"A Beautician and two former air hostesses are among 15 women selected to work in France's first garage run by women, which is being hailed as the solution for a car industry that is having trouble finding male mechanics clever enough to understand its high-tech vehicles."
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My father, after being a mechanic for a couple of decades, went on to owning several of his own car dealerships.
Sometimes I used to have to laugh. All of the young hot-shot mechanics who were trained in computer-diagnostics etc could spend hours trying to diagnos a vehicle, checking every stupid little high-tech sensor etc, and not figure it out - then my Dad would walk through the shop and ask them the most simple questions and they would look at him dumbfounded, as he in fact had diagnosed the problem without all the gizmos. He would always shake his head and smile while saying "sometimes you young guys get so carried away with all that computer stuff that you forget that you're still looking at an internal combustion engine - same principle as in 1950."
On a different note, I have no problems with the women trying this one out. I worked in car dealerships a lot over the years and I'll tell you one thing - theres no room for snivelling in a dealership. You get paid only what you produce. Salesman only get paid by commission, Mechanics only get paid on flat rate, Sales/Service/Parts Managers only get paid a percentage of their department's profit. Hey, it's a dog eat dog world and we're all wearing Milkbone Underwear! You have to hustle your ass and perform if you want to eat at the end of the month and nobody really cares about your excuses because they're too busy hustling for their own bread. 9 to 5 doesn't exist!
If they can make it work, power to them - man or woman. Dealerships, however, have a high employee turnover just because of constant pressure business style. There's rarely a need to fire slackers because they will starve themselves pretty fast and go running to a job that will pay them regardless of incompetence. There's lots of pay inequity inside a dealership, a guy making $18,000/yr might be sharing an office with a guy making $75,000/yr - No complaining! Want more money? Work harder!
I would be willing wager that only half to a quarter of these people will still be there in 2 years, and in 5 years there may only be two or three left.
Seems to me this that this son of the dealership owner is trying to get laid, and not trying to set up a viable business. I can't fathom that any successfull Dealership owner would train an entire staff and then let them loose with their own dealership after 2 years. What a waste of training and a waste of money - as I said, I promise more than half will be gone in a couple of years (that goes equal for men or women).
There's something fishy about this article.