The BIGGEST Firing Stories You'll EVER Hear

A listener fact-checks Steve with AI 0:00

Steve Shaw: Check this out, Dave Rogers. We asked, and people responded. My buddy Corey Gold texted me and said, "Steve, I was listening to you guys the other day, and I was actually in your training, so I thought I'd use AI to fact-check you. You tell everybody an alignment is required every 12 months or 12,000 miles. So I picked up my phone and asked Siri if an alignment is required every 12 months, and Siri said, absolutely, an alignment is required once or twice a year, depending on driving conditions." How about that? My hat's off to Corey for fact-checking me and finding out that yes, a car does require an alignment every 12 months or 12,000 miles.

Dave Rogers: That's a miracle. I don't know if we talked about it last time, but being a student of the game and understanding this stuff is so important. For those out there who don't have the base knowledge, or didn't start as a mechanic or technician, use the AI tools that are out there. Ask good questions. I'm not expecting you to go to the library and check out a book. Just sit at home and give ChatGPT some questions. Take back some real-life issues from your day. There's cool technology now where AI listens to phone conversations, transcribes everything and sends a note to the service manager or GM. Those are great learning tools. If you didn't handle a conversation right, pop it into ChatGPT and see what it says. It can't hurt.

Does firing the manager ever help? 1:58

Steve Shaw: It's funny you say student of the business. A buddy called me today and said he got fired. Look, we've all been fired at some point in our lives. I have been fired at least once as a manager. And we never share all the pertinent details. He didn't tell me what he did, but he's a pretty good dude. I like the guy. I've never worked with him in a store. I know a lot of guys through training, and I know whether they adopt my processes and train their people, but my clients don't generally send me their financials.

It made me think. You know I'm really into Major League Baseball right now. I watched an episode with Trevor May where he talked about what happens to a club when the manager gets fired midseason. Is it a good thing or a bad thing? Does it ever turn out better? And the answer was that it almost never changes the direction or the end result of the season. So I think about that from our perspective. You've been around a long time. What are your thoughts when you have to let somebody go or replace a manager? I find it fascinating.

Dave Rogers: There's an exception to the rule. I'm not a Phillies fan, but I'm not a hater. A few years back they fired their manager midseason, Joe Girardi, and then they went on their World Series run. And this year they fired a manager midseason again.

Steve Shaw: Well, Don Mattingly has done a good job with the Phillies right now.

Dave Rogers: Right. It's kind of funny. The first time, they fired Girardi, an ex-Yankee, and now they just hired an ex-Yankee. Interesting. But it happens to everybody. I've been fired before. Sometimes you let people finish the month, and sometimes you fire them midstream. I fired people way back when things were a little less nice and less HR-centric. January fourth used to be a big day to fire people, cleaning house for the new year. They'd wait until after Christmas. I used to think that was cruel. I told my boss, fire them before Thanksgiving, or between Thanksgiving and Christmas, so they don't spend all their money on Christmas and then have no job to pay the bills in January. They said no, that was stupid; their way was the smart way.

I think what happens is that the first thing you have to do is get out there and control the message. Make sure your team is in place and everyone understands. Keep it simple. Don't go high-level, don't get into the dirt and don't badmouth anybody. Most of the time, most of the people in the store kind of know why the person got fired anyway. They know things weren't going well. So my main thing is to keep it simple and control the message, and then take it day by day.

Taking over after a manager is gone 5:44

Steve Shaw: You never know, though, because there are people who thrive in chaos, and the manager who was there for years could have been buddies with a lot of people. So you can't go in and badmouth them: "He just wasn't performing. He was an SOB." These men and women may have been friends, even outside of work. If you do that, you're shooting yourself in the foot.

I remember my first job as a manager, going into a store where the manager had been removed. As an advisor, I'd never had a manager get fired while I was there, so I didn't know how to take over. Ultimately I thought that was a good thing for me, because I got to do whatever I wanted, my way. I wasn't following somebody's mentorship. I just did what I thought was right. But I've taken over many stores in my illustrious career where the manager was a poor performer, and you run into the people who really liked them. All of a sudden you've got to turn it around and get people working who were used to just getting by. It's a big deal.

