seal and bearings interchange and lookup guide to an all-online setup. And the very valuable and hard to find IBI bearings and seals interchange books had all been tossed in the dumpster while I was gone!!! To say that I was upset would be a vast understatement! It's been more than a decade and I'm still POed about that. And of course, the latest and greatest online lookup has no functional way to look up anything by dimensions, or oddball setups from an individual tractor, or anything like that....
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It's clear to me from your post that you really cared about your job and went the extra mile to really be a "Parts person". Generally, in the parts business model, you would never receive any recognition, or financial reward for doing the extra things that customers really appreciate. Actually, in many ways you are punished for doing anything "extra". You were probably wise to find a different career. But old geezers like me appreciate your efforts.