The one thing we all want most from our job is the freedom to do it the way we think it should be done. Whether you're sweeping
floors or running a multinational corporation, the one thing that provides more job satisfaction than anything else is the
freedom to do things your own way. It's hard to imagine sticking with a job that denies at least a little bit of that freedom.
Of course, you and the boss must agree on "the right way," and almost everybody in the world works for somebody else. A CEO
answers to a board of directors, and the president of the United States must (eventually) answer to voters. In a small business,
ultimately everyone works for the customer.
Like other craftsmen, sometimes you have to make your own decisions about what will make the customer happy. While customers
can be the most difficult boss, they can also be the easiest. Most don't know or care about what you do in the service bay,
they only know if their car is fixed. Oh, they care about professionalism and courtesy and all the other things that form
their opinions about your shop, but their most important judgment is about you. And that's formed by the results of your work,
especially when the car is in for repair as opposed to maintenance. If the car is fixed right, delivered on time and the final
bill is close to the estimate, they'll be back. And repeat business is a form of praise that any shop owner can recognize.
In some ways, the customer is the best boss to have, because they don't tell you how to do the job. Some may try, and if they
insist, well, you don't have to work for them, do you? But if you're not the shop owner, you have a more immediate boss, and
he or she may have a few opinions about how the job should be done — opinions that are far different from yours.Sometimes there are two different ways to do a job: the right way and the other way. Sometimes the other way will work. But
in those situations, everyone has to be happy with the result, including you. Your experience tells you what works and what
doesn't, and usually you are free to make the decision. But if it conflicts with what the boss thinks is good for his business
(whether he's right or wrong), something's gotta give.
My last job working in the service bay was at a large, busy shop, and flatrate was our mistress. I never learned to "work
the system," because I was good at diagnostics and electrical work. Because no one else wanted those jobs, I got all of them.
Even on the cars of the late 1970s, those jobs were more time consuming, because the problem often was hard to pinpoint (little
has changed). But I always succeeded, always found the problem, fixed it right and always satisfied the customer. Of course,
flatrate couldn't reward that success, but I made the decisions and took pride in my work.
Unfortunately the boss didn't think it was important to find a way around flatrate for rewarding that kind of performance.
No doubt he had his reasons, and maybe he was right, maybe not. But his decisions and mine seemed to have two different objectives,
and something had to give.