Dave Rogers: And you can't assume anything. Don't assume it's going to run itself when that person's not there. You've got to identify the high performers and touch base with everybody, because you're right: some people are going to be loyal to the guy who just got fired, and some will be thrilled to death he's gone. For the most part, you've got to put somebody in there who'll take ownership until you figure out who's going to take their place, even if it's a temporary fix. I've seen it happen too many times: the general manager or service manager leaves, and we just assume it's going to run itself. That can be very dangerous, because guys like you take it upon themselves and run amok, doing whatever you want.

Consultants who get managers fired 8:07

Steve Shaw: Hey, I've never run amok. But I think about the times I've taken over, and as a consultant, I learned something very early in my career. I think it's one reason consultants have a bad rap, and there are consultants out there who've done this. They come into your store and talk trash about the manager: "This guy doesn't know what he's doing. You've got to get rid of him." And the dealer goes, "Well, you must know what you're talking about," and fires the service manager. Now the consultant, who didn't know any better, got him fired and is on the hook, and he has to sit down and take over the store. But that's good for the consultant, because now he gets paid. I think that happens more than we'd care to admit. "I'll go ahead and work here. Maybe I'll do it at half my rate." The consultant comes in, gets the manager fired, gets half a dozen other people fired, and now he's running the store. That's a bad deal, and I've seen it give some consultants a bad rep.

I was very fortunate to learn that early. I rarely consult on things like that anymore. I've had dealers say, "Hey, Steve, I want you to write a report about my manager, because I'm going to terminate him." And I'm like, boy, this ought to be good. But I'm very matter-of-fact. If you ask me to evaluate someone, I'll give you an evaluation. But I'll never say, "I recommend firing him." It's, "This is what your guy does, and you know it." As a trainer, you've got to stay above board. Trust me, I don't want the manager's job.

Dave Rogers: There are too many dealers who listen to the person they just met because they're paying them money, or one of the gang at the 20 Group. They're embarrassed about something, they're out having a drink or dinner, and somebody says, "You should watch that guy." They come back from the 20 Group meeting, create havoc and fire somebody. You can't do it that way. These places don't break overnight.

The old five-year churn, and Dave's first firing 10:40

Dave Rogers: It's funny these topics came up a couple of times in the last week. The old school, and it was old school for a reason, was that about every five years, the owner would fire the service manager. A new manager would come in and drive the place up drastically. Then after about five years it would level off, they'd fire him, the next guy would come in, and it would go up again. They used to do this as a normal way of doing things. Back in the old days, nobody blinked an eye when somebody got fired.

My first service manager job: I'd never been a service manager before. I had a great boss who gave me the job. I was there a little over two years. It was a little Dodge Hyundai store, a union shop, in my hometown, very close to my house, very convenient. While I had that job, my ex-wife got pregnant, and she couldn't work, or was sick, whatever. So I started selling cars three nights a week. We weren't open Saturdays, in the early nineties, so I'd come in early Saturday morning, submit all my warranty, and sell cars for the day. I was working six days a week, and I'd come in Sundays to do warranty too.

Everything's going great. I'm learning a lot, I'm making a little money selling cars on the side, and my boss gets fired. He gets called to a meeting up north. He calls me before he leaves: "I'm going up north. I think I'm done. Do me a favor: go to my office, bring a battery box over, put my stuff in there. I'll call you if I need you. I have a bad feeling." Sure enough, he gets fired. Since we were all hired by him and were his guys, we figured at some point we'd get launched too.

Dave Rogers: Fast-forward about six months. My first daughter is born on a Wednesday night. I come in Thursday to do payroll and tell the office I'm taking the next week off to go home with my first kid. Everybody's fine. That was planned. Then I get a call Sunday night: "I need to see you Monday morning. Come to the office." He was the fixed ops guy down the street, the complex guy. So I'm like, here we go. I come into my office at seven in the morning, put all my stuff in my briefcase, put it in the trunk of my car, and then drive over to his office, because I knew I was getting launched.

Before I left, I went to the shop steward. I had a big manila envelope full of all the write-ups, the ones you had to send a copy of to the union. A thick envelope stuffed with all three signed copies. I handed it to him, and he says, "Where are you going?" I said, "I'm going over to the Pontiac store. So-and-so wants to see me, and I have a feeling I'm not coming back. So here's my present to you, because you've been a good guy the whole time I've known you. Throw these in the garbage. Nobody will know they existed."

