Figured y'all might like to hear this story.. all true.

In High School I noticed a local body shop had several 40s & 50s Cars that they were working on.
In need of a job I stopped in and asked if they needed any help, being that I grew up with 2 professional restorers I felt somewhat qualified.
After being introduced to the shop owner I got the 10 cent tour.

First thing I noticed were the 4 ft pile of beer bottles & cans (whatever was on sale I'd imagine) and trash & garbage everywhere.

The owner offered me a job helping disassemble & doing the final wash & cleaning of the cars. Needing money & figuring I would get plenty of laughs I took the job.
The second day there we went to lunch. I walked out to my car and told the boss I'd meet him at the Chinese Buffet we were going to. He pulls up in a car that a customer had dropped off that day. I asked him why he drove that car and not his own- his response was "This car has more gas than mine".
The other 2 bodymen would walk around with cans of beer in their pockets so they would not have to go back & forth to the fridge. When one of them ran out and he asked the other guy for one of his and the guy said no, the other guy took a screwdriver and stabbed the cans so he couldn't drink them either and his jeans were soaked in beer.
Trying to straighten a bent hinge on a Cutlass using the 2x4 on the door sill method- ended up pulling the metal from around the lower hinge and BRAZED it back catching the carpet on fire. He puts the fire out with beer.
I could go on alot more(all just as amusing as this) but this is enough for now. Needless to say I only stuck around a couple of weeks but that experience left a big impression on how not to do things.
I did take a few pictures of the operation and every so often I'll take them out and look at them and remind myself that this is not how it's done!

Sounds like the way some of my friends operate!!

Thanks,,,That is funny

I like the screwdriver in the beer can part.....priceless

Sounds like a place I once worked for sadly to say. They would drink OMB

Image matters.. customers don't think about body shops. they ride by on the way to their jobs.. after they wreck they think of shops. having a neat clean shop will have them coming to you. repeat customers and the referrals they give, is the only way... Me.. you can only screw me once. same with your customers...gotta make them happy..no matter what it takes. image matters. clean up.

I had a transmission shop near me that had the garbage bin FULL of Bud bottles and cans and 24 pack cardboard. The owner would have a bottle in his hand at 8am! I used to joke how he just glued the bottle to his hand and would refill it when empty.

I went to work for a shop knowing that the dude was an odd feller but no as odd as the whole thing turned out to be. I had quit my job as a paint rep and was going back to my tool box after getting tired of all the driving. Well, one thing I had to give up was my company car and not having another at the time I took a job at this shop because it was only about a thousand feet from my home. The guy was kind of a tool genius, I learned a lot about tools and some interesting ways to use them. But like your typical genius he was VERY odd. He had a son who was about 8 who had grown up in this shop. I saw this kid in a playpen in the office when he was about six months old when I was a paint rep calling on the shop. They lived about an hour and a half away from the shop. So this poor little kid had been leaving home at 6am every day of his life to go to this shop where he then was until seven or so EVERY DAY! He was "home schooled at the shop! ("Shop schooled"?) He was a MESS a friggin MESS. The old man rolled his own cigs and smoked like a chimney. The wife did all the book work and estimating, she had piles of receipts and stuff over a foot high on the desk, I am not kidding you, WELL over a foot high! I wish I would have wrote down the stuff that went on there everyday. Everywhere has a thing or two every once in a while that you will tell friends about, this place it happened EVERY DAY. Once they got a "Flowbee" http://www.flowbee.com/ and the owner cut his long (Einstein looking) hair out in the middle of the shop with the shopvac. Once the kid locked himself in the bathroom and the old man was supposed to be taking him to a doctors appointment or something. The kid was locked in there and the old man was banging on the door screaming at him to come out. He would walk off and smoke a cig at a hundred miles an hours like speed smoking or something, then walk back and bang on the door. As he walked away one of the times the kid runs out of the bathroom with the father chasing him out to the front of the shop. I went into the bathroom ( I had been waiting to use it if you get my drift) and I found that the kid had made suds in the sink with the soap and spread the suds all over the walls! And I mean ALL OVER the walls!

The booth was a friggin piece of crap with no lights, the painter had literally put one of two of those little portable cheapie Harbor Freight quarts lights hanging in a couple of corners! It was like a friggin nightclub in that booth I mean DARK. Yet this painter was one of the best I have ever seen, he produced amazing work. In the five months I worked there he had ONE car refused by a customer for a color mismatch.
I quit when they wouldn't give me a couple more dollars and hour and stayed to the last day of my two week notice, I don't think he had ever had a guy do that (I watched two other guys come and work there for a few days and leave). He came to my new job a few months later and offered me my job back paying me "More than anyone in town would pay me". Not that I was such a good bodyman, but because I put up with his crap I assume. I am still at that same shop I left him for over ten years later. And he is still open! Like I said, he was an odd dude but I'll tell you what, he REALLY had some interesting ideas on tool use and tool design. I learned a lot working there that 5 months, what to do and what not to do, I learned a lot.

Brian

lol...you can't make this stuff up. I was taught almost all my restoration stuff from a guy who could have been your guy's brother. Only difference was he had a beer tap coming through the wall of the garage with the keg in the 'fridge on the other side of the wall. His favorite phrase was "that'll buff right out"...

He had a dog trained to climb a stepladder and get whatever grit box of sandpaper he asked for out of the attic over the garage. I've never seen a dog climb a stepladder before or after that...much less come back with the right box of paper.

-Chris

chris wrote:lol...you can't make this stuff up. I was taught almost all my restoration stuff from a guy who could have been your guy's brother. Only difference was he had a beer tap coming through the wall of the garage with the keg in the 'fridge on the other side of the wall. His favorite phrase was "that'll buff right out"...

He had a dog trained to climb a stepladder and get whatever grit box of sandpaper he asked for out of the attic over the garage. I've never seen a dog climb a stepladder before or after that...much less come back with the right box of paper.

-Chris

Well one old teeth-less guy that worked with me said that a partner who he had a body-shop with grew pots on the shop's paint booth's roof , I guess the heat and UV lamps did their job after all.

Years ago I had my car at a ford dealer for body paint work. As i made a visit one day to check on progress I talked to the guy who was going to paint the car.
I noticed his hands were shaking like crazy and I thought to my self , no way is he going to pain that car. So I went to the shop mgr and told him of my concerns , he said not to worry as that guy was the best painter in town ! Yea right on what planet I thought., Anyhow , I let it go and expected to sue them over a lousy paint job , boy did I get a surprize. This guy made the paint look better than factory and not anything wrong , nothing ! After the paper work was handled , I ask how this guy could do such a good job ? The comment i got was they ley him have a shot or 2 of his favorite acoholic beverage and the rest is history !