Sure enough, I went over there and got fired. And the mechanic said to me before I left, "Yeah, Dave, it was just a matter of time." Because that company just churned and burned, churned and burned. I thought it was hysterical that he knew it. "It's been two years, man. You weren't going to last more than two years at this company."

Steve Shaw: Isn't that funny? You said it: "Why would I listen to you? You're just number five. You're just the next guy."

Dave Rogers: He said that to me. I ran into him a couple of weeks later and said, "Mike, can you tell me why you wouldn't listen to me?" He said, "Because I knew you weren't going to be there. I don't have to change." He told me.

Steve cuts 26 people, then gets cut 14:59

Steve Shaw: And you're like, "No, for real, I'm going to be here. I'm the guy." I was with a public company when I was young, kind of like what you just said. I was running four or five stores in Los Angeles. They bought the store in July, I came in as fixed ops director, and by October they said, "Steve, we've noticed your expenses are way too high." I said, "My expenses? You fucking hired me. I just got here too." They said we needed to cut a hundred grand out of payroll, or some ridiculous amount. It turned out that across four stores, I had to fire twenty-six people.

I said to my GM, "Jeff, can I let these guys go after the holiday?" He said, "Yeah, let's wait until after Thanksgiving." Then the regional guy comes in: "No, these fuckers are gone. You fire them now." It's like a Wednesday night. So I had my list, and I had to fire twenty-six people. I was the no-good SOB. And when it was all said and done, there was still payroll that needed to be taken care of that didn't go away with those people. Thirty days later, it just so happened that I made the exact amount of money they still had to cut. So at Christmas, Stevie was gone too. Thanks a lot. It was all numbers, and they just didn't care: "Here you go, bro. You're out."

Dave Rogers: Listen, that was the old days. It was plug and play. I always laughed: the Pharaoh dies, and everyone moves up. But aside from every five years and the numbers skyrocketing, what did that get you? It got you a bunch of fourteen-year-old Pharaohs who didn't know their ass from their elbow, because eventually you run out of qualified candidates. That group was known for doing that. And the only reason I took the job there was that I knew I'd eventually become a manager, and I could get that on my resume, which was very hard to do. I took the job as an advisor knowing my boss would get blown out at some point and I'd get promoted, and that's exactly what happened. So I didn't expect anything, and I wasn't shocked.

But to go back to the original point: that used to be the culture, and it can't be anymore. You can't do what the car business did twenty, thirty, forty years ago. It's insanity. The job is more difficult now. There's a lot more technology. It's not just an ex-tech handing out work to technicians. You've got the factory on your ass, the BBB, Google reviews, CSI, video, and the manufacturer micromanaging the shit out of you. So if you're going to fire the manager, you've got to think about what's most important right now. If it's numbers, maybe you figure out a way to help the guy get the numbers.

Promote the person behind the manager 18:43

Dave Rogers: I was talking to a service manager recently whose boss, the parts and service director, left the company not long ago. This service manager has been there five or six years doing a good job. He's the guy behind the guy, making things happen and putting out fires. He said, "Please don't hire somebody over me. I think I can do this job. I can be the number one guy." So we're talking, and I'm asking him about closing ratios, the skill levels of the advisors, the TO process, and he's looking at me and says, "I've been focusing on the techs. That's been my job for five years: making sure the shop is handled correctly and the guys are making hours. I took my eye off the ball. I haven't been watching the advisors. You're right. That's something I've got to get better at."

There's so much to this business now. There was some grumbling about whether this guy could succeed, and I said, "No, we've got to give the guy a chance. Let's talk to him and find out what's going on." It was a very interesting, eye-opening conversation for both of us. I don't think we should dispose of him. I think we should keep him, and I think he's going to do a good job.

Steve Shaw: And think about the opportunity cost when the manager gets fired. All of a sudden everybody's worried about their job, so they stop performing. Performance is immediately in the tank. There may be some attrition. What does it cost to hire somebody, $10,000, $15,000 now? There's a statistic behind that. I lost my manager, I'm going to lose a couple of people, a couple of techs. This arbitrary letting somebody go is terrible. People get restless, then they start leaving, and a new guy comes in and has to put everybody back together because of a poor decision.

I hate hearing that somebody got fired. And I love what you're saying. I had a parts guy once who was just not getting it done. I was fixed ops director, he was the parts manager, and he was my friend. He was making everybody mad, and I might have let it go on too long, but I sat him down and said, "Buddy, this is not working, and we've got one of two choices." He did the same thing: "I really effed up." I said, "Here's what you're going to do. You're going to go stand in front of all those men and say, 'I effed up, and I'm here to make it better.'" And they gave him a chance. "Thank goodness you realize it." He was able to turn his parts department around. I think it's the worst thing in the world when somebody gets fired, especially in today's day and age. What really went on? What really caused it?

Dave Rogers: You do the post-mortem after the guy leaves, and then you figure out whether it was really the manager or something else. No disrespect, but I've seen some crazy GMs out there who worry about the stupidest shit. I don't know if they're looking for somebody to put in the crosshairs to take the heat off themselves. They don't know anything about service and parts, so they automatically assume it's the problem. They're ex-sales managers, born and raised to think service is ripping them off, so they have this animosity.

Let's be honest: most sales managers and salespeople, if you had to relate them to somebody in history, are like gunslingers. Back to back, twenty paces, turn and shoot. Today's car salesperson is the gunslinger of the 1800s. They're not going to like the logical, mechanically inclined, facts-driven guy. They're not going to like us in service. They don't want to hear the truth, so they make these decisions based more on emotion than on facts. But I think we're getting better. The car business has definitely improved over the last twenty years. I think the publics have helped bring professionalism into the industry and get some respect from the rest of the world. And the technology and complexity of the business mean that if you're a good service manager, you're probably not going to get fired for something stupid like you would have twenty years ago.

The publics, gunslingers and followers 23:17

Steve Shaw: I love that. I think the publics brought some validity to our business. I grew up in the mom-and-pop world, and then the publics came in and gave us a real career path, not just working for the local car dealer. When I was with a public company as an employee, I'd meet the president and the vice president as Steve the service manager, and I thought they were assholes. I never got one-on-ones with them. It was always through their intermediaries, or a handshake. The message from the top down to us was always a mixed bag. My regional guy would talk trash about the president, or say, "You're going to do this, or we're all going to get fired."

Then, as a third-party vendor, I met a lot of these guys, and they were actually really good guys with a vision: "Here's where we are, here's our vision, and you have to disseminate it all the way down to the service manager level." Well, the guys in between would go in and say, "You're going to fucking do this, because my job is on the line." I never saw anybody at the Nation at that high level saying, "Either do this or get out." I can't tell you what they do now, but back then it was always, "We need to move the needle." A couple of my really good friends now are those high-level people I got to meet as an outside service. But somehow the message got disseminated as "Do this or get out," so people hated them, and they either left or got fired by the regional guy. It was a wacky time back then, the late nineties and two-thousands.

Dave Rogers: Definitely. The public company I was with was just forming in '94 when I got there. It wasn't public yet. It went public in '96, and there was a lot of turmoil and stock volatility. It was plummeting. AutoNation was going crazy buying stores, and there were only two or three publics out there. Then Roger came in and bought the company, gave it some respectability, and I give him credit for that, and he put his name on it after a while. But from '94 to '98 there was a lot of turmoil: getting rid of stores, launching people, firing people. The muckety-mucks were all in a political atmosphere, looking after their own jobs. They didn't want to ruin their cash cow, because they had stock options. I've watched general managers leave in handcuffs. I've seen that.

But to answer your question: unlike sports, it's probably more of a fifty-fifty. It really depends on why the person was let go. You have to be careful that they don't have a following, and that the shop isn't loyal to them, because the last thing in the world you need is all the techs leaving because they're buddy-buddy, with that guy going right down the street to the next dealer. That could put you out of business. And I think that has led people to hold on to people too long sometimes, because they worry about what happens.

Steve Shaw: I had a group of men who worked for me, and I was that gunslinger guy back then. Twenty-seven months was a good stint for me as a service manager or fixed ops manager. But in those twenty-seven months, we got shit turned around, we made money, and all my men were making money. I had a program I'd work on how to turn a dealership around, and I had a great rap for that. Steve's rap was: he might not be there more than two or three years, but in those two or three years, you're going to make a lot of money. So I had guys who would follow me. They knew, "We'll go with Steve, and for the next three years we'll be over here, and if Steve quits, he'll take us to the next place and pay us more." I single-handedly drove up technician wages in Los Angeles, California, and I was proud of it, man, because these guys would follow me, and we all killed it. They were all mad as hell at me when I stopped and became a trainer: "I don't have a job for you anymore, guys." But for ten or fifteen years of my career as a service manager, it was a good run. That's my checkered past.

Dave Rogers: I got moved around a lot, a few times in Jersey City alone, to different stores and to help out in different places. Unfortunately, I couldn't take anybody with me. You're fixing a store, and then they transfer you. I think one guy came with me one time. Some of the stores were seventy-five miles away, and people weren't going to drive seventy-five miles. So you had to rebuild the team and start over. I learned how to build a store and rebuild it, build a succession plan, and make it so that when I left, it got better. A lot of the places I handed to the folks who worked underneath me and busted their ass did bigger and better things after I left. Whether it was the foundation I put in place or that they were good people, they did well.

Steve Shaw: There are so many good people in the business. And this was my foundation. I had worked so many stores as a manager, then I was a consultant for a short time, and now I'm a trainer. When I say you've got to have a vision, it's because I would walk into a store, and you may or may not know me. I was in the Ford world, and for the most part ended up at a big high-line group. I'd say, "Guys, this is what we're going to do," and I'd get people so jazzed. "If you do X, Y and Z with me, nobody here is getting fired, and all of you will make more money." I was about painting that picture. "These are the fundamentals we're going to work." I remember once at a Ferrari store, I literally took the Ferrari sign off the wall. They said, "It's Ferrari." I said, "No, it's not. It's a car dealer." We worked the fundamentals, and we grew and made money together.

But that's also why I'm a stickler on the rules. If you don't hold people accountable, if we say we're going to follow the rules and we don't, we won't get to the promised land. The only way we all get there is by following these rules. So I was a hard-ass. Armin said that, and Janet said that, on our calls. But there were no unwritten rules, I can guarantee you that.

GM tip: think twice before you launch a manager 30:46

Dave Rogers: Well, there were no unwritten rules. So listen, I'll kick off the tip of the day. For the general managers out there who don't know fixed ops and don't understand what's going on: think twice. Don't make an emotional decision. Maybe there's a customer screaming up front every once in a while, or too often. Maybe you've got some comebacks, or some used cars that aren't right. That manager probably has his hands full in the back. You really should think twice before just launching the person. That doesn't mean you shouldn't take corrective action. Have these conversations. If you're not fluent in their language, bring in somebody who is, or ChatGPT it, like we said last time. Find a way, because most people don't go to work every day thinking, "I'm going to do a shitty job today, and hopefully my boss doesn't catch me."

Steve Shaw: I agree a hundred percent.

Dave Rogers: Their hair's on fire, and there are customer things going on. They're missing stuff that might be obvious to somebody who's not in the fire. It's easy to criticize. You mentioned the corporate guys, the C-suite. It's easy to make comments from 30,000 feet and tell this guy he's an idiot because "We've got a Lexus store in California doing triple the grosses of the Lexus store in Podunk, Tennessee." Really? Only three times more? I bet if I go to the one in California, they're leaving a lot more money on the table than the guy in Podunk. You don't know that. So arm yourself with good information. And be real careful: if you're going to let a manager go, make sure there's not a flock ready to fly with him, or you're going to shoot yourself in the foot and regret it. Give it 24 hours, give it 48 hours, give it a little time to breathe before you make these decisions, because rash decisions don't work out the way they used to thirty years ago.

Steve Shaw: There aren't a lot of gunslingers out there who are going to come in and backfill.

Dave Rogers: There aren't. And you don't want those guys working for you anyway.

Steve Shaw: That is absolutely a true statement. Good to talk to you. If you're out there and you just got fired and you've got a story to tell, or you want to tell your story about taking over a store, I'd love to hear it, and we'll have you on the air. It'd be super fun. And I want to talk more about how the business has changed, because I love these conversations about old school versus new school.

Dave Rogers: Don't forget: live Fridays, four o'clock.

Steve Shaw: Yes, sir. This will be Thursday, so tomorrow at 4 p.m. we'll see you live. Fixed Ops Focus, streaming live at four o'clock on Friday.

Dave Rogers: I'll talk to you.

Steve Shaw: Later